End of the world - Has the countdown begun?

By Lionel Wijesiri

In a little over two weeks, Year 2012 would draw to a close. But there is a hitch! In less than a week from now, we are coming up on a date which has made many people in the world worried. The date is December 21, 2012. This is the day that many people believe will either be the end of the world, the day of the Earth’s total destruction or the beginning of a rebirth, a sort of transformation.

A visual of the ‘End of the World’ as predicted by various people

A powerful group of people predicts - with an unbelievable degree of accuracy - that on December 21, 2012 at 11:11:11 GMT, a rare stellar explosion will herald the end of the world.

Five more days left for the D-day! That’s weird. With less than five days to go, can we really give credence to such “prophesy”, or should we all be laughing at such speculation? On December 22, all would be made clear.

However, this Doomsday scenario has done big rounds. Finally, the US space agency NASA also got concerned with thousands of messages from individuals who were worried about their lives. In a public space service announcement by NASA, Francis Reddy, of NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, went on record to say: “...astronomers can say with certainty that there is no threatening star close enough to hurt Earth.”

Origin

How did this “2012 phenomenon” originate? It was initiated by the Mayans who lived in Central America (in the geographical locations of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras) between AD 250 and 900.

Archaeologists studying this fascinating culture have deciphered their many calendars, but their longest period calendar, known as the ‘Long Count’, is what set alarm bells ringing. The Long Count calendar was created by the Mayans so that history could be chronicled and future events could be planned - not too dissimilar to the calendar on our computer, smartphone or iPhone.

It just so happens that this ‘Long Count’ calendar will end with its 13th Baktun on December 21, 2012. (A baktun in the ancient Mayan Long Count Calendar contains 144,000 days, which is equal to 394.26 tropical years). In short, this long-period calendar has a total cycle of 5,126 years. This is a departure from the other calendars the Mayans used at the time. Some calendars lasted less than a year, others lasted decades. Then, using remarkable ingenuity, the Mayans created the Long Count calendar that had a numerical foundation - almost like an ancient binary code.

A tablet depicting the Mayan Long Count Calendar

Why did the Mayans create the Long Count calendar?

The start date of the Long Count calendar was significant for the ancient Mayan people, because this was the date on which they believed the world - or at least the world that we presently live in – was born. Certainly, this date marked what they believed was the end of a previous world and the beginning of the current one. The question is, why does the Long Count start in 3,114 BC? Some archaeologists believe evidence suggests that something very significant may have occurred around this time, which affected the whole world on a global scale, and this may have prompted the Mayans to set the start of their Long Count calendar as they did.

What happened 5,200 years ago?

These archaeologists believe that an explanation of why the Mayan Long Count calendar began its countdown in 3,114 BC could be given by climate records. One proponent of the theory that something big and important happened to the Earth’s climate 5,200 years ago is Prof. Lonnie Thompson.

He is an American palaeo-climatologist and distinguished university professor in the School of Earth Sciences at the Ohio State University. He has achieved global recognition for his drilling and analysis of ice cores from mountain glaciers and ice caps. Thompson and his team have studied glacial ice all over the world. In researching issues relating to our current climate change problem, they have uncovered evidence that points to very significant climate change 5,200 years ago.

Plants preserved in the icy Peruvian mountains, the preserved body of a man found in the Alps in 1991, tree ring records in the British Isles, changes in the Saharan landscape from lush pastures to barren desert, low-level methane levels in ice core samples from both polar regions – all point to the same conclusion; a significant reduction in solar energy reaching the Earth, causing a period of much colder climate conditions. Prof. Thompson also warns that such changes could occur again, and that human interference with the Earth’s natural climatic cycles could upset the balance, with devastating consequences.

Baktun

Although the exact end-date of this Long Count cycle has recently been thrown into doubt, one thing most Mayan culture experts and Doomsday theorists agree on is that the calendar “ends” in December 2012. One thing they don’t agree on, however, is what this actually means. Doom sayers will try to convince you that the “end” of the Long Count, 13th Baktun is a Mayan prophesy of the “End of the World.”

However, according to someone who actually knows a great deal about the Mayan culture, the Mayans never made any such prophesy: “We have to be clear about this. There is no prophecy for 2012,” said Erik Velasquez, an etchings specialist at the National University of Mexico. The National Institute of Anthropological History in Mexico recently issued a statement: “The West’s messianic thinking has distorted the world view of ancient civilisations such as the Mayans.” According to the Institute, of the 15,000 glyphic texts found in the ancient ruins of the Mayan empire, only two mention 2012. Events after 2012 are also mentioned, so this “End of the World” isn’t as definite as the doom sayers might say.

Comets and asteroids

Calendars exist for keeping track of the passage of time, not for predicting the future. The Mayan astronomers were clever, and they developed a very complex calendar. Ancient calendars are interesting to historians, but of course they cannot match the ability we have today to keep track of time, or the precision of the calendars currently in use. The main point, however, is that calendars, whether contemporary or ancient, cannot predict the future of our planet or warn of things to happen on a specific date such as 2012.

NASA reports are based on facts gained from space exploration

The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids (as has the Moon, as you can see because it has no atmosphere to erode the impact craters), although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Today NASA astronomers are carrying out the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit our planet. They have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA website, so anyone can see that nothing is predicted to hit the Earth in 2012.

Are you still not sure? Then I suggest you go to the NASA home page, nasa.gov, you will see many stories that expose this hoax.

Scientists, both within NASA and outside, recognise that this hoax with its effort to frighten people is a distraction from more important scientific concerns, such as global warming and loss of biological diversity. We live in a world where there is freedom of speech, and that includes the freedom to lie. We should be glad there are no censors. However, if we will use common sense we can recognise the lies.

So, December 21 will come and go, just as any other day of the year, and at midnight on December 31, 2012, the Gregorian calendar will flip from the year 2012 to 2013.

Don’t worry! You will experience it yourself. Trust NASA. So, get ready for the celebration. It will be the start of a New Year for our own calendar. Nothing more! Nothing less!