The end of the world is nigh once more, or so say Christian doomsday experts who warn that Armageddon and the End Times are upon us, only this time it will heralded by a magnetic polar shift. But there is a problem with the End of Days prediction that can summed up in a word: Science.
As USA Today cheekily reported July 18, at least nobody will have to worry about who will be the next president, because — long before Election Day in November — the end of the world will have begun with what is known as a “polar flip,” or, to be more precise, the magnetic polar shift that occurs with the movement of the magnetic poles to positions opposite of their usual north-south line-up. According to the group End Times Prophecies, “Why the World Will End Surely on 29 July 2016? Shocking facts,” the polar shift will occur on July 29.
Explains the computer-modulated female voice in the doomsday video, “The polar flip will make the stars race across the sky, and the vacuum from the reeling of the Earth will pull the atmosphere along the ground, trying to catch up, creating what is known as a roll cloud.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HPrfFvkEj0&feature=youtu.be
End Times Prophecies’ dire warnings aside, it should be noted that scientists have been monitoring the magnetic polar shift for some time and they’ve found that the actual magnetic poles, while they do move, they don’t so much as flip as they do a gradual shift over time. The phenomenon occurs as the magnetic North Pole moves upwards, a process produced by the migration of molten iron at the Earth’s core. The pole reversal takes roughly 780,000 years to happen, but it does so by miles per year, not a sudden “polar flip.”
In fact, the polar shift doomsday scare has been around for a while. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) issued a statement regarding polar shifts in 2011 to allay fears that a sudden polar shift could destroy the planet. In the statement, NASA explained how the geomagnetic polar shift occurs all the time (on a geological scale, of course), and that the poles were shifting at approximately 40 miles per year. In short, there would be no need to worry about vacuum suction and the creation of a world-destroying “roll cloud.”
So why July 29? According to Express , NASA has stated that the polar shift will speed up slightly between July 14 to August 19, thus providing End Times Prophecies a basis for their end of the world prognostication.
Regardless of the science, End Times Prophecies has a habit of predicting the end of the world. The fact that this report is being typed and read indicates that they’ve been consistently inaccurate. Just this year, the group predicted the end of the world would occur in May via a collision between Earth and an asteroid. The group also predicted in June that President Barack Obama would admit to being the Antichrist, thus ushering in the End of Days, the End Times, Armageddon, and the Second Coming.
https://www.facebook.com/usatoday/posts/10153680927380667
As for how a polar shift fits into Christianity’s End of Days scenario, they offer that “For Jesus will only return on the day the poles reverse and a global earthquake reels the Earth, turning it upside down and leaving every city in the world in utter ruin and destruction.”
So it would appear that the people at End Times Prophecies will again be disappointed on July 30. As the poles will only move about 580 feet on that day, there won’t be a lot of “stars racing” or “reeling of the Earth.”
Besides, predicting the end of the world is difficult. To discover just how difficult, all the End Times Prophecies group need do is a little research on the prognostications of Harold Camping. Camping, a radio evangelist, became famous for his doomsday predictions. In fact, according the New York Times , he and his followers made national headlines in 2011 as they traversed the United States and erected billboards that warned of the coming end. And when that didn’t happen, he again predicted the end of the word before the end of the year. He passed away at the age of 92 in 2013, the end of the world stubbornly refusing to occur while he was a part of it.
Despite the unlikelihood of the end of the world occurring on July 29, the video has become a YouTube hit. Since its posting on July 9, the video has been viewed over 3.5 million times to date.
[Image via Shutterstock]