2012- a modern catastrophology

[Kyriakos]

I was not sure if this belonged to history or arts (and OT had this thread already in the past). My reasons for posting it here is that it has an iota of historical relevancy, due to the theory being about the end of the world, and taking place at a set time, with a (albeit tenuous for most) "backing" in the Mayan calendar.

I was wondering if there is a consensus for this theory of megalocatastrophe (i coined this -well, i am sure it has been used before to be honest) as to when exactly it will occur.

Browsing youtube one gets a number of dates, like 21/12/2012.

My question is if there has been a calculation on just when precisely the Mayan calendar ends.

By the way if you decide to move this, please move it to the arts forum, where it also can be said to have a place since it is (probably) a figment of people's imagination.
But a lot of books have been written lately on this issue.

Also you can post, if you feel like it, astronomical truths about that date. Again from several web pages i get all sorts of information, but i am not really able to tell which has a basis - if any has.

 

[Kyriakos]

I don't believe you since my built-in Opera browser spelling check does not approve "megacatastrophe" either

 

[BuckyRea]

I have a book on Biblical prophesy at home that clearly documents that the world is going to end sometime in the mid 80s when the Soviet Union and Egypt (Gog and Magog) attack Israel.

 

[Scratch]

I have a book on Biblical prophesy at home that clearly documents that the world is going to end sometime in the mid 80s when the Soviet Union and Egypt (Gog and Magog) attack Israel.

Late Great Planet Earth?

 

[Earthling]

It was always supposed to be the 21st of December/winter solstice as the date, I think that's agreed upon even among widely varying other theories on the Mayan calendar end-of-the-world-craze.

 

[North King]

The Mayan calendar doesn't end. It just flips over a digit, starts a new cycle. Nothing so exciting as the end of the world. That's a misinterpretation.

Admittedly at equivalent times in previous cycles the world was recreated, but that was because humans were screwed up in one way or another (in the form of jaguars, or monkeys) and didn't honor the gods properly. There are still Mayans around who honor the gods in one way or another, and we have a pretty good track record as a species, so I think we're safe.

 

[NedimNapoleon]

21/12/2012 will be an awesome day, the calendar ends because every few thousand years you can see the milky way covering the sky, can't wait

 

[ParkCungHee]

You can see the milky way covering the sky every night.

 

[NedimNapoleon]

I know but its going to align and stuff and be something amazing http://www.astro.uu.nl/~strous/AA/en/2012.html

 

[Dachs]

Milky Way moves around, starlight comes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I know but its going to align and stuff and be something amazing http://www.astro.uu.nl/~strous/AA/en/2012.html

What's it going to "align and stuff" with?
The Canis Major Dwarf and the Large Magellenic Cloud?

 

[NedimNapoleon]

I have no idea, I watched it on Nat Geo,

 

[citedon]

I have a question. Has only one Mayan calendar been found or are there several that stop at 2012? There is a possibility that the people who made it or them simply picked that year arbitrarily as a stopping point, thinking that there was no practical reason to continue it more than a two or three thousand years. There might have been a lot of calendars that stopped at various dates for various reasons that have not been discovered.

 

[North King]

I have a question. Has only one Mayan calendar been found or are there several that stop at 2012? There is a possibility that the people who made it or them simply picked that year arbitrarily as a stopping point, thinking that there was no practical reason to continue it more than a two or three thousand years. There might have been a lot of calendars that stopped at various dates for various reasons that have not been discovered.

That's not really the situation.

The Mayan calendar basically consists of a bunch of places, sort of the same way ours has months, days, and years. Our biggest unit of time is kind of ill defined: the biggest thing that non-scientists really talk about is a century or maybe a millennium.

The Mayans, by contrast, have a lot more places in their calendar. December 21st, 2012, is the day on which the calendar advances by one of the largest units. They're going into the 14th baktun. It's sort of the equivalent of the year 2000 AD for us -- nothing more than another millennium going by.

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

we have 'till 12/21/2012 to live, meanwhile there will be revolutions, WW III, fallout, all that stuff

 

[Kentharu]

I'll be safe in my Doom Bunker with Stephen Colbert

.

I hope the rest of you are ready. Those mutant crabs won't fight themselves off.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Enemy Crabs have not been threatening since 2006.

 

[LightSpectra]

So why exactly would the Mayans have known when the world ends? And if people actually believe that they did, shouldn't they therefore adhere to the old Mayan religion?

 

[Kyriakos]

That belief could have to do with man's inherent animist older way of thinking, according to which you can be under some circumstances prone to imagine that a different group of people have acquired secret knowledge, by means of preoccupation with lost systems of faith.


This appears to be one of the tenets of seemingly irrational inability to fully discredit any sort of religion. One can be an atheist, but in most cases (either consciously or not) there exist agnostic elements in that atheism. Not sure if that is for good or worse, but obviously it is part of how our psyche works.

 

[Plotinus]

I know but its going to align and stuff and be something amazing http://www.astro.uu.nl/~strous/AA/en/2012.html

If you actually follow that link you will see that the thing the Milky Way will "align" with is the sun. The sun goes through the Milky Way twice a year (when it passes through Gemini and Sagittarius). This is not an uncommon phenomenon. Even if it were, you wouldn't see anything, because the sun is visible only during the day and the Milky Way is visible only during the night. And even if you could see anything, it wouldn't be of any interest - it's just the sun going through a particular patch of the sky. So I wouldn't expect anything particularly amazing from this "align and stuff". The Milky Way and everything else will look exactly the same as on any other night.