2012

[wolvesevolve]

And to get back on topic: Recently I saw a documentary on Nostradamus. And it was interesting how his prophecies were sought after especially in times of perceived crises. There has been a rise in sales numbers of Nostradamus books since the 1980s. Far more than each man thinking he lives in a very important time, I think each generation likes to believe we live in a time close to the end of the world, or at least human civilization.

I'm still waiting for the first connection to be made between global warming, the bird flu and 2012. Don't you agree that in 2012 the polar caps will have melted to an irreversible point, entire regions will be flooded to a degree that we're all close to drowning - and to top it all of, the avian flu will finally have mutated into a highly dangerous human variant. And then it's Christmas season 2012, and we will all find ourselves wet and sick, stacked with books that will no longer help us, and soon, scientist have found out, an asteroid the size of England will hit the earth, but at least we know that our end has come because the Mayan predicted it; because sun, earth and center of our galaxy are all neatly ligned up. And it's probably for the better anyway. Happy 2013!

To sum it all up: I think it's easy to take anything and find precisely what you were looking for in that - like predicting future events from a single text because certain letters appear at every 3. position of a sentence, or something like that. (Funny how these things always predict those events that have come to past, isn't it?) It's easier to claim the Mayan - or anyone - predicted the end of the World, the coming of a (new) God in ten years or a hundred than it is to open your eyes and try to understand why things are the way they are right now, and why some of them scare us while others really should. It's easier to believe an asteroid out of the blue will kill us, or a deadly flu that suddenly appears, than it is to see that, if the end were near, we ourselves had brought it upon us ...

Oh yeah, and lest I forget: Have a nice Sunday.

Have you been watching Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense?

I also love that quote ya got off the wikipedia entry, I had been looking and looking for some sort of statement like that from a Mayanist...never thought it would turn up on a wiki entry!

Glad to see ya post on this thread Noah!

[wolvesevolve]

It's a new cycle.. a new earth on that date. The Mayan got a lot of their stuff from the Olmec. You might want to check them out as well. It's amazing how they knew that the earth/sun/milky way would line up!

I was going to add as well, that the Aztecs/Mexicas, Mixtecs, and other prominent groups in Mesoamerica at the time of the Spanish arrival...they all shared the belief that 4 worlds/suns had came and went, cycled through into a new creation/world that they presently inhabited, that of the 5th Sun. So as in agreement with hippyroo, I think the Mayans shared a similar belief that the "end of the world" in 2012 would begin the start of a new creation.

Also a sidenote: On another forum, someone pointed out an article that our Sun will switch magnetic poles...also in 2012! I dont think it really means much, the Sun does it's pole switch regularly ever 10 years or so....but it is a funny coincidence.

[Guest Thomas]

Strangely, at the end of the year 2012, the Sun will be exactly between the Earth and the center of the Milky Way. A situation that arises every 26 000 years.

Exactly between?

From Milky Way

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way

Galactic center

The galactic disk, which bulges outward at the galactic center, has a diameter of between 70,000 and 100,000 light-years.^[17] The distance from the Sun to the galactic center is now estimated at 26,000 ± 1400 light-years, while older estimates could put the Sun as far as 35,000 light-years from the central bulge.

(Today I'm an Owl, tomorrow a Rooster)

[Guest Laurent.]

Hey there Thomas!

Not sure what your point is. First of all be sure that you do not get mixed up in the galactic nomenclature.

The galactic disk marks the central plane of the Galaxy (approximately 50 kiloparsec in diameter for the Milky Way... just for comparison)

Then at the center of this disk you have the Nuclear Bulge (with a radius of just under one kiloparsec) It is essentially a spherical and dense mass of old stars. Far brighter than the arms (which are the other components of the disk) but difficult to observe because of its relatively small size and the surrounding stars.

At the very center of the Galaxy is the small massive nucleus. Under one parsec in diameter and a mass of about 1 000 000 times the mass of the sun. The galactic nucleus may be an extremely compact stellar cluster or it may be a single very massive object, possibly a black hole.

I hope this cleared up the situation even though I don't know what the problem was. And just for my defense, the world exactly is a far from exact term in astrophysics.

Note: 1 Parsec = 3.08568025 × 10^16 meters and 1 kiloparsec = 1000 x 1 parsec

edit: I must say that, even though I have studied a bit of astrophysics, I have not looked into this conjuncture theory at all!! The words you quoted from me were my summary of the 2012 alignment idea and I must say that I do not give any credit to this "prophecy". Now, for an astronomical point of view, you should take a look at this forum.

Edited December 27, 2007 by Laurent.