Mayans have predicted events in Year 4000:

'World won't end on December 21'

By Ranil Wijayapala

An interview with Professor Chandana Jayarathne

People across the globe are now cautious about the impending Doomsday or the end of World on December 21, 2012 as it has become a deep rooted belief in many communities. It has spread even among the well educated hierarchy across the globe and among the general public at the grass roots levels of the society as the message comes in multifaceted forms with a touch of religious belief, astronomical and mathematical calculation and scientific touch.

Though there were speculation among the public about the end of the world many times in the past, this time it has emerged in a more strong way alarming a large portion of the society as the access to information through Internet has been powerful enough to confuse them rather than defusing their tension.

People are talking more about three days of darkness and many other catastrophic events that may occur leading to the end of the world and relate them to various other astronomical, religious and scientific events mention in many sources.

To evaluate the how these speculations came in to the fore and whether there is any scientific background to these speculations the Sunday Observer met Head of the Physics Department of the University of Colombo Professor Chandana Jayarathne.

Professor Jayarathne says that people should not get panicked about these speculations since there is no scientific evidence to prove such thing would happen.

"We know that the world may not exist forever. Anything can happen at any time but scientifically there is no evidence to say that there will be catastrophe on December 21, 22, 23 or 24 or the following dates as speculated by the people", he said.

Mayan Calendar

According to the Professor, the speculations about the end of the world is based on the Mayan calendar, a calendar formulated and based on astronomical movements.

"People tend to believe that the world is due to end on December 21, 2012 at 11.11 GMT, that is 4.41 pm in Sri Lanka according to Mayan calendar", he said.

Mayans were among the 11 nations that existed between 10,000 to 8,000 years those who have helped to develop the astronomy to the present level along with Rome, Greece and Egypt. Mayan and Incas were also having some knowledge about astronomical events.

Mayans lived in the middle of American continent and during the period of 2050 to 900 A.D. Mayans were having an advanced civilisation that was similar to Sri Lanka. But that civilisation has been destroyed and the Mayans are now living like aborigines in countries like Guetamala and El-Salvador.

The calendar they used helped them predict eclipses etc. They used the calendar and their counting system was not based on ten, like the way we use now. They were having a calendar using the counting system based on 13. Once they count upto 12, the number 13 they write is similar to 10. That way they had five circles in the calendar and when they write the number 12 twelve times it cannot write any more numbers.

Its short calendar was ended on August 11, 3114 BC and then they thought to have a bigger calendar and developed a new calendar based on twenty. When you write up to 19 the twenty you write is like 10. So that also had five circles and that calendar now ends up on December 21, 2012. In this Mayan calendar they have not mentioned like in our calendar, where number 1 come again after December 31 to start from January 1. They cannot mention dates after December 21 and they have to start another calendar.

"There are several reasons to say that this is not the end of the world. First thing is that the Mayans have not predicted it. The existing Mayan leader Phiplipe Gomes says that there is no such thing mentioned and using this present Mayan calendar they have some events mentioned even up to October 21, 4772 on the Gregorian calendar which we use. Therefore we do not need any other explanation to say that December 21 is not the end of the world. If the world ends on December 21 they should not have mentioned such a date in their calendar", the Professor said.

How the world comes to an end

Scientists have explained in many ways the world will come to an end. One way is said to be due to the end of hydrogen fuel in the sun. When hydrogen fuel ends the sun will start to swell and will expand its size up to the earth orbit and the earth will just fall into the sun. During this period the sun will be called red giant. But scientists estimate to end hydrogen fuel in the sun it will take another 4.5 billion years as the sun is having half rate of hydrogen.

The semi destruction of the world or mass extinction can take place if an asteroid hits the earth. To destroy the earth the asteroid must have a 10 kilometre diameter. If such an asteroid hits the earth the emerging dust will cover the sky and earth will not get sunlight for several weeks or years sometimes. Scientists believe that such thing had happened 55 million years ago when an asteroid struck Yucutan bay in the Atlantic ocean close to USA which has resulted in killing dinosaurs.

"The scientific community has fixed several telescopes or even infrared cameras all over the world to detect any object that comes towards the earth. So if there is any object coming to the earth they should have observed it by now. There is nothing for the people to panic.

"The other way the earth can be destroyed is by nuclear war. We call it a nuclear winter. Again that will cause similar dust and smoke and clouds will cover the whole earth. They are the only possible ways the whole world can get a dark surface, the dust will cover the whole sky and gets dark. Since there is nothing like World War III on sight, there is nothing for the people to fear about such incident", the Professor said.

Propagating myth for business

"Actually this story has been propagated by business people and the Guatemalan government itself. By spreading this story they are receiving a large number of foreign tourists to visit their country to see the Mayan palaces which are still available as ruins. They had nice houses like pyramids.

They have fabricated this story to attract more tourists to the country", he said.

Apart from that, some people in the USA itself are selling underground bunkers for sale after speculating these fabricated stories. They have also some helmets to protect any such major catastrophic event.

Another group has made this situation a business to sell a 'mantra' among the people to get protected from this catastrophe.

"To get that mantra you have to pay from the credit card for that and once you use this mantra you will be protected from the end of the world. That is how the story originated", he added.

This fabricated story with some scientific touch to it tend to make people panic and there are people in the world who committed suicide.

There is a new thing called astraphobia, a new psychotic condition where it is found that children are afraid for astronomical invasions and even some are having anxiety conditions. "Even in Sri Lanka such cases are reported in certain psychiatric wards and they have contacted me. In Sri Lanka itself I understand that some people in Batticaloa area are packing things thinking that the end of the world will come.

In Colombo there are people who have sold houses and are going all over the world on trips to enjoy life before they get killed. Certain religious sectors, of course non-Buddhists, strongly believe that this sort of catastrophic incident will happen in December. I must say that scientifically there is no possibility for such thing to happen", the professor said. "Such situation is reported in the Western world because some of these stories they mentioned have originated from NASA. Now NASA has established their own web page to categorically deny these statements on the end of the world. It has gone to such extents that even the US government is having a website and mentioning that this will not happen.

Nibiru a mythical planet

This is the level of situation in the West even. But the people of the east are not that frightened about this situation", he said. The reason for this story for the belief of the people is also based on some other reasons apparently with some scientific touch.

"One reason is that collision of rock planet with earth. We called it planet X or Nibiru.

The story says that there is another planet called tenth planet line to the solar system which is far away and it comes once in a while and this time it will hit the earth or go close to the earth so the earth axis will be upside down or it will get destroyed", he added.

This is only a fabricated planet and that story started in mid 1990s by a woman saying that the world will end in 2003 with the planet Nibiru will come and hit the earth. In every two years this story that the world will come to an end with Nibiru hitting the earth in two or three years. But so far nothing happened.

"If there is such a planet even if it is dark, by now the orbits of Venus and Earth should have changed due its previous visits. But so far nothing has happened to the orbit of the earth or any other planet due to the influence of such planet.

This indicates that there is no such historical facts to prove the existence of a planet called Nibiru in the planetary system", the professor said.

"The second thing is that our infrared telescope systems are mounted all over the world to identify asteroids, which can identify an object in the size of a tennis ball.

If such a thing is there by now we should have observed it. It is a mythical planet and there is nothing to fear about it", the Professor said.

The scientist have described how the destruction of earth could happen due to an asteroid hitting the earth. "It has happened in the past; what they will now do is burn the path of the asteroid focusing solar lights. This is not man made and automatically if any object comes it would burn the part of the rock and when gas emits from the melted rock like a balloon it will be shift several millimetres from its path. That is enough to save the earth", he said.

There are other techniques developed like space tractors pulverisation and nuclear destruction etc.

Another fact relating to this story is the solar storm story. People believe that if there is a solar storm it will come to the earth and destroy it. Solar storm is not a very uncommon thing. Every eleven years we get a maximum number of sun storm or solar storm. It is a cycle. It has caused no major destruction and it will cause only a small disturbance to the human activities and nothing to destroy anything.

"What will happen is the sun is a very hot object and time to time it ejects some hot gasses, masses of hydrogen and helium.

Since they are very hot they are in plasma state. When these charged particles comes they will diverted to the northern and southern poles of the magnetic fields of the world and reduced very bad light called aurora this is in the upper atmosphere and the nitrogen and oxygen get interacted with high energy particles from the sun and emit light in the visible spectrum", the professor added.

This will affect slightly the radio FM frequencies. The maximum that will cause to us is the impact on the communication between the airplanes for a short period. On the other hand it will also affect the satellite communication also and the positioning of the satellite if such particles hit the satellite. There may be chances for the changes in the GPS system and for the power failures to occur in satellites.

"The biggest problem due to this is the discharging of electricity from the underground power cables due to the disturbances in the magnetic field of the earth. This will be created a few days after the stormy situation in the sun. For example, one Canadian city power supply was disrupted for eight hours due to such situation in 1991.

As a solution for this, one satellite called soper is made to adjust the activities of the electricity generators in accordance with the effects of the solar storms.

Therefore nothing is happening to the power generators due to this effect. Since these solar storms are occurred once in eleven years the next solar storm will occur in 2013 but not in 2012. In 2013 solar storm too the peak is less than the earlier one. So there is nothing to worry about it, the professor said.

"Another myth relating to this is that the planets will come in a straight line on December 21 and destruction can take place due to the breaking of continents. This is completely false and fabricated statement and planets will never come in a straight line on this date. Only three of them Mercury, Venus and Saturn will come in a straight line.

They are now closer to each other these days and if you go out in the night just before sunrise you can see these three planets. But not all planets, only three planets will come in a straight line," he said.

Even if all the planets come in a straight line which has happened in the past at several occasions, nothing will happen. Because the gravitational force caused by them are very much less than the influence of the movement of our planet and the tiding forces.

Change of Magnetic field

"The other thing they believe in is that the magnetic field will reverse due to this influence. Of course magnetic field is generated due to the movement of liquid particles inside the earth. The reversal of magnetic fields has happened in the past and it is reported that on average in every 250,000 years it happens in the past. Fortunately or unfortunately it has never happened in the past 750,000 years," the Professor said.

Now we can say if it happens gradually because it is a very slow process and every 100 years the compass will change by 2 degrees to 2.5 degrees. If you calculate it will take another 900 years for it to happen at the current rate. It had happened in the past and nothing has happened due to it.But it will never happen on a particular day and it is a very slow process. It takes hundreds of years. Even if something like that happens only the migrating birds from Europe to Sri Lanka in the winter only will lose their way. "Otherwise nothing will happen to the earth", he added.

Galactic alignment

Galactic alignment is that the earth will come to the centre of the galaxy and the galaxy will be aligned. Galactic alignment will take place every year on December 21 because of the tilt of the earth. People are also talking about some other things to support the idea of end of the world. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault located in Spitsbergen in Norway has also added fuel to the speculations.

This seed vault is located inside a mountain covered by snow and inside there is a laboratory in a bunker 120 metres inside the rock and 130 metres above sea level. This is powered by the coal taken from the same area and the refrigerators are kept at minus 13 centigrade. "Even if there is nuclear war or any catastrophic destruction, still you get snow in this area so that the temperature will be minus degrees.

They have kept 1.5 million distinct seed samples of agriculture crops and other organism inside it. This has nothing to do with the Doomsday and this is for experimental purposes to preserve these seeds and other organisms for the experimental purposes etc. A similar thing has been built by the Russians as well", the professor said."Therefore, there is nothing for the people to fear about the December 21 Doomsday and it will not happen and there is no scientific evidence to say that and subsequent three days of darkness will also not take place because there are no scientific evidence to prove that", the Professor said.