History has a long and rich tradition of apocalyptic
predictions – all of which were wrong – yet
some people still think that this time ’round
in 2012 is the real deal.
Why 2012?
Because of ancient Mayan calendars. Obviously.
Mayan calendars not only recorded the days
and years, but also longer cycles of about
5 Millennia.
So they could easily make calendars that went
1,000s of years into the future. But, of course,
1,000s of years in the future from 1,000s
of years ago brings us to current times when
the Mayan calendars stop in 2012.
Modern new-agey people decided that the wise
Mayans stopped making calendars because they
knew when the world would end.
And because new agers are happy – though
scientifically illiterate – people their
vision of 2012 was a great spiritual awakening
or world reboot or other hippy-consciousness-expanding
nonsense that the Mayans, who spent time puling
strings of thorns through peoples’ tongue,
probably didn’t have in mind.
To a normal person the thought that: calendar
finishes therefore end of the world is an
odd conclusion to draw.
After all, the amount of time in the Universe
is infinite and the amount of stone is limited.
So, at some point the Mayans had to stop carving
calendars.
But never mind.
What should have stayed a fringe belief turned
into mass hysteria with the 2012 disaster
movie that swept the academy awards and the
numerous emmy-nominated apocalypse documentaries
on
::sigh::
The History Channel.
What happened to you guys?
Anyway. After this NASA became so inundated
with questions that they had to take time
away from their busy robot building, frontier
pushing, knowledge expanding, civilization
inspiring schedule, to write a webpage explaining
that no, a human-sacrificing, stone-age society
with neither wheels to pull carts nor glass
to make telescopes, didn’t know more about
science at the dawn of history than real scientists
do today.
But the parade of crazy marched on anyway
making wilder and wilder predictions for Earth
including:
• Geomagnetic Reversal (a process that unfolds
on a geologic timescale, not a single day)
• A collision with mysterious Planet X (That
no astronomers have found)
• A local star going supernova (Despite
there being no such candidates)
• An Alien Invasion (Which is ludicrous
on the face of it… or is it?)
• And a galactic synchronization beam, whatever
the hell that is.
A sane person, at this point, would wonder
how the Mayans were able to predict astro-physical
anomalies thousands of years in advance and
millions of miles away yet didn’t foresee
the Spanish coming across the Atlantic.
And that’s because the Mayans never predicted
apocalypse. The only people to claim the Mayans
knew about the end of the world were distinctly
not Mayans.�