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Ancient Mayan Calander predicts the world ends on Dec 21st 2012

Acanthus said:
Becuase we have compared their system to our own current system?

They kept very good records.
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I meant how would anyone know how accurate it is if it's millions of years in the future?
 
God damn it. That's right when our mortgage comes due. Well, a couple months earlier. I take it we shouldn't lock into a long term deal?
 
I just ordered the new Daniel Pinchbeck book 2012: The Return Of Quetzalcoatl from the library.
 
Byron In Exile said:
For instance, if you knocked it off its axis with a big wooden bat as long as the diameter of Jupiter, and took a really hard swing with it, it would probably set us back more than 150 years in technology.
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That's nothing. The Bush Administration has already set freedom back over 300 years.
 
rosco rathbone said:
I just ordered the new Daniel Pinchbeck book 2012: The Return Of Quetzalcoatl from the library.
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Remember the movie 'Q'?
That was pretty good.
 
KRCummings said:
Remember the movie 'Q'?
That was pretty good.
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I had to look it up...never saw that one.

I did see Apocalypto, and the sacrifice scene made up for the rest of the lameness in that movie.

All in all, I prefer my millenarianism to have a hi-tech edge. Ideas of Technological Singularity (Vernor VInge, Eleazar Yudkowsky) and Omega Point (Frank Tipler) are a lot more interesting to me than the Mayan Calendar which has been glommed onto by every half-baked New Ager and stoned I-Chingster since the 1960s. (Terrence McKenna being one of the more readable.)
 
KRCummings said:
I meant how would anyone know how accurate it is if it's millions of years in the future?
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Particularly if everything comes to an end less than six years from now.
 
KRCummings said:
I meant how would anyone know how accurate it is if it's millions of years in the future?
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Very very long physics calculations i assume.

I really dont know, and havent really taken this all that seriously.
 
Acanthus said:
Very very long physics calculations i assume.

I really dont know, and havent really taken this all that seriously.
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Why not?

You don't think the end of the world is a serious matter?
 
Byron In Exile said:
Why not?

You don't think the end of the world is a serious matter?
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I dont believe the hype behind it, although it's an interesting idea, it's a loooooooooong shot.
 
Acanthus said:
I dont believe the hype behind it, although it's an interesting idea, it's a loooooooooong shot.
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Well, let's try to separate out the hype and see what's left...


"The Mayans, who had a better calender than the Gregorian calender than we use today, have predicted the end of the civilized world on Dec 21st 2012."

There apparently isn't any such prediction. The 13th Baktun cycle (each being 144,000 days or 394 years) of the Mayan long count calendar seems to end on that date, or the 23rd, or possibly even some other date altogether. The former assumes that the date on which the world was created was August 11th, 3114 BC. Since the earth is clearly much older than that, and the Maya were so wrong about the date of its creation, there seems no reason to believe them to have been any more accurate about when it might end, had they made such a prediction at all.


"This is the exact date that astronomers have discovered the sun, moon, earth, and the giant black hole at the center of the galaxy perfectly align. An event that happens once every ~28000 years. There is no record of civilized man being alive from before that period."

The sun, moon, earth, and the center of the galaxy do not align on that date or any date. The sun, while it crosses the galactic equator every year, is never between earth and the galactic center.

What happens every 25,700 years or so is that, due to precession or the earth's axis, the sun crosses the galactic equator at the time of the solstice. It may be that the Mayans were aware of precession and aligned the end of a calendric age with what they thought was this event. If so, they missed by about 15 years, because this happened already in December 1997.

Otherwise, there is nothing remarkable about the December solstice of 2012. The moon is not aligned with anything, being just past its first quarter, the sun is, as mentioned, not aligned with the galactic center, actually past the galactic equator, and the planets will be in a typically random arrangement.


"Some scientists hypothesize that this event could knock the Earth off of its axis, moving the north and south poles to the equator. This would cause worldwide flooding, earthquakes, volcanoes, and literally hell on earth type events that arent even concieved."

I would say that anyone with such hypotheses as these is probably not someone who can seriously be called a scientist. There are no forces from any "alignment" events that are strong enough to cause any noticable effects on earth, other than the tides caused by the sun and moon.

So, it will probably be a lot like Y2K: the principle casualty being Mayan calendar programs which will need to be upgraded in order to function after that date.
 
Lasher said:
That's nothing. The Bush Administration has already set freedom back over 300 years.
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Yeah, but their calendar sucks ass.

How many months was "Mission Accomplished" before the end of the war?

Nobody knows.

Bad enough that they can't see the future, they can't even see the past.
 
Cap’n AMatrixca said:
It's so comforting to know I'll be taking some of you with me!

To the others...

sorry
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It's already 12.19.14.2.13

Only 0.0.5.15.7 shopping days left!
 
Byron In Exile said:
Well, let's try to separate out the hype and see what's left...


"The Mayans, who had a better calender than the Gregorian calender than we use today, have predicted the end of the civilized world on Dec 21st 2012."

There apparently isn't any such prediction. The 13th Baktun cycle (each being 144,000 days or 394 years) of the Mayan long count calendar seems to end on that date, or the 23rd, or possibly even some other date altogether. The former assumes that the date on which the world was created was August 11th, 3114 BC. Since the earth is clearly much older than that, and the Maya were so wrong about the date of its creation, there seems no reason to believe them to have been any more accurate about when it might end, had they made such a prediction at all.


"This is the exact date that astronomers have discovered the sun, moon, earth, and the giant black hole at the center of the galaxy perfectly align. An event that happens once every ~28000 years. There is no record of civilized man being alive from before that period."

The sun, moon, earth, and the center of the galaxy do not align on that date or any date. The sun, while it crosses the galactic equator every year, is never between earth and the galactic center.

What happens every 25,700 years or so is that, due to precession or the earth's axis, the sun crosses the galactic equator at the time of the solstice. It may be that the Mayans were aware of precession and aligned the end of a calendric age with what they thought was this event. If so, they missed by about 15 years, because this happened already in December 1997.

Otherwise, there is nothing remarkable about the December solstice of 2012. The moon is not aligned with anything, being just past its first quarter, the sun is, as mentioned, not aligned with the galactic center, actually past the galactic equator, and the planets will be in a typically random arrangement.


"Some scientists hypothesize that this event could knock the Earth off of its axis, moving the north and south poles to the equator. This would cause worldwide flooding, earthquakes, volcanoes, and literally hell on earth type events that arent even concieved."

I would say that anyone with such hypotheses as these is probably not someone who can seriously be called a scientist. There are no forces from any "alignment" events that are strong enough to cause any noticable effects on earth, other than the tides caused by the sun and moon.

So, it will probably be a lot like Y2K: the principle casualty being Mayan calendar programs which will need to be upgraded in order to function after that date.
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Where did you derive this information?

Specifically, that at no point is the sun between the earth and center of the galaxy, because it is common knowledge in the astronomy world that our sun orbits the center of the galaxy (as does every other star) on the same plane as our planets orbit the sun. Logically at some point they would align.
 
Acanthus said:
Where did you derive this information?

Specifically, that at no point is the sun between the earth and center of the galaxy, because it is common knowledge in the astronomy world that our sun orbits the center of the galaxy (as does every other star) on the same plane as our planets orbit the sun. Logically at some point they would align.
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The plane of the solar system and the plane of the galaxy are not the same. They are like two discs at different angles, and where they intersect is a line. That line does not pass through the center of the galaxy.
 
Byron In Exile said:
The plane of the solar system and the plane of the galaxy are not the same. They are like two discs at different angles, and where they intersect is a line. That line does not pass through the center of the galaxy.
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I probably should have said "where the planes intersect." The discs themselves don't actually intersect, because our solar system is about 100 light-years above the plane of the galaxy.
 
Byron In Exile said:
I probably should have said "where the planes intersect." The discs themselves don't actually intersect, because our solar system is about 100 light-years above the plane of the galaxy.
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It is my understanding that that the planets (with the exception of outer bodies) plane of travel around the sun does in fact cross the center. Im actually doing an interview with a PhD in astromony that did a lot of work on the big bang theory, ill ask him when im done if hes friendly.
 
Acanthus said:
It is my understanding that that the planets (with the exception of outer bodies) plane of travel around the sun does in fact cross the center. Im actually doing an interview with a PhD in astromony that did a lot of work on the big bang theory, ill ask him when im done if hes friendly.
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I wouldn't bother him with something that basic. You have access to the Internets — just look it up.
 
Byron In Exile said:
I wouldn't bother him with something that basic. You have access to the Internets — just look it up.
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I have actually tried, there isnt that much information that out there, its a pretty specific question.
 
Acanthus said:
I have actually tried, there isnt that much information that out there, its a pretty specific question.
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The path that the sun and planets follow across the sky shows the plane of the solar system, called the Ecliptic.

The plane of the galaxy can be seen in the sky as the Milky Way, and that is called the Galactic Equator.

What you want to know is if the point at which these two intersect is also the center of the galaxy.

There's a lot of information available about that.
 
Acanthus said:
The Mayans, who had a better calender than the Gregorian calender than we use today, have predicted the end of the civilized world on Dec 21st 2012.

This wouldnt be alarming if:

-This is the exact date that astronomers have discovered the sun, moon, earth, and the giant black hole at the center of the galaxy perfectly align. An event that happens once every ~28000 years. There is no record of civilized man being alive from before that period.

-Some scientists hypothesize that this event could knock the Earth off of its axis, moving the north and south poles to the equator. This would cause worldwide flooding, earthquakes, volcanoes, and literally hell on earth type events that arent even concieved.

In other words, party at my place Dec 20th.
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Damn, that's my birthday! Dec. 21st, that is. And it's also Winter Solstice. :eek:

:cool:
 
Byron In Exile said:
The path that the sun and planets follow across the sky shows the plane of the solar system, called the Ecliptic.

The plane of the galaxy can be seen in the sky as the Milky Way, and that is called the Galactic Equator.

What you want to know is if the point at which these two intersect is also the center of the galaxy.

There's a lot of information available about that.
Click to expand...

Nice, I havent taken astronomy or astrophysics yet :cool:

Next year :D
 
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