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GOOD NEWS DEPT: LOOKS LIKE WORLD WON'T END IN 2012
Boombaard, Slashdot - News is spreading quickly here that scientists writing in a (Dutch) popular science periodical have debunked the 2012 date featuring so prominently in doomsday predictions/speculation across the web. On 2012-12-21, the sun will appear where you would normally be able to see the 'galactic equator' of the Milky Way; an occurrence deemed special because it happens 'only' once every 25.800 years, on the winter solstice. However, even if you ignore the fact that there is no actual galactic equator, just an observed one, and that the visual effect is pretty much the same for an entire decade surrounding that date, there are major problems with the way the Maya Calendar is being read by doomsday prophets.
Because written records were almost all destroyed by 16th-century Spaniards, quite a lot of guesswork surrounds the translation of their calendar to ours, and it appears something went very wrong with the calculations. The Mayas used 4 different calendars, all of different lengths, with the longest of which counting out ages of roughly 5200 years. Figuring out how these relate to our calendars is a big problem, which scientists had thought they had figured out about a century ago. (That's where 2012, which now turns out to be almost 2 centuries out of date, comes from.) However, a German geologist showed in 2005 that the proposed correlation to GMT didn't fit with a lot of Mayan-observed events that we know about, and calculated that a roughly 208 year correction was needed, meaning the soonest the Mayan Calendar can end is in 2220.
The final blow was arguably the thesis [of] nature scientist Andreas Fuls three years ago at the Technical University Berlin. Fuls pointed out that the GMT-correlation [was] not consistent with a preserved Mayan table on which the positions of Venus are listed. There is more, such as inscriptions and objects [that] in time of Goodman, Martinez and Thompson were not detected or [were] outdated. . . . The end of the long count by the correlation is only about two centuries, at 21, 22 or December 23, 2220. "It is the only option," says Fuls if you ask him about it. Until then, it would appear we are quite safe, except from Hollywood.
Because written records were almost all destroyed by 16th-century Spaniards, quite a lot of guesswork surrounds the translation of their calendar to ours, and it appears something went very wrong with the calculations. The Mayas used 4 different calendars, all of different lengths, with the longest of which counting out ages of roughly 5200 years. Figuring out how these relate to our calendars is a big problem, which scientists had thought they had figured out about a century ago. (That's where 2012, which now turns out to be almost 2 centuries out of date, comes from.) However, a German geologist showed in 2005 that the proposed correlation to GMT didn't fit with a lot of Mayan-observed events that we know about, and calculated that a roughly 208 year correction was needed, meaning the soonest the Mayan Calendar can end is in 2220.
The final blow was arguably the thesis [of] nature scientist Andreas Fuls three years ago at the Technical University Berlin. Fuls pointed out that the GMT-correlation [was] not consistent with a preserved Mayan table on which the positions of Venus are listed. There is more, such as inscriptions and objects [that] in time of Goodman, Martinez and Thompson were not detected or [were] outdated. . . . The end of the long count by the correlation is only about two centuries, at 21, 22 or December 23, 2220. "It is the only option," says Fuls if you ask him about it. Until then, it would appear we are quite safe, except from Hollywood.
4 Comments:
The first time I encountered claims about 2012, it was not called the end of the world, but the beginning of a new era.
Scientists have been measuring the progress rate of the total human knowledge about the universe by tracking how often the amount we know doubles and graphing that rate as a curve. The curve is logarithmic which means that the frequency with which our knowledge doubles is increasing dramatically (and if you understand the old story about the inventor of the chess board asking for one grain of wheat for the first square, 2 grains for the second, 4 grains for the third and so on until all the grain in the world was accounted for long before square 64 you will know just what that means).
2012 is the year that graph is projected to approach infinity. Every day our knowledge will be increasing so much that it will be impossible to keep up with. In other words 2012 just could be the year our possibilities become limitless and everything will change in ways that are incomprehensible to us now.
Does that give anyone an idea of why so many call it the end of the world? If our knowledge base does increase that fast and ways of getting that knowledge into each human brain come about, it could finally mean the end to the superstitious religious nonsense that is holding us back from true human progress. Those who are heavily invested in such nonsense are certainly going to see it as the end of the world.
Henry Fnord
The Mayans always called it the end of an era as well. Its the end of one long 5200 year cycle. But, since its a cycle, its also the beginning of the next 5200 year cycle.
Trust a bunch of westerners to mis-interpret and call it the latest installment of "the end of the world."
After all, its been a whole 9 years since the last time this bunch of semi-educated monkeys we call 'humans' got all worked about the end of the world because of a calendar.
And typically they were wrong on when the new millenium began then to.The first year was of course 2001, not 2000.-Smokejaguar
Huh? I think 4:26 was referring to the nonsense about all the computers in the world going insane because they didn't know how to encode dates that didn't start with 19. That was a technological end-of-the-word scenario that definitely was tied to the specific year 2000.
I do, however, share your contempt for the world-wide confusion about when this century actually began.
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