The solar storm , jan22,2012 and apocalyptical alignments

"This handout image provided by NASA, taken on Sunday night, Jan. 22, 2012, shows a solar flare erupting on the Sun's northeastern hemisphere. Space weather officials say the strongest solar storm in more than six years is already bombarding Earth with radiation with more to come"- Google ,and it got me thinking of Dec 2012,the dooms day theories , that has spread in various media describes the end of the world or of human civilization on that date.  The Discovery Channel also aired 2012 Apocalypse in 2009, suggesting that massive solar storms, magnetic pole reversal, earthquakes, supervolcanoes, and other drastic natural events may occur in 2012. Author Graham Hancock, in his book Fingerprints of the Gods, interpreted Coe's remarks in Breaking the Maya Code as evidence for the prophecy of a global cataclysm.


               
                                                          
 Some people have interpreted the galactic alignment  apocalyptically meaning vast devastation ,  it will somehow  create a combined gravitational effect between the Sun and the super massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy which is known as Sagittarius A*( Sagittarius A  is a complex radio source at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is located in the sky in the Sagittarius constellation. It is hidden from view at optical wavelengths by large clouds of cosmic dust in the spiral arms of the Milky Way.
It consists of three components, the supernova remnant Sagittarius A East, the spiral structure Sagittarius A West, and a very bright compact radio source at the centre of the spiral, Sagittarius A*. These three overlap: Sagittarius A East is the largest, West appears off-centre within East, and A* is at the centre of West - Wikipedia).thus creating havoc on Earth,. The Sun's apparent path through the zodiac as seen from Earth does not take it near the true galactic centre, but rather several degrees above it. Even if this were not the case, Sagittarius A* is 30,000 light years from Earth, and would have to be more than 6 million times closer to cause any gravitational disruption to Earth's Solar System. History Channel documentary, Decoding the Past. However, Jenkins has complained of the fact that a science fiction writer co-authored the documentary, and went on to characterise it as "45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism".

 The term "galactic alignment" has been describe as a very different phenomenon proposed by some scientists to explain a pattern  in mass extinctions supposedly observed in the fossil record by some who believe in a 2012 doomsday .Hypothetically mass extinctions are not random, but recur every 26 million years and to account for this, it suggests that vertical oscillations made by the Sun as it orbits the galactic centre cause it to regularly pass through the galactic plane. The influence of galatic tide is weaker when the Sun's orbit takes it outside the galactic plane which bisects the galactic disc .  However, when re-entering the galactic disc—as it does every 20–25 million years—it comes under the influence of the far stronger "disc tides", which, according to mathematical models, increase the flux of Oort cloud comets into the inner Solar System by a factor of 4, thus leading to a massive increase in the likelihood of a devastating comet impact. However, this "alignment" takes place over tens of millions of years, and could never be timed to an exact date. Evidence shows that the Sun passed through the plane bisecting the galactic disc only three million years ago and is now moving farther above it.

A third suggested alignment is some sort of planetary conjunction occurring on December 21, 2012. However, there will be no alignment of planets on that date. Multi-planet alignments did occur in both 2000 and 2010, each with no ill result for the Earth. Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System; larger than all other planets combined. When Jupiter is near opposition, the Earth experiences less than 1% the gravitational force it feels daily from the Moon.

Photo credit NASA