There seems to be a rare planetary alignment occurring in 2012, is that enough to tilt the earths axis?

The Big 2012 Hoax is a collection of older hoaxes, lies and stories that had nothing to do with 2012, until the charlatans modified them to fit their Big 2012 Hoax.

The planetary alignment hoax was for the alignment of 1982: the alignment was real but the "predicted" effects were all made up, including the prediction that California would slip into the ocean (on March 10, 1982).

The book that had started the whole thing was by Gribbin and Plagemann (1974).

However, these two have nothing to do with the Big 2012 Hoax, which was created, during the summer of 2003, by the same charlatans who had made money from the Planet X hoax (we all died on May 13, 2003, except those who purchased their book on how to survive, and various survival kits).

There is an approximate alignment of Saturn, Venus and Mercury with the Sun, some time in 2012. But it is nowhere close to the precise alignment of the same planets on March 21, 1894, when an observer on Saturn would have seen both Venus and Mercury transit the Sun's disk. To my knowledge, the Earth did not flip on that day.

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It is true that the gravitational effect of the other planets (especially Jupiter) has an effect on Earth's orbit (our mean orbital distance varies by a few hundred km every year). Even Laplace had calculated such things way back in the early 1800s)

It can also have an effect on the inclination of our axis (the rate of change is counted in "degrees per hundred million years" -- but see ** ).

What the Moon does, for now, is keep the angle of tilt in a narrow interval ( +/- 1.3 degrees) over a billion years or so.[Laskar & Robutel]

As the Moon recedes AND as our spin slows down, this stabilizing effect will diminish and, who knows, in about two billion years, we might be "surprised" by a higher inclination angle, which could reach 80 degrees by then.

However, by then, we will be only a billion years away from the collision with the Andromeda galaxy and I am sure that people (or whatever passes for people, by then) will be panicky and running amok in the streets (or whatever passes for streets), scaring each other with different hoaxes about the galactic collision.

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** However, Darren Mark Williams, in his PhD thesis, says that the obliquity (angle of inclination) may have changed by 30 degrees in a matter of "only" one hundred million years, about half-a-billion years ago. That is quite a high rate: one degree in only 3.3 million years.

No, this is double nonsense:

1. There is absolutely no rare planetary alignment occurring in 2012.

2. The pull of all planets is enough for causing a small wobble on earths axis every day, but the effect is periodic, it neutralizes itself over the years. The moon stabilizes Earths axis by tidal forces that are about 500 times stronger than the effect of the other seven planets in the solar system, together.

I don't know where you heard this, but it just isn't true. When the subject of 2012 first came up, I checked the Moon and planets very carefully with Starry Night software, and found that there were _no_ alignments in 2012. Not one!

"2012" is a hoax designed to scare children and adults who know nothing about science. There is no science behind it, and no scientists believe in it.

The world has existed for over four billion years. Is it reasonable to expect that it will come to an end in less than three years? And all because of a Mayan calendar? Use some common sense.

The most interesting astronomical events in 2012 will be an annular eclipse of the Sun on 2012 May 20, a total eclipse of the Sun on 2012 Nov 13, and a transit of the planet Venus across the face of the Sun on 2012 Jun 06.

Scientists don't expect anything out of the ordinary to happen in the year 2012, or specifically on the date December 21, except for the solstice, which happens every year.

None of the "predicted" happenings for 2012 hold up under close scrutiny. "Planet X" and "Nibiru" simply don't exist. The Mayan calendar ends a cycle, but there were no predictions of the end of the world. The Sun doesn't line up with the galactic centre; it's 6 degrees off. No asteroids or comets are actually predicted to hit Earth.

All of this stuff was put together by crackpots in order to promote their books and TV shows, and shamelessly promoted by the History Channel. Don't take any of it seriously!

The best way is to _inform yourself_ about 2012 by reading factual sites about it, rather than sites that are trying to sell you something. Here are a few:

http://www.2012hoax.org/

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/69774827.html

http://blogs.jpl.nasa.gov/?p=59

http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ask-an-astrobiologist...

Or, if you want a video, here's David Morrison of NASA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQqn-zZzbLw

"...There seems to be a rare planetary alignment occurring in 2012..."

Wrong..! There will be no planetary alignment in 2012 (..http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/the-so...

How about a catastrophic, doomsday alignment with the center of our galaxy? Nope..! Our Sun does bob up and down as it travels in orbit around the center of the galaxy. The oscillation takes a total of 64-million years to complete. And there's a moment when the Sun passes directly through the galactic disk and there's a perfect galactic alignment between the Sun and the center of the galaxy. When's that galactic alignment going to happen? It's almost impossible to know exactly. The Milky Way is 100,000 light-years across, but only 1,000 light-years thick. So during the course of that 64 million year cycle, the Sun rises above the galactic plane 500 light-years, passes down through the galactic plane, until it's 500 light-years below and then comes back up again. There has to be a moment when everything's in perfect alignment, but the timescales are so long that astronomers couldn't calculate it. Of course, this alignment with the center of the galaxy doesn't have an effect on the Earth or the Solar System, it's just like crossing an imaginary line in space, like traveling from Canada to the United States in your car.

There's another type of galactic alignment. This is where the Earth, Sun and the center of the galaxy are in perfect alignment from *our* perspective. This actually happens every year during the winter solstice, on December 21st. Because of a wobble in the Earth's orbit, the positions of the constellations slowly shift from year to year. The most perfect galactic alignment between the Earth, Sun and the center of the Milky Way happened back in 1998, but now we're slowly shifting away from that alignment. In the coming decades, the perfect alignment will shift to another day.

Saying Earth aligns with the Milky Way is nonsense. Our solar system is always part of the Milky Way far from the center and in orbit around the edge of it. It never aligns more at one time than another. Have you forgotten the nonsense about Y2K? How soon we forget! Why do some people love silly Doomsday nonsense? You can find much nonsense of many types on the internet or elsewhere.

There are NO MAJOR planetary alignments scheduled for 2012. This is just one part of the 2012 hoax.

All you need to do to prove this is download the free planetarium program Stellarium and look at the sky for December 2012.

http://www.2012hoax.org/

www.stellarium.org

No.

Given an absolute perfect alignment of every body of significant size in the solar system (which is NOT what will be happening in 2012), the Earth would be deflected by such an immeasurably small fracion of a degree that I don't know the word for that number (1 umptygillionth of a degree?). No one but the most anal-retentive astronomers will even be able to measure any change that palnetary alignments eve cause to the Earth's rotation or orbit.

Not a chance. Mars and especially Jupiter are so far away that their gravitational pulls are insignificant to the point of being nothing.

There will be no planetary alignment in 2012, or any other year.

Theoretically every 25,000 years or so there's been proof of a polar switch/tilt in the Earth's layers.

So to answer your question, if I read it correctly, yes...

No one's been around long enough to be able to tell what will happen to us though, theories of genetic mutations like the dinosaurs...Earth catching on fire, tsunamis, extreme weather...

But hey, that's theoretically speaking. Guess we'll find out who is correct after all, the scientists or the non-believers...

But think of it this way. Every generation on the history of Earth has had some 'probable' end to mankind...we are just the lucky ones to get to find out what will REALLY happen!

mind you this comment is sure true,

"The world has existed for over four billion years. Is it reasonable to expect that it will come to an end in less than three years?"