{"id":5722,"date":"2012-11-29T16:19:54","date_gmt":"2012-11-29T22:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/?p=5722"},"modified":"2012-11-30T12:27:55","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T18:27:55","slug":"december-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/?p=5722","title":{"rendered":"December 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years we\u2019ve been hearing about December 2012, in particular, December 21st<\/sup>, the date on which the Maya supposedly predicted the end of the world\u2014but what is fact and what is fiction?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that as we stagger our way towards 2013, news of gloom and doom can be found everywhere\u2014the economy, politics, environment.\u00a0 News regarding the fiscal cliff brings fears of impending economic disaster.\u00a0 The debt ceiling clock is running out.\u00a0 After Hurricane Sandy there\u2019s talk of more superstorms and the growing dangers of climate change and global warming.\u00a0 And then there are earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, and talk of possible raging solar storms and rogue planets about to collide with Earth\u2014all of these seem to support an apocalyptic forecast.<\/p>\n

But will the end of days occur in December?\u00a0 Consider the Maya calendar.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

December 21, 2012, does mark the end of a cycle of the Maya calendar.\u00a0 On that date, the calendar will display a series of zeros, signaling the end of Baktun 13.\u00a0 The Maya calendar was based on cycles of time, with the Baktun being one of those.\u00a0 Each Baktun is 144,000 days, thus, one cycle of 144,000 days ends and another begins.\u00a0 Not exactly \u201cdoomsday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, associating the Maya calendar with the end of the world has led to many misinterpretations and rumors.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Even worse, \u201c\u2026middle-school teachers everywhere report that many of their students are fearful of a coming apocalypse,\u201d says David Morrison<\/a>, an astrobiologist at NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center and Director of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe (SETI).<\/p>\n

Morrison says he \u201creceives many emails and letters from worried citizens, particularly young people.\u00a0 Some say they can’t eat, or are too worried to sleep. Others say they’re suicidal.\u201d<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

Some people are so concerned that they\u2019re flocking to a tiny village in the foothills of the Pyrenees of France called Bugarach<\/a>, where an ancient prophecy supposedly claims that it will be the only place left standing on Earth after December 21, 2012.\u00a0 It is there in Bugarach where they believe a mountain called \u201cupside down mountain\u201d will keep them safe.\u00a0 The mountain is rumored to have inspired the mountain in Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cClose Encounters of the Third Kind\u201d and is also host to a bewildering number of other oddities such as strange sounds emanating from underneath it to being a \u201cUFO underground car park.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, others have decided to \u201cParty Like There\u2019s No To-Maya,\u201d as one Denver hotel is advertising for its December 21st special.<\/p>\n

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?\u00a0 While it\u2019s 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 \u201cwimpiest in some time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, that doesn\u2019t mean that another Carrington Event<\/a> can\u2019t happen as it did in 1859 or that a repeat of the severe geomagnetic storm of 1989, which knocked out Hydro-Quebec\u2019s power grid for nine hours, won\u2019t occur.\u00a0 But \u201cNOAA scientists are on alert,\u201d says Tom Bogdan, Director of NOAA\u2019s Space Weather Prediction Center<\/a> in Boulder, Colorado.\u00a0 \u201cWe 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 \u2014 to forecast when space weather is coming our way, so we can avoid or mitigate damages.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNor are any near-Earth objects, planetary or otherwise, threatening to slam into our planet on December 21,\u201d says Don Yeomans<\/a>, a planetary scientist who tracks near-Earth objects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. \u00a0He adds that the \u201conly 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.\u201d\u00a0 Close, but no collision.<\/p>\n

Other rumors such as the Earth\u2019s magnetic field doing a sudden reversal or the planet undergoing a complete blackout for three days in late December raise the eyebrows of scientists.<\/p>\n

So will the world end this December?\u00a0 Remember Y2K?\u00a0 More than likely everything will stay the same, and we\u2019ll continue along as we have\u2014forgetting the facts and seizing the buzz.\u00a0 But perhaps in the end, as Mitzi Adams, a heliophysicist at NASA\u2019s Marshall Space Flight Center, says, \u201cThe greatest threat to Earth in 2012, at the end of this year and in the future, is just from the human race itself.”<\/p>\n

Link to article in print:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.gcnlive.com\/wp\/2012\/11\/30\/barb-adams-december-2012\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years we\u2019ve been hearing about December 2012, in particular, December 21st, the date on which the Maya supposedly predicted the end of the world\u2014but what is fact and what is fiction? It\u2019s true that as we stagger our way towards 2013, news of gloom and doom can be found everywhere\u2014the economy, politics, environment.\u00a0 News […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-articles","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5722"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5741,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5722\/revisions\/5741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}