An image of mayan calendar on Cosumel Island' Mexico (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We have always been anxious of what will be our tomorrow and predictions had always been there. One prediction is the Maya calendar telling that by December 21, 2012 will be the end of the world. This is according to some internet conspiracy theorists, the world will end this Friday - a prediction based on an incorrect interpretation of Mayan theology, and a strange mix of New Age beliefs.
December 21 marks the end of an age in a 5,125 year-old Maya calendar, an event that is variously interpreted as the end of days and the start of a new era. A mash-up of academic speculation and existential angst seasoned with elements from several world religions, the 2012 phenomenon has been fueled by Hollywood movies and computer games, and relentlessly disseminated by Internet doom-mongers.
Mass hysteria in a Russian prison, a Chinese man
building survival pods for doomsday and UFO lovers seeking refuge with aliens
in a French mountain village are just some of the reports that have sprung up
in the final countdown to December 21, 2012.
What is this
Maya calendar? This Maya calendar is a system of calendars
used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and in many modern communities in highland Guatemala
and in Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. The essentials of the Maya
calendar are based upon a system which had been in common use throughout the
region, dating back to at least the 5th century BCE. It shares many aspects
with calendars employed by other earlier Mesoamerican civilizations, such as
the Zapotec and Olmec, and contemporary
or later ones such as the Mixtec and Aztec calendars.[2]
Although the Mesoamerican
calendar did not originate with
the Maya, their subsequent extensions and refinements of it were the most
sophisticated.[citation
needed] Along with those of the Aztecs, the Maya
calendars are the best-documented and most completely understood.[citation
needed]
By the Maya mythological tradition, as documented in Colonial Yucatec accounts and
reconstructed from Late Classic and Post classic inscriptions, the deity Itzamna
is frequently credited with bringing the knowledge of the calendar system to
the ancestral Maya, along with writing
in general and other foundational aspects of Maya culture.[3]
Mainstream scholars
don’t buy into the Mayan calendar mess. But mainstream scholars don’t
usually make headlines. And Mayan scholars say associating the end of the
calendar with the end-of-the-world misinterprets the Mayans original intention,
which, actually, was to insure that everything stays the same.
There
are other five common Mayan apocalypse fears and why they won't come true.
Prediction 1: The sun will kill us all- Much has been made by Mayan doomsday fear-mongers of the fact that the sun is currently entering a maximum activity phase. The sun rotates through periods of quiet and activity that peak roughly every 11 years; active periods are marked by an increase in solar storms and flares. [See stunning solar flare photographs] Some of these flares can indeed influence Earth. When the sun releases electromagnetic particles in such a way that they interact with our atmosphere, solar storms can disrupt telecommunications, though there are ways to protect satellites and other electronics. These charged particles are also responsible for the aurora — the Northern and Southern Lights. Predictions of a Dec. 21 solar storm that will devastate the planet are not based in reality, according to NASA scientists. This particular solar maximum is one of the "wimpiest" in recent history, according to NASA heliophysicist Lika Guhathakurta, who spoke during an online panel on the Mayan apocalypse on Nov. 28. In other words, scientists have no reason to expect solar storms capable of disrupting our society.
Prediction 2: The Earth's magnetic poles will flip-flop- What is it with the Mayan apocalypse and electromagnetism? This rumour holds that the North and South Poles will suddenly and catastrophically change places on Dec. 21. The idea isn't as totally leftfield as it sounds: The Earth's magnetic field does actually flip-flop occasionally, though not in the course of a day. The pole swaps happen over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, according to NASA. The switching of magnetic poles could lead to a slight increase in cosmic radiation, but previous flip-flops have not disrupted the life seen in the fossil record. Predicting the magnetic-pole switch is also tough. The last swap occurred about 780,000 years ago, which puts the planet about due for another change in the next several thousand years. However, there has been at least one period where the magnetic poles stayed put for 30 million years.
Prediction 3: Planet X will collide with Earth- Planet X, sometimes known as Nibiru, does not exist. Nevertheless, some doomsday theorizers have predicted that on Dec. 21, this "rogue planet" will slam into Earth, annihilating all life. Planet X rumours got their start in 1976, when the late author Zecharia Sitchin claimed to have translated a Sumerian text to rediscover the lost planet Nibiru, which allegedly orbits the sun once every 3,600 years supposedly explaining why modern man and telescope had failed to notice this planetary neighbour. In 2003, self-described psychic and alien-channeler Nancy Lieder warned that this planet would collide with Earth. When that didn't happen, the date got pushed back to 2012 to coincide with Mayan apocalypse myths. Of course, a planet set on a collision course with Earth in mere days would be extremely visible to the naked eye. In fact, Nibiru should have shown up as nearly as bright as Mars in the night sky by April 2012, if that scenario were true. Given NASA's capacity to peer into deep space, a nearby planet headed for Earth is not going to escape detection.
Prediction 4: The planets will align- Another fear is that the planets will align on Dec. 21, somehow impacting our planet. According to the NASA's 2012 doomsday myths webpage, there are no planetary alignments in the next few decades. Even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. There have been planetary alignments in 1962, 1982 and 2000, according to NASA, and we're all still here.
Prediction 5: Total Earth blackout -This rumour, circulating in spam emails, claims that NASA is predicting a total Earth blackout between Dec. 23 and Dec. 25. Some emails claim that this blackout will occur as the result of the sun and Earth aligning for the first time, while others spin a wild tale about Earth entering "a still ring" called the Photonic belt. Whatever the alleged cause, this is simply not going to happen, according to NASA.
This bizarre theory is not the first to have people believing their days are numbered. Here are some of the other predicted doomsdays that never happened:
Rapture, May 21, 2011- Those terrified by this Friday’s predicted doomsday would do well to remember last year’s flop forecast of the Rapture by Evangelical preacher Harold Camping. The now notorious 91-year-old American radio broadcaster was so certain that Jesus Christ would return to Earth and that billions of apparent ne’er-do-wells would perish in flames that he spent $100million advertising the event. Former New York Subway worker Robert Fitzpatrick, 61, even sank his $140,000 life savings into warning that only 200million faithful or 2.8% of the world’s population would be saved. When May 21 last year passed and nothing happened, Camping revised the date of the Rapture and end of the world to October 21. Again, the date passed without infamy. After months of silence, Camping, who had also once predicted the same fate for September 1994, “humbly” admitted: “We were wrong.”
The Second Big Bang, November 23, 2009- Whereas most doomsday predictions centre on an apparent plan by God, some believe that the end of the world could be man-made. When the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland was completed in 2008, some groups feared the “doomsday machine” could trigger an all-consuming black hole. Once fully switched on – heralding the largest ever recreation of the Big Bang particle collisions that created life – a black hole might emerge and swallow our planet up. Doom mongers, one of which even sued the organization behind the LHC, CERN, suggested that the Earth –and everything on it – would vanish from space in a twentieth of a second. Eight seconds later, the moon would disappear - and eight short minutes after that, the Sun would be ripped apart, followed by the rest of the solar system.
But when, on November 23, 2009, particle collisions commenced in all four detectors, it produced much glee for physicists – but no life-destroying black hole.
Y2K, January 1, 2000- The Year 2000 was supposed to mark the moment that Britain’s 19th century anti-technology Luddites would be vindicated and our reliance on machines would come back to haunt us.
With the passing of 1999, it was feared that computers would be unable to move from a two-digit date (97, 98, 99 etc) and all manner of chaos would ensue. It was predicted that planes would fall out of the sky, trains stop running, microwaves blow up and, perhaps most importantly, banks would fail. Businesses spent billions updating software and systems to avoid the apparent peril of the “Millennium Bug”. Many computer scientists now believe the threat was over-egged and that much of the costly updating was unnecessary.
Jehovah’s Witnesses’ prediction of the Second Coming, August 1914- The First World War, a conflict like no other before was quickly noted as a watershed event in history. But for Jehovah’s Witnesses at the time it was a little more important than just a particularly bloody war. The door knocking religious sect’s founder, Charles Taze Russell, predicted that the year would see the Second Coming of Christ.
The First World War, which began in August 1914, was interpreted as a
sign of Armageddon and the end of days. But 1914 passed without Rapture and the
fighting between European powers lasted another three years and claimed
10million lives.
The Great Fire of London, September 2, 1666- With witch-burnings and fears of satanic priests rife, the 1600s marked high times for religious superstition. So it is perhaps not surprising that residents of London felt a little edgy about the approach of 1666 – with 666 being the biblical “mark of the beast”. After all, 100,000 people had just died in the plague of 1665. Panic about the end of days reached a crescendo when, on September 2, 1666, a bakery in Pudding Lane caught fire and the inferno quickly spread. It burned for three days and destroyed more than 13,000 buildings. But, in spite of the wide-scale destruction and hell-like appearance of the fire, only 10 people died. It is also believed to have had the beneficial effect of preventing future plagues – by wiping out the disease-harboring rats.
Tweeted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the New York Museum of Natural History: “End of the world prophecies for 2012 are hoaxes perpetrated by the scientifically illiterate on the scientifically uninformed.”
