Did you think the world's going to end in 2012 or do you think the Mayans were wrong about that or describing something else and that 2012 will be just another year?
2012: end of the world or just another year?
- Thread starter Joe Washington
- Start date
Even to the Mayans, the end of the calender was the end of an age, not the world. I don't kill myself on New Years Eve, I buy a new calender a few weeks before and then go to a party.
I did see on the Discovery Channel that the sun/Earth/something else will be "aligned" in a weird way in December of 2012 that could cause some crazy things to happen with the Earth's magnetic field. They said it's something that only happens every something-hundred-thousand years, and it could really fuck things up.
Personally, I have no idea. I'm going to disappointed if NOTHING happens after thousands of years of hype.
Personally, I have no idea. I'm going to disappointed if NOTHING happens after thousands of years of hype.
J
Jetfire
Guest
Is this related to the movie or something? Cause how is this a SF/F topic??? Shouldn't this be in Misc???
The end of the world is a science fiction topic in some ways.
That's not saying much since Y2K was way overblown nonsense that allowed a lot of folks to get scammed.
All that proves is that you should never trust "science" information from a channel that depends on advertising revenues to stay in business. If spouting paranoid fantasies and misinformation gets better ratings than telling the simple, unexciting truth, then they'll lie through their teeth, which is what they're doing here. It's complete and utter BS, taking a few valid ideas and distorting and blending them past all recognition.
What you're describing here sounds like a conflating of several separate, equally false assertions about 2012. One is that there will be a rare alignment between the Sun and the galactic center when the Sun crosses the galactic equator on December 21, 2012. In fact, that alignment already happened in 1998 even by the arbitrary definition of the galactic equator used by the theorists. Another is that there will be a syzygy, an alignment of planets within the Solar System, on that date; that is simply untrue. I just checked it myself in Celestia; on that date, the planets will be scattered all over the system, with no multi-body alignments of any kind, unless you count the Sun, Earth, and Ceres.
The other assertion is that the solar maximum in 2012 will produce a vast solar flare that will trigger a geomagnetic reversal, the "flipping" of the planet's magnetic poles. This is wrong on several levels. One, the solar maximum will peak in 2013 and is expected to be fairly weak. Two, a geomagnetic reversal is a process that takes thousands of years. Three, there's no reason to believe such reversals are in any way influenced by solar flares; they're the result of changes deep in the core of the Earth.
It's sad that the Discovery Channel has sunk to the level of spouting lies like this. That's the diametric opposite of being an educational channel.
Wait, are you serious? Wait, you too?Err. I think that was Aragorn's point.
Here's a nice page debunking various 2012 myths, mainly ones about some imaginary death planet called Nibiru:
http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ask-an...ibiru-and-doomsday-2012-questions-and-answers
http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ask-an...ibiru-and-doomsday-2012-questions-and-answers
No, because the whole idea is fiction. It belongs right where it is.
If Mayan cosmology had been correct, the Sun would have gone out once they weren't able to feed it blood any more. Case closed.
That's the Aztecs, not the Maya. While the Maya did practice human sacrifice to some extent to propitiate various gods, it wasn't Sun-directed the way Aztec sacrifices were.
Besides, we're not talking about Mayan cosmology here. Actual Mayan cosmology makes absolutely no claims about the world ending on any date. What we're talking about here is a myth that New Age authors in the United States began to formulate in the mid-1970s based on misinterpretations of the Mayan calendar conflated with their own New Age beliefs. So it's not the Mayans we should be debunking. The Mayans actually had a very advanced, wonderfully accurate calendar. It's not their fault that a bunch of idiots have twisted its meaning over the past 35 years.
If Mayan cosmology had been correct, the Sun would have gone out once they weren't able to feed it blood any more. Case closed.
That's the Aztecs, not the Maya. While the Maya did practice human sacrifice to some extent to propitiate various gods, it wasn't Sun-directed the way Aztec sacrifices were.
Besides, we're not talking about Mayan cosmology here. Actual Mayan cosmology makes absolutely no claims about the world ending on any date. What we're talking about here is a myth that New Age authors in the United States began to formulate in the mid-1970s based on misinterpretations of the Mayan calendar conflated with their own New Age beliefs. So it's not the Mayans we should be debunking. The Mayans actually had a very advanced, wonderfully accurate calendar. It's not their fault that a bunch of idiots have twisted its meaning over the past 35 years.
I was under the impression the Mayan calendar just ended....like "how far into the future do we need to make this thing?" stopped and that people just read too much into that arbitrary decision, and added their own doomsday scenarios.
December 21, 2012 = Mayan Y2K?
No, the calendar doesn't end. The current longest cycle as defined in the Mayan Long Count calendar ends on December 21, 2012 -- and the next one begins. It's no different from the turn of the century or millennium in our calendar, just on a longer interval. A calendar is a cyclical thing -- there's no reason why any calendar should ever "end." That concept doesn't even make sense. When one cycle of a calendar ends, the next one begins. That's how calendars work. After all, no matter how big a number gets, you can always add one to it.
More to the point, December 20, 2012 is designated in the Mayan calendar as 12.19.19.17.19, December 21, 2012 is 13.0.0.0.0, December 22 is 13.0.0.0.1, and so on. (That "17" isn't a typo; all the cycles consist of 20 of the next smaller cycle, except the second-shortest one, which is 18 of the next-smaller cycle. That's because it's essentially one year -- 18 x 20 days = 360 days.) It doesn't end, it just increases the biggest number by one and resets all the others back to the beginning. Just like how any other calendar works.
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