After seeing the much hyped movie 2012, which began running in theaters around the world a few weeks ago, scientists started questioning the validity of the claims the movie makes. Though it was meant to play at the craze that appears to be taking over the world, which has it that, two years from now, the planet as we know it will be destroyed, it does so without any real foundation, critics say. This is obvious to anyone with at least some degree of training in Science. The premises of the movie do nothing but amplify the fear that some have of the year 2012.
In the flick, everything is thrown in the mix – planetary alignments, the Mayan calendar and, for some reason, neutrinos. The last are small, neutrally charged elementary particles, which have the ability to get inside regular matter without any problem. The plot of the movie has them inexplicably gaining electrical charge, and beginning to heat up the planet's core. This is impossible in real life, and will never happen, particle physicists state. The screenwriters could have at least searched Wikipedia, and found a much more suitable particle for the role of planetary destroyer. Or they could have gone for the cosmic rays. They never disappoint.
The second “twist” is Crust Displacement Theory, which holds that, given enough heat, our planet's core will eventually start to heat up even more, and cause the Earth's crusts to become unstable and rupture. This is evidenced in the escape scenes, where the main protagonists of the movie attempt to use a small airplane to escape Los Angeles. The city appears to be destroyed by earthquakes, and we see entire tectonic plates shattering, and lifting hundreds of feet into the air. This is not what would happen if somehow the San Andreas fault line became unstable and shift its location.
The earthquake would strike at once, and there would be no way that a family in a limo could outrun it. The tsunamis that then engulfed the city would also not form to these impressive heights, considering that the epicenter of the tremor would have been underground, and not offshore. The same holds true for the scene in which a cruise ship is being sunk by a massive wave. Tsunamis do not occur offshore. They travel in stealth until they reach shorelines, and then rise to their impressive heights. A ship would be about the safest place you could be during one, given that the vessel is in the middle of the ocean.
Towards the end of the movie, we see water coming over mountains, and even reaching halfway up the Himalaya. If you looked at any map, you would see that the configuration of these mountains does not allow for such a thing to happen, regardless of how massive the oceanic waves are. In the end, the inaccuracies of the film were heavily punished by reviewers, who saw that it was nothing more than lazy foundations and spectacular CGI (computer-generated images). The bad thing about this film is that it could make some people believe that the end is near even more.
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