Cornell Expert on the Mayan Calendar / 2012 Hoax

Martin is a doctoral candidate in Cornell University’s department of astronomy. Her research focuses on the hydrogen content of galaxies in the nearby universe. She holds a B.A. degree in English and a B.S. degree in physics from the University at Buffalo.

She says the world will NOT end on Dec. 21, 2012. The Mayan calendar was designed to be cyclical, so the fact that the long count comes to an end in December 2012 is really of no consequence. Simply, it is the end of great calendar cycle in Mayan society, much like our modern society celebrated the new Millennium. It does not mean that the “world will end.” In fact, the Mayan calendar does not end then and there is no evidence to suggest that the Mayans – or anyone for that matter – has knowledge for the world’s demise.

For the past three years, Martin has been a volunteer with Cornell’s “Curious? Ask an Astronomer” service, a Web site founded by astronomy graduate students in 1997.

“Curious? Ask an Astronomer” features the answers to over 750 frequently asked astronomy questions, and readers who can’t find their answers there can submit a new question and receive a personal answer from a graduate student volunteer. Web site: curious.astro.cornell.edu.

2012 Doomsday Theories (From Wikipedia)

A far more apocalyptic view of the year 2012 has … spread in various media. This view has been promulgated by History Channel which, beginning in 2006, aired “Decoding the Past: Mayan Doomsday Prophecy”, based loosely on John Major Jenkins’ theories but with a tone he characterized as “45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism”. It was co-written by a science fiction author. This show proved popular and was followed by many sequels: 2012, End of Days (2006), The Last Days on Earth (2008), Seven Signs of the Apocalypse (2008), and Nostradamus 2012 (2008). Discovery Channel also aired “2012 Apocalypse” in 2009, suggesting that massive solar storms, flipping of the magnetic poles, earthquakes, super volcanoes, and more may occur in 2012.

Geomagnetic Reversal

One idea proposed in these films involves a geomagnetic reversal (often incorrectly referred to as a polar shift by proponents of this hypothesis), which could be triggered by a massive solar flare, one with energy equal to 100 billion atomic bombs. This belief is supposedly supported by observations that the Earth’s magnetic field is weakening, which indicates an impending reversal of the north and south magnetic poles. Scientists believe the Earth is overdue for a geomagnetic reversal, and has been for a long time, even since the time of the Mayans, because the last reversal was 780,000 years ago. Critics, however, claim geomagnetic reversals take up to 5,000 years to complete, and do not start on any particular date. Also, NOAA now predicts that the solar maximum will peak in 2013, not 2012, and that it will be fairly weak, with a below-average number of sunspots. In any case, there is no scientific evidence linking a solar maximum to a geomagnetic reversal. A solar maximum would be mostly notable for its effects on satellite and cellular phone communications.

Planet Nibiru

Proponents of a Nibiru collision claim that a planet, called Nibiru or Planet X, will collide with or pass by Earth in that year. This idea, which has been circulating since 1995 in New Age circles and initially slated the event for 2003, is based on claims of channeling from alien species and has been widely ridiculed. Astronomers calculate that such an object so close to Earth would be visible to anyone looking up at the night sky.

Black Hole Alignment

An apocalyptic reading of Jenkins’s hypothesis has that, when the galactic alignment occurs, it will somehow create a combined gravitational effect between the Sun and the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy (known as Sgr A*), creating havoc on Earth. Apart from the fact noted above that the “galactic alignment” predicted by Jenkins already happened in 1998, the Sun’s apparent path through the zodiac as seen from Earth does not take it near the true galactic center, but rather several degrees above it. Even if this were not the case, Sgr A* is 30,000 light years from Earth, and would have to be more than 6 million times closer to cause any gravitational disruption to our Solar System.

Some versions of this idea elide the 2012 “galactic alignment” with the very different “galactic alignment” proposed by some scientists to explain a supposed periodicity in mass extinctions in the fossil record.The hypothesis supposes that vertical oscillations made by the Sun as it orbits the galactic center cause it to regularly pass through the galactic plane. When the Sun’s orbit takes it outside the galactic disc, the influence of the galactic tide is weaker; as it re-enters the galactic disc, as it does every 20–25 million years, it comes under the influence of the far stronger “disc tides”, which, according to mathematical models, increase the flux of Oort cloud comets into the Solar System by a factor of 4, leading to a massive increase in the likelihood of a devastating comet impact. However, this “alignment” takes place over tens of millions of years, and could never be timed to an exact date. Evidence shows that the Sun passed through the galactic disc only three million years ago, and is now moving farther above it.

Web Bot Project

The Web Bot project is a series of automated bots that search the internet for specific keywords, looking for patterns. Its co-creator, Goerge Ure, states that its study of “web chatter” predicted the September 11 attacks in New York, though he also suggests that the project can predict natural disasters, such as earthquakes. He now asserts that the project has predicted that the world will end on December 21, 2012. Critics of these proposals argue that while the collective knowledge of humanity could possibly predict terrorist attacks, stock market crashes or other human-caused events, there is no way it could predict something like an earthquake or the end of the world.

2012 Film

A movie called 2012, directed by Roland Emmerich and starring the actors John Cusack, Danny Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt and Woody Harrelson was released on November 13, 2009. On November 12, 2008, the studio released the first teaser trailer for 2012 that showed a megatsunami surging over the Himalayas and interlaced a purportedly scientific message suggesting that the world would end in 2012, and that the world’s governments were not preparing its population for the event. The trailer ended with a message to viewers to “find out the truth” by searching “2012″ on search engines. The Guardian criticized the marketing effectiveness as “deeply flawed” and associated it with “websites that make even more spurious claims about 2012″.

The studio also launched a viral marketing website operated by the fictional Institute for Human Continuity, where filmgoers could register for a lottery number to be part of a small population that would be rescued from the global destruction. The fictitious website lists the Nibiru collision, a galactic alignment, and increased solar activity among its possible doomsday scenarios. David Morrison of NASA has received over 1000 inquiries from people who thought the website was genuine and has condemned it, saying “I’ve even had cases of teenagers writing to me saying they are contemplating suicide because they don’t want to see the world end. I think when you lie on the Internet and scare children in order to make a buck, that is ethically wrong.”

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Nov 12, 2009 | Categories: Future Trends & New Paradigms | Tags: 2012, 2012 hoax, end of the world, hoax | Leave A Comment »