For years we’ve been hearing about December 2012, in particular, December 21st, the date on which the Maya supposedly predicted the end of the world—but what is fact and what is fiction?
It’s true that as we stagger our way towards 2013, news of gloom and doom can be found everywhere—the economy, politics, environment. News regarding the fiscal cliff brings fears of impending economic disaster. The debt ceiling clock is running out. After Hurricane Sandy there’s talk of more superstorms and the growing dangers of climate change and global warming. And then there are earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, and talk of possible raging solar storms and rogue planets about to collide with Earth—all of these seem to support an apocalyptic forecast.
But will the end of days occur in December? Consider the Maya calendar. Almost everyone has heard about the Maya calendar ending on December 21, 2012, with some believing it to be a day of catastrophic end for our world while others herald it as a new beginning for universal peace and harmony and spiritual transformation.
December 21, 2012, does mark the end of a cycle of the Maya calendar. On that date, the calendar will display a series of zeros, signaling the end of Baktun 13. The Maya calendar was based on cycles of time, with the Baktun being one of those. Each Baktun is 144,000 days, thus, one cycle of 144,000 days ends and another begins. Not exactly “doomsday.”
Unfortunately, associating the Maya calendar with the end of the world has led to many misinterpretations and rumors. These misinterpretations and rumors have a dark side, and a recent Reuters poll suggests that one in ten people believe that December 21, 2012, could mean the end of our world. Even worse, “…middle-school teachers everywhere report that many of their students are fearful of a coming apocalypse,” says David Morrison, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center and Director of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe (SETI).
Morrison says he “receives many emails and letters from worried citizens, particularly young people. Some say they can’t eat, or are too worried to sleep. Others say they’re suicidal.”
“While this is a joke to some people and a mystery to others, there is a core of people who are truly concerned,” he said.
Some people are so concerned that they’re flocking to a tiny village in the foothills of the Pyrenees of France called Bugarach, where an ancient prophecy supposedly claims that it will be the only place left standing on Earth after December 21, 2012. It is there in Bugarach where they believe a mountain called “upside down mountain” will keep them safe. The mountain is rumored to have inspired the mountain in Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and is also host to a bewildering number of other oddities such as strange sounds emanating from underneath it to being a “UFO underground car park.”
Meanwhile, others have decided to “Party Like There’s No To-Maya,” as one Denver hotel is advertising for its December 21st special.
But what about the other supposed world-ending cataclysms that might occur on or around December 21, like giant solar flares or rogue planets slamming into Earth? While it’s true that our sun is currently entering an active phase of its cycle known as solar maximum, often associated with an increase in sunspot activity and solar storms, NASA heliophysicist Lika Guhathakurta says that our current solar maximum is the “wimpiest in some time.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean that another Carrington Event can’t happen as it did in 1859 or that a repeat of the severe geomagnetic storm of 1989, which knocked out Hydro-Quebec’s power grid for nine hours, won’t occur. But “NOAA scientists are on alert,” says Tom Bogdan, Director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. “We now know how powerful space weather can be and how events that begin on the surface of the Sun can end up wreaking havoc here on Earth. This is why NOAA has a Space Weather Prediction Center — to forecast when space weather is coming our way, so we can avoid or mitigate damages.”
“Nor are any near-Earth objects, planetary or otherwise, threatening to slam into our planet on December 21,” says Don Yeomans, a planetary scientist who tracks near-Earth objects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He adds that the “only close asteroid approach on the horizon is forecast to occur on February 13, 2013, when an asteroid will pass within 4.5 Earth radii to our planet.” Close, but no collision.
Other rumors such as the Earth’s magnetic field doing a sudden reversal or the planet undergoing a complete blackout for three days in late December raise the eyebrows of scientists.
So will the world end this December? Remember Y2K? More than likely everything will stay the same, and we’ll continue along as we have—forgetting the facts and seizing the buzz. But perhaps in the end, as Mitzi Adams, a heliophysicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, says, “The greatest threat to Earth in 2012, at the end of this year and in the future, is just from the human race itself.”
Link to article in print:
http://www.gcnlive.com/wp/2012/11/30/barb-adams-december-2012/
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