Windows XP Control Panel, Shortcuts and Control.exe

Windows XP Control Panel, Shortcuts and Control.exe

As the name suggests, Control Panel is where many important system settings can be changed or adjusted. Since so many vital functions can be found there, it is worth looking at some aspects of how it works. We will also consider some ways of quickly accessing this very important system area. Going over the entire panoply of functions is too much for a single article but shortcuts for a few frequently used functions are given. The standard way to open Control Panel is through Start-Control Panel. There are two methods of displaying the contents. One is called the "Category View" and displays tasks by generalized categories as shown in the figure below. Choosing a category leads to another box with a further choice of tasks or icons for specific control panel applets. The figure below shows the choice when "Performance and Maintenance" is clicked . A second way of displaying Control Panel is called the "Classical View" and displays icons for individual applets. A partial view is shown below. Some of these applets may have several tabs that open different functions. Control Panel Applets Some of the components of the Control Panel are special system folders but many are determined by a group of files with the extension CPL. Most of these files are in the folder\Windows\System32\; some that are part of application software may be elsewhere. To find which CPL files are on your system, go to Windows Search and search for all files with name *.cpl. The table below lists some of the common CPL files. CPL files can be used to directly access various features of Control Panel by opening them with eitherRundll32.exe or Control.exe. By this means, scripts or shortcuts can be written for immediate access to particular functions. Commands using these files can also be entered into the Start-Run line. Note that some CPL files are multi-functional and require additional parameters to invoke the various functions. Parameters use the "@" sign and a zero-based integer. Tabs are denoted by additional indexes (not necessarily zero-based integers). More details are given in the section on shortcuts below. Table I. Some Control Panel Applet Files File Function Tabs (number in parentheses is index n discussed below) access.cpl Accessibility controls Keyboard(1), Sound(2), Display(3), Mouse(4), General(5) appwiz.cpl Add/Remove Programs desk.cpl Display properties Themes(5), Desktop(0), Screen Saver(1), Appearance (2), Settings(3) hdwwiz.cpl Add hardware inetcpl.cpl Configure Internet Explorer and Internet properties General(0), Security(1), Privacy(2), Content(3), Connections(4), Programs(5), Advanced(6) intl.cpl Regional settings Regional Options(1), Languages(2), Advanced(3) joy.cpl Game controllers main.cpl Mouse properties and settings Buttons(0), Pointers(1), Pointer Options(2), Wheel(3), Hardware(4) main.cpl,@1 Keyboard properties Speed(0), Hardware (1) mmsys.cpl Sounds and Audio Volume(0), Sounds(1), Audio(2), Voice(3), Hardware(4) ncpa.cpl Network properties nusrmgr.cpl User accounts powercfg.cpl Power configuration Power Schemes, Advanced, Hibernate, UPS (Tabs not indexed) sysdm.cpl System properties General(0), Computer Name(1), Hardware(2), Advanced(3), System Restore(4), Automatic Updates(5), Remote (6) telephon.cpl Phone and modem options Dialing Rules(0), Modems(1), Advanced(2) timedate.cpl Date and time properties Date & Time(0), Time Zone(1), Internet Time (no index) Shortcuts and Scripts Using Control.exe As outlined at the beginning of this page, the standard way to open Control Panel functions by using Start-Control Panel requires several steps. If a particular function is frequently used, it may be convenient to create a shortcut that opens the desired window directly. It is common on the Internet to find shortcuts that use the executable fileRundll32.exe to open CPL files and these are discussed here. However, many of the standard shortcuts are for Windows 98/Me and do not work in Windows XP. Also there are easier, shorter ways available for Control Panel applets. Using Rundll32.exe is a general method applicable to many different types of DLL files with a complicated syntax. For CPL files there is a specific method using the executable Control.exe that I think is preferable. It has the simpler syntax shown below. control somefile.cpl,<optional arguments> Here, somefile.cpl stands for whichever of the CPL files is of interest. There are two types of optional arguments. They are of the form "@m,n" (without the quotes.) Here "m" and "n" are integers. Thus, the full expression when optional arguments are included is control somefile.cpl,@m,n The parameter @m is used for files with more than one basic function and starts with zero, which is the default value if no parameter is used. For example, main.cpl controls both mouse and keyboard properties. Thus, either the command control main.cpl or control main.cpl,@0 would open the mouse properties. To open the keyboard properties the command would be control main.cpl,@1 The second set of optional parameters "n" can be used when a dialog box is tabbed. A number of the values are given in Table I. For example, the default window when the mouse properties dialog is opened is the "Buttons" tab. To open the"Pointer Options" tab (third on the list) the command would be control main.cpl,@0,2 Note that here the index "n" is zero-based so the third tab has an index of 2. Many control panel files have only one main page and the "@m" index can be omitted. In that case, to open a particular tab requires two commas between the file name and the tab index. For example, the dialog box for System Properties has a number of tabs as listed in the table above. A specific one of these can be opened by adding a parameter so that the command reads control.exe sysdm.cpl,,n where "n" is an integer running from 0 to 6 corresponding to the 7 tabs listed in Table I. Unfortunately, Microsoft is not consistent in how it indexes tabs. For example, when using access.cpl, the tabs run from 1 to 5 instead of beginning with zero. Some files can only be opened at a few tabs or only at the beginning tab. For instance, Power Options has four tabs but they are not accessible with an index. The only way to find out what system applies to a particular file seems to be trial and error. Also note that the numbering of tabs for many files is not the same in Windows XP as it was in Windows 98/Me. Also, at least one change was made in Windows XP SP2. Many of the values are given in the book, Microsoft Windows XP, Inside Out (2d edition), by Bott, Siechert, and Stinson, which has been used as a partial source for Table I above. Easier Shortcuts Using Control.exe Trying to open control panel applets with commands containing the complexity of index parameters discussed in the previous section may seem rather daunting to some PC users. Fortunately, there are some alternate commands using plain names that can also be used. These do not seem to be as well-known but are discussed in Microsoft'sMSDN library. Fewer possibilities are available than with the previously discussed methods but there are some new commands as well. Three that work in Start-Run are given below. Table II. Commands using plain names Command Function control date/time Launches the Date and Time Properties window control desktop Launches the Display Properties window control color Launches the Display Properties window with the Appearance tab preselected Scripts using Shell object Control panel applets can also be opened with JScript or VBScript files using the Shell.Application object and its ControlPanelItem method . For a control panel appletsomefile.cpl the syntax is Shell.ControlPanelItem("somefile.cpl" ) For example, the display applet desk.cpl would use Shell.ControlPanelItem("desk.cpl" ) A snippet of the corresponding code for VBScript is dim objShell set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application") objShell.ControlPanelItem("desk.cpl") Other Shortcuts There are also a number of other quick ways to get to some of the Control Panel components. Here is a short list of some. Using the Windows key + the Break key will open the System Properties dialog box. Enter devmgmt.msc into Start-Run to open Device Manager Enter fonts into Start-Run to open the Fonts folder Enter main.cpl into Start-Run to open Mouse properties Enter desk.cpl into Start-Run to open Display properties Enter control userpasswords2 into Start-Run to manage User Accounts Note that any file with extension CPL can be used directly as long as your system has the usual file association of CPL with Control.exe. To see how to check your file associations or to change file associations go to this tutorial.

FW: VAB - Shuttle Endeavour launches from Florida

Shuttle Endeavour launches from Florida NGC

The US space shuttle has made its final night launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Endeavour orbiter soared into the Florida sky on a 13-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

It is delivering a connecting node and a large window module in what will be one of the last ISS assembly flights.

The US space agency (Nasa) plans just four further shuttle missions after this one - and all of them are planned to launch in daylight hours.

The blast-off occurred at 0414 local time (0914 GMT), 24 hours behind schedule. Endeavour should have left Earth on Sunday but was held on the pad because of a thick layer of cloud blanketing Florida's Space Coast.

Monday's weather was much more obliging, and the shuttle's ascent to orbit made for quite a spectacle.

"It lit up the Kennedy Space Center," said shuttle flight director, Mike Leinbach.

"I saw it very clearly through solid rocket booster separation, and then it disappeared behind some clouds and I got kinda disappointed. But then it broke out of those clouds and that's when I was able to see it all the way out to seven minutes in flight. For the last night launch, it treated us well."

Endeavour's mission is an important moment for the European Space Agency's (Esa) contribution to the station project. Both the new modules were manufactured in Italy by Thales Alenia Space.

Node 3, also known as Tranquility, will house the station's core life-support systems.

It will also store a treadmill the crew must use regularly to exercise their bodies and maintain bone density.

One of the risks of living in microgravity conditions is that bones tend to lose strength over time.

The Cupola is an observation tower that will be used to control robots working on the exterior of the platform.

It is constructed in the shape of a dome, with six trapezoidal side windows and a circular top window of a little under 80cm, making it the largest window ever built for space.

The Cupola is travelling into orbit attached to the end cone of Node 3 but once in orbit will be transferred to a berthing point that looks straight down to Earth.

The spectacular views from the Cupola mean it is likely to become a popular place on the station for astronauts to relax.

Esa's project manager on Node 3 and the Cupola, Philippe Deloo, told the BBC: "I heard that on orbit the most favourite past-time of the crew when they're off duty is to watch out the window and look at Earth.

"The psychological effect of being able to look outside, to look at the Mother Earth, is something that has long been put forward as an argument to have windows on the station."

Endeavour's crew is commanded by George Zamka, a colonel in the US Marine Corps, and includes the British-born mission specialist Nicholas Patrick.

Dr Patrick will conduct the three spacewalks to install the two modules with colleague Bob Behnken.

 

Vehicle Assembly Building


 
 
The Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is one of the largest buildings in the world. It was originally built for assembly of Apollo/Saturn vehicles and was later modified to support Space Shuttle operations. High Bays 1 and 3 are used for integration and stacking of the complete Space Shuttle vehicle. High Bay 2 is used for external tank (ET) checkout and storage and as a contingency storage area for orbiters. High Bay 4 is also used for ET checkout and storage, as well as for payload canister operations and solid rocket boster (SRB) contingency handling.

The Low Bay area contains Space Shuttle main engine maintenance and overhaul shops, and serves as a holding area for SRB forward assemblies and aft skirts.

During Space shuttle build-up operations inside the VAB, integrated SRB segments are transfered from nearbay SRB assembly and checkout facilities, hoisted onto a Mobile Launcher Platform in High Bays 1 or 3 and mated together to form two complete SRBs. The ET, after arrival by barge, is inspected and checked out in High Bays 2 or 4 and then transfered to High Bay's 1 or 3 to be attached to the SRBs already in place. The orbiter is then towed over from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the VAB transfer aisle, raised to a vertical position, lowered onto the Mobile Launcher Platform and then mated to the rest of the stack. When assembly and checkout is complete, thecrawler-transporter enters the High Bay, picks up the platform and assembled shuttle vehicle and carries them to the launch pad.



The VAB covers 3.25 hectares (8 acres). It is 160 meters (525 ft) tall, 218 meters (716 ft) long and 158 meters (518 ft) wide. It encloses 3,664,883 cubic meters (129,428,000 cubic feet) of space.

• Flag & Bicentennial Emblem: Added in 1976, required 6,000 gallons of paint. The flag is 64 x 33.5 meters (209 x 110 ft) in size. Each strip on the flag is as big as the tour buses used to transport visitors around KSC
• Steel: 89,421 metric tons (98,590 tons)
• Concrete: 49,696 cubic meters (65,000 cubic yards)
• Piling: 4,225 open-end steel pipe piles, 0.4 meters (16 inchs) in diameter were driven 49 meters (160 ft) into bedrock.
• Air Conditioning: 9,070 metric tons (10,000 tons), 125 ventilators.
• Lifting Devices: 71 cranes; two 227 metric ton (250 ton) bridge cranes.
• Siding: 100,800 sq meters (1,085,000 sq ft) insulated aluminum panels; 6,503 sq meters (70,000 sq ft) plastic panels.
• Doors: There are 4 High Bay doors. Each opening is 139 meters (456 ft) high. The north entry to the transfer aisle was widened 12.2 meters (40ft) to permit entry of the Orbiter, and slotted at the center to accommodate its vertical stabilizer.

Comparisons:

• Height: VAB - 160meters (525 ft) <--> Statue of Liberty - 93 meters (305 ft)
• Volume: VAB - 3,665,013 cu meters (129,428,000 cub ft) <--> Pentagon 2,181,117 cu meters (77,025,000 cu ft).
• VAB equals 3.75 Empire State Buildings

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

— Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

Global Positioning System Information

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a U.S. space-based global navigation satellite system. It provides reliable positioning, navigation, and timing services to worldwide users on a continuous basis in all weather, day and night, anywhere on or near the Earth which has an unobstructed view of four or more GPS satellites.

GPS is made up of three segments: Space, Control and User. The Space Segment is composed of 24 to 32 satellites in Medium Earth Orbit and also includes the boosters required to launch them into orbit. The Control Segment is composed of a Master Control Station, an Alternate Master Control Station, and a host of dedicated and shared Ground Antennas and Monitor Stations. The User Segment is composed of hundreds of thousands of U.S. and allied military users of the secure GPS Precise Positioning Service, and tens of millions of civil, commercial and scientific users of the Standard Positioning Service (see GPS navigation devices). GPS satellites broadcast signals from space that GPS receivers use to provide three-dimensional location (latitude, longitude, and altitude) plus precise time.

GPS has become a widely used aid to navigation worldwide, and a useful tool for map-making, land surveying, commerce, scientific uses, tracking and surveillance, and hobbies such as geocaching and waymarking. Also, the precise time reference is used in many applications including the scientific study of earthquakes and as a time synchronization source for cellular network protocols.

GPS has become a mainstay of transportation systems worldwide, providing navigation for aviation, ground, and maritime operations. Disaster relief and emergency services depend upon GPS for location and timing capabilities in their life-saving missions. The accurate timing that GPS provides facilitates everyday activities such as banking, mobile phone operations, and even the control of power grids. Farmers, surveyors, geologists and countless others perform their work more efficiently, safely, economically, and accurately using the free and open GPS signals.

History

The design of GPS is based partly on similar ground-based radio navigation systems, such as LORAN and the Decca Navigatordeveloped in the early 1940s, and used during World War II. In 1956 Friedwardt Winterberg^[1] proposed a test of General Relativity using accurate atomic clocks placed in orbit in artificial satellites. To achieve accuracy requirements, GPS uses principles of general relativity to correct the satellites' atomic clocks. Additional inspiration for the GPS came when the Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik in 1957. A team of U.S. scientists led by Dr. Richard B. Kershner were monitoring Sputnik's radio transmissions. They discovered that, because of the Doppler effect, the frequency of the signal being transmitted by Sputnik was higher as the satellite approached, and lower as it continued away from them. They realized that since they knew their exact location on the globe, they could pinpoint where the satellite was along its orbit by measuring the Doppler distortion (see Transit (satellite)).

Summary of satellites

Block	Launch Period	Satellite launches				Currently in orbit and healthy
		Suc- cess	Fail- ure	In prep- aration	Plan- ned
I	1978–1985	10	1	0	0	0
II	1989–1990	9	0	0	0	0
IIA	1990–1997	19	0	0	0	11 of the 19 launched
IIR	1997–2004	12	1	0	0	12 of the 13 launched
IIR-M	2005–2009	8	0	0	0	7 of the 8 launched
IIF	2010–2011	0	0	10	0	0
IIIA	2014–?	0	0	0	12	0
IIIB		0	0	0	8	0
IIIC		0	0	0	16	0
Total		58	2	10	36	30
(Last update: 29 December 2009) PRN 01 from Block IIR-M is unhealthy PRN 25 from Block IIA is unhealthy See the GPS almanac. For a more complete list, see list of GPS satellite launches

Courtesy : Wikipedia

Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.

BPA Linked to Heart Disease, Study Confirms

Plastic food containers are among common products that can contain bisphenol-A, or BPA.

Photograph by Charlie Roy, Getty Images

Bisphenol-A, or BPA—a common, human-made chemical that enters most of our bodies everyday—has been linked to heart disease, a new study says.

The study comes as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—which has until now maintained that BPA is safe at low levels—announced Friday that the FDA has some concerns about the impacts of BPA on developing fetuses, infants, and children. The agency is also urging consumers to reduce their exposure to the chemical until further studies are completed.

BPA is commonly used in consumer plastics, particularly polycarbonate plastic items such as many sunglasses, reusable bottles, food packaging, and baby bottles. It also lines the inside of food cans.

In a sampling of U.S. adults, those with the highest levels of BPA in their urine were almost twice as likely to suffer from coronary heart disease than those with the lowest concentrations of BPA.

The findings almost perfectly dovetail with a 2008 study on the same topic, said study co-author Tamara Galloway, an ecotoxicologist at the U.K.'s University of Exeter.

"If you see it once, that's interesting," Galloway said.

"If you see it twice in a separate population, it's a strong indication that what you're seeing is not just some chance finding."

Frederick vom Saal, a BPA researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia, agreed that the two sets of "data are compelling and demonstrate repeatability"—the point at which scientific findings move from preliminary to validated.

Study co-author Galloway cautioned, however, that no direct cause-and-effect had been found between BPA and heart disease. It remains possible that the two may be only indirectly linked, for instance through diet or lifestyle factors.

BPA Mimics Estrogen

The American Chemistry Council, which represents the U.S. plastic industry, says that "minimal" exposure to BPA poses no known risk to human health.

Still, BPA's ability to mimic estrogen—and spur reproductive mutations in the womb—has been well documented, leading some cities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe to ban BPA-containing products.

(Related: "Sex-Changing Chemicals Found in Potomac River.")

Meanwhile, BPA's "effects in adults have largely been overlooked," Galloway said, despite the fact that the chemical is found in more than 90 percent of the U.S. population.

So Galloway and colleagues examined data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the only large-scale data set of adult health and nutrition in the world.

The team examined BPA concentrations in the urine samples of 1,493 adults taken between 2005 and 2006. A quarter of the people had "higher amounts" of BPA, the study says.

"Expand that to six billion"—roughly the world's current population—"and you've got a billion people in harm's way," said the University of Missouri's vom Saal, who was not involved in the new study.

BPA Exposure Decreasing?

The previous study, which had used data from 1,455 U.S. adults tested between 2003 and 2004, found an association between higher rates of BPA and occurrences of heart disease, diabetes, and abnormal liver enzymes.

The new study revealed the same relationship with heart disease, though the diabetes and liver-enzyme links were statistically less strong in the 2005-2006 group, the researchers say.

There was one big difference between the two data sets that surprised study co-author Galloway: The average level of BPA exposure in the 2005-2006 group was a third lower than the level in the earlier group.

The drop in BPA levels may be because more people are steering clear of obvious exposures to the chemical, and because some industries—such as plastic-bottle manufacturers—have voluntarily cut out BPA, experts speculate.

One unknown that requires "urgent" attention is how exactly the chemical might encourage heart disease in the body, according to the study published tomorrow in the journal PLoS One.

Cutting BPA Risks a No-Brainer

Bisphenol-A exposure is certainly not the only factor in heart disease, but reducing at least one possible risk is a "no brainer," the University of Missouri's vom Saal said.

For instance, people can limit their exposure by not microwaving polycarbonate plastic food containers (which normally have number sevens on their undersides), avoiding canned foods, and using BPA-free baby bottles, according to the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

(Explore an interactive showing toxic chemicals that may be lurking in your home.)

"It's not a pretty picture," vom Saal added.

"This is a bad chemical, and it should not be used in the way it's being used."

Courtesy:

Christine Dell'Amore

National Geographic News

Inspiring People to Care About the Planet

Vettaikaran review - Must watch movie

Vettaikaran movie is a must watch. Vettaikaran was one of the most awaited movie of Vijay in the year 2009.The movie stars actor Vijay and Anushka Shetty in the lead roles.

Vijay playes the role of an auto driver in the movie. His role reminds us of superstar Rajinikanth, who played the role of an auto driver in the hit Baasha. Actress Anuskha, Arundhati fame, plays the role of a medical college student.

Vettaikaran’s story is based in unwanted elements that needs to be removed from the society and the country. Who other than Vijay can fit in such a role? One by one he removes all those unwanted elements. Meanwhile he falls in love with Anushka, who comes from a middle class family. Both share a great chemistry, whether it’s fighting or romancing. Initially both fight every now and then, but finally they fall in love.

Expectations are high and people are hoping that Illayathalapathy’ Vijay lives up to their expectations.The movie is directed by Babu Sivan and produced by M.Balasubramaniam, B.Gurunath Meiyappan. Vijay Anthony has taken care of the music for the movie. Sun Pictures has the rights of Vettaikaran from AVM productions.

2012: Six End-of-the-World Myths Debunked

Courtesy: NGC

ON TV 2012: Countdown to Armageddon airs Sunday, November 8, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel

The end of the world is near—December 21, 2012, to be exact—according to theories based on a purported ancient Maya prediction and fanned by the marketing machine behind the soon-to-be-released 2012 movie.

But could humankind really meet its end in 2012—drowned in apocalyptic floods, walloped by a secret planet, seared by an angry sun, or thrown overboard by speeding continents?

And did the ancient Maya—whose empire peaked between A.D. 250 and 900 in what is now Mexico and Central America—really predict the end of the world in 2012?

At least one aspect of the 2012, end-of-the-world hype is, for some people, all too real: the fear.

NASA's Ask an Astrobiologist Web site, for example, has received thousands of questions regarding the 2012 doomsday predictions—some of them disturbing, according to David Morrison, senior scientist with the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

"A lot of [the submitters] are people who are genuinely frightened," Morrison said.

"I've had two teenagers who were considering killing themselves, because they didn't want to be around when the world ends," he said. "Two women in the last two weeks said they were contemplating killing their children and themselves so they wouldn't have to suffer through the end of the world."

(Related gallery: "Apocalypse Pictures—Ten Failed Doomsday Prophecies.")

Fortunately, with the help of scientists like Morrison, most of the predicted 2012 cataclysms are easily explained away.

This 2002 Hubble Space Telescope picture of the star V838 Monocerotis and surrounding dust clouds has been said to contain evidence of a phantom world--alternately called Planet X and Nibiru--that is on course to collide with Earth in 2012.

But, said NASA astrobiologist David Morrison, "there is no object out there. That's probably the most straightforward thing to say."

The origins of this theory actually predate widespread interest in 2012. Popularized in part by a woman who claims to receive messages from extraterrestrials, the Nibiru doomsday was originally predicted for 2003.

"If there were a planet or a brown dwarf or whatever that was going to be in the inner solar system three years from now," Morrison said, "astronomers would have been studying it for the past decade and it would be visible to the naked eye by now."

2012 MYTH 1
Maya Predicted End of the World in 2012

The Maya calendar doesn't end in 2012, as some have said, and the ancients never viewed that year as the time of the end of the world, archaeologists say.

But December 21, 2012, (give or take a day) was nonetheless momentous to the Maya.

"It's the time when the largest grand cycle in the Mayan calendar—1,872,000 days or 5,125.37 years—overturns and a new cycle begins," said Anthony Aveni, a Maya expert and archaeoastronomer at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

The Maya kept time on a scale few other cultures have considered.

During the empire's heyday, the Maya invented the Long Count—a lengthy circular calendar that "transplanted the roots of Maya culture all the way back to creation itself," Aveni said.

During the 2012 winter solstice, time runs out on the current era of the Long Count calendar, which began at what the Maya saw as the dawn of the last creation period: August 11, 3114 B.C. The Maya wrote that date, which preceded their civilization by thousands of years, as Day Zero, or 13.0.0.0.0.

In December 2012 the lengthy era ends and the complicated, cyclical calendar will roll over again to Day Zero, beginning another enormous cycle.

"The idea is that time gets renewed, that the world gets renewed all over again—often after a period of stress—the same way we renew time on New Year's Day or even on Monday morning," said Aveni, author of The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012.

2012 MYTH 2
Breakaway Continents Will Destroy Civilization

In some 2012 doomsday prophecies, the Earth becomes a deathtrap as it undergoes a "pole shift."

The planet's crust and mantle will suddenly shift, spinning around Earth's liquid-iron outer core like an orange's peel spinning around its fleshy fruit. (See what Einstein had to say about pole shifts.)

2012, the movie, envisions a Maya-predicted pole shift, triggered by an extreme gravitational pull on the planet—courtesy of a rare "galactic alignment"—and by massive solar radiation destabilizing the inner Earth by heating it.

Breakaway oceans and continents dump cities into the sea, thrust palm trees to the poles, and spawn earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and other disasters. (Interactive: pole shift theories illustrated.)

Scientists dismiss such drastic scenarios, but some researchers have speculated that a subtler shift could occur—for example, if the distribution of mass on or inside the planet changed radically, due to, say, the melting of ice caps.

Princeton University geologist Adam Maloof has extensively studied pole shifts, and tackles this 2012 myth in 2012: Countdown to Armageddon, a National Geographic Channel documentary airing Sunday, November 8. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News and part-owns the National Geographic Channel.)

Maloof says magnetic evidence in rocks confirm that continents have undergone such drastic rearrangement, but the process took millions of years—slow enough that humanity wouldn't have felt the motion (quick guide to plate tectonics).

2012 MYTH 3
Galactic Alignment Spells Doom

Some sky-watchers believe 2012 will close with a "galactic alignment," which will occur for the first time in 26,000 years (for example, see the Web site Alignment 2012).

In this scenario, the path of the sun in the sky would appear to cross through what, from Earth, looks to be the midpoint of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which in good viewing conditions appears as a cloudy stripe across the night sky.

Some fear that the lineup will somehow expose Earth to powerful unknown galactic forces that will hasten its doom—perhaps through a "pole shift" (see above) or the stirring of the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's heart.

Others see the purported event in a positive light, as heralding the dawn of a new era in human consciousness.

NASA's Morrison has a different view.

"There is no 'galactic alignment' in 2012," he said, "or at least nothing out of the ordinary."

He explained that a type of "alignment" occurs during every winter solstice, when the sun, as seen from Earth, appears in the sky near what looks to be the midpoint of the Milky Way.

Horoscope writers may be excited by alignments, Morrison said. But "the reality is that alignments are of no interest to science. They mean nothing," he said. They create no changes in gravitational pull, solar radiation, planetary orbits, or anything else that would impact life on Earth.

The speculation over alignments isn't surprising, though, he said.

"Ordinary astronomical phenomena are imbued with a sense of threat by people who already think the world is going to end."

Regarding galactic alignments, University of Texas Maya expert David Stuart writes on his blog that "no ancient Maya text or artwork makes reference to anything of the kind."

Even so, the end date of the current Long Count cycle—winter solstice 2012—may be evidence of Maya astronomical skill, said Aveni, the archaeoastronomer.

"I don't rule out the likelihood that astronomy played a role" in the selection of 2012 as the cycle's terminus, he said.

Maya astronomers built observatories and, by observing the night skies and using mathematics, learned to accurately predict eclipses and other celestial phenomena. Aveni notes that the start date of the current cycle was likely tied to a solar zenith passage, when the sun crosses directly overhead, and its terminal date will fall on a December solstice, perhaps by design.

(Take a Maya Empire quiz.)

These choices, he said, may indicate that the Maya calendar is tied to seasonal agricultural cycles central to ancient survival.

2012 MYTH 4
Planet X Is on a Collision Course With Earth

Some say it's out there: a mysterious Planet X, aka Nibiru, on a collision course with Earth—or at least a disruptive flyby.

A direct hit would obliterate Earth, it's said. Even a near miss, some fear, could shower Earth with deadly asteroid impacts hurled our way by the planet's gravitational wake.

Could such an unknown planet really be headed our way in 2012, even just a little bit?

Well, no.

"There is no object out there," NASA astrobiologist Morrison said. "That's probably the most straightforward thing to say."

The origins of this theory actually predate widespread interest in 2012. Popularized in part by a woman who claims to receive messages from extraterrestrials, the Nibiru doomsday was originally predicted for 2003.

"If there were a planet or a brown dwarf or whatever that was going to be in the inner solar system three years from now, astronomers would have been studying it for the past decade and it would be visible to the naked eye by now," Morrison said.

"It's not there."

2012 MYTH 5
Solar Storms to Savage Earth

In some 2012 disaster scenarios, our own sun is the enemy.

Our friendly neighborhood star, it's rumored, will produce lethal eruptions of solar flares, turning up the heat on Earthlings.

Solar activity waxes and wanes according to approximately 11-year cycles. Big flares can indeed damage communications and other Earthly systems, but scientists have no indications the sun, at least in the short term, will unleash storms strong enough to fry the planet.

"As it turns out the sun isn't on schedule anyway," NASA astronomer Morrison said. "We expect that this cycle probably won't peak in 2012 but a year or two later." (See "Sun Oddly Quiet—Hints at Next 'Little Ice Age'?")

2012 MYTH 6
Maya Had Clear Predictions for 2012

If the Maya didn't expect the end of time in 2012, what exactly did they predict for that year?

Many scholars who've pored over the scattered evidence on Maya monuments say the empire didn't leave a clear record predicting that anything specific would happen in 2012.

The Maya did pass down a graphic—though undated—end-of-the-world scenario, described on the final page of a circa-1100 text known as the Dresden Codex. The document describes a world destroyed by flood, a scenario imagined in many cultures and probably experienced, on a less apocalyptic scale, by ancient peoples (more on the Dresden Codex).

Aveni, the archaeoastronomer, said the scenario is not meant to be read literally—but as a lesson about human behavior.

He likens the cycles to our own New Year period, when the closing of an era is accompanied by frenetic activities and stress, followed by a rebirth period, when many people take stock and resolve to begin living better.

In fact, Aveni says, the Maya weren't much for predictions.

"The whole timekeeping scale is very past directed, not future directed," he said. "What you read on these monuments of the Long Count are events that connected Maya rulers with ancestors and the divine.

"The farther back you can plant your roots in deep time the better argument you can make that you're legit," Aveni said. "And I think that's why these Maya rulers were using Long Count time.

"It's not about a fixed prediction about what's going to happen."