Everybody ready for the "Mayan Apocalypse"?

POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 25, 2012 00:54
VIEWED: 4389
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NIKI2

Wednesday, December 12, 2012 5:54 PM

Not scientists. It's only ten days away now...and their efforts to provide actual facts haven't deterred some from still believing in it.

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If you want to see a roomful of people roll their eyes, just walk into a gathering of astronomers — or experts on ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, for that matter — and shout, “Mayan apocalypse!” For years now, the idea that the earth will be destroyed in a terrible cataclysm on Dec. 21, 2012, has been bouncing around the Internet and showing up in articles, books and even movies. It’s been the inspiration for get-rich-quick schemes. It’s like Y2K all over again, but at least that episode of end-of-world hysteria was reality-based.

The 2012 apocalypse, by contrast, is just plain nutty. An asteroid is not about to hit the earth. Neither is an imaginary planet called Nibiru. Our world isn’t going to be abruptly flipped upside down like a burger on a griddle. The earth won’t be plunged into a three-day blackout. And contrary to what you’ve been hearing, Maya astrologers never said any of that stuff would actually happen. The idea is so preposterous that a Web search for “Mayan apocalypse” turns up as many spoofs as it does serious discussions.

The truth is a lot more prosaic than what the tinfoil-hat crowd would have you believe. Yes, the Maya had what’s known as a Long Count calendar, and yes, that calendar ends on Dec. 21, 2012. But the delightful thing about calendars — including the one the Maya used — is that they always start over again from zero. Just because we have a record of the Long Count equivalent of last year doesn’t mean the Maya weren’t busy working on next year’s. As for Nibiru, well, never mind. That one was borrowed from the ancient Sumerians, and the original prediction was that we’d get clobbered by the free-range planet in 2003. You might have noticed that that didn’t happen, so the date of arrival was moved up to 2012 to coincide with the Maya silliness. An apocalyptic twofer!More at http://science.time.com/2012/12/12/nasa-versus-the-mayan-madness/

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