ROBERT J.R. GRAHAM: Mesoamerican Long Count calendar

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Sunday, 7 September 2014

7 Failed Doomsday Theories

2012 – 7 Reasons Why The World Ends On December 21, 2012

by: Gerard Le Flamand

squared circle – mayan calendar (Photo credit: Thom Watson)

Scientists around the globe agree and are unanimously predicting that life on Earth as we know it could end on or around December 21st, 2012. Amongst them, several believe that it will be invoked by humans, but the majority is convinced that nature in a universal way will be the cause of the dramatic changes. Several religious leaders worldwide however are stating that it will be an act of God and that Judgment Day will come upon us at that time. Whichever theory you tend to follow, it is remarkable for once that all visions are on the same wavelength as to the impact on mother Earth. These are seven reasons why scientists and non-fiction predictors are convinced that the world as we know it will end on December 21st, 2012:

Reason #1 – The End of the Mayan Calendar:

The oldest and most researched source of the end was derived from the Mayan Calendar that indicates that times end on this day. The Mayans are considered a highly intelligent race who must have possessed far developed technologies which to date nobody alive can even start to comprehend. They were also a bloodthirsty race and some of their key characteristics involved building highly accurate astrological equipment out of stone and sacrificing virgins.

Not only did they live in an era immediately before the previous major global event, about 11,500 years ago, they were able to calculate the lunar moon as 329.53020days, only 34 seconds off.

The Mayan calendar has set the end of the Earth on December 21, 2012. Their prediction is to be taken serious as at that time, the accuracy of calculating the lunar moon so close, the likelihood of their calculation being accurate yet again is extremely high.

Reason #2 – Sun Storms:

The media in general does not like to cover topics that are hard to explain, except for some of the supernatural channels that are rarely visited by the self-claimed realistic viewers. However scientists are on the ball when it comes to observing the sun and its activities with the relatively high-tech equipment we know today. And they have made a mesmerizing discovery when it comes to its activities lately. Few years ago, the sun dramatically increased its radiation energy to levels much higher than registered in a long time. Its behavior definitively is cyclic and there is a clear 11+ year recurring cycle. Now, a couple of years after the last serious activity increase, 2012 announces the height of the 11+ years cycle announcing much higher activity than already measured in recent years.

Since the recent storms already accounted for knocking out power grids and destroying satellites, there is a very clear indication that the next round in 2012 will be of previously unseen magnitude impacting our planet and the technology in orbit of it. Calculations suggest it will reach its deadly peak sometime late in 2012.

Reason #3 – The European Atom Smasher:

cern/atlas (Photo credit: silviaN)

European Scientists are finalizing the construction of the world’s largest particle accelerator ever conceived. To describe it in simplified terms, it consists of a 27 kilometers tunnel designed to smash atoms together in the anticipation of finding out what makes the Universe tick.

With reason, this mega-project has already caused serious concerns where several renowned scientists have expressed their deep concerns about flipping the ON-switch. Amongst their predictions of all kinds of lethal events, mini black holes are probable to be created. Chances are that the first mega-experiment with this latest invention may turn the globe into a matter no bigger than the size of a basketball.

Oh that first experiment is scheduled for 2012.

Reason #4 – According to Religion

Several religions are giving us similar indications and predictions based on, amongst others, interpretations of the Bible, the I Ching (also known as the Chinese Book of Changes), as well as various sections within the Hindu teachings. All of them indicate the 21st of December 2012 as the end of the world. The Bible reveals this as the date of the Armageddon or the final battle between good and evil as well as Judgment Day.

It is expected that in the coming time as we approach D-Day, that more religious figures will speak up and lift the secrecy well kept by institutes such as the Vatican.

Reason #5 – Most Powerful Volcano on Earth

The largest volcano on earth is located underneath the Yellowstone National Park in the United States which is famous for its thermal springs and Old Faithful geyser. This fact has gotten geological experts very nervous and the reason for sleepless nights ever since it was linked to the upcoming events in 2012. The Yellowstone volcano has a pattern of erupting approximately every 650,000. Currently we are many years past the due date for a new major eruption, which in itself is rather bizarre since the cyclic events of the planet are usually pretty accurate and thus predictable. An new explosion will fill the atmosphere with ash, blocking the sun and plunging the Earth into a frozen winter that could last up to 15,000 years. Such a new Ice Age is due when looking at the usual cycles of Earth. And what is most alarming is that the pressure under the Yellowstone is building steadily, and geologists have set 2012 as a likely date for the big bang.

Reason #6 – The Physicists

Physicists at Berkeley University in the United States who use super computers to complete their highly complex formulas and calculations have been crunching the numbers and they’ve concluded as well that the Earth is well overdue for a major catastrophic event. Their calculations prove beyond any doubt that if and when this catastrophe happens, it will impact every living being on Earth and basically wipe away entire species as we know them today. What is really scary about their calculations is the fact that they are pretty much convinced, with a certainty of 99% that all of this will come down very soon and that the best guess date is 2012.

Reason #7 – Polar Shift

The magnetic field surrounding Earth shields us from most of the suns radiation. This is generally know, yet what is less known is that the magnetic poles we call north and south have a habit of swapping places approximately every 750,000 years. Right the cycle is overdue by about 30,000 years.

Furthermore, scientific research has shown that the poles are drifting apart roughly 20 to 30 kilometers every year, which is much faster than ever before, and which points to a pole-shift being very nearby. During the process of a pole shift, the magnetic field is disrupted until it disappears. Sometimes it is absent for up to 100 years. As a result, there is sufficient UV radiation in the air to crisp your skin in seconds, killing everything it touches.

Source

Why the World Won’t End in 2012

Beyond 2012: Why the World Won’t End

10 Popular 2012 Doomsday Theory Fails

WMEAC’s Top Apocalyptic Scenarios

NASA is pretty confident the world will not end Friday

Mayan Apocalypse: Panic as Fears Grow the World Will End December 21 When Mayan Calendar Stops

‘Doomsday’ rumours quashed by NASA

NASA Debunks 2012 Doomsday, Mayan Calendar Theories

How the World Will End (Pt. 3)

Mayan end-of-world rumors: Why people think the World will End today?

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The post 7 Failed Doomsday Theories appeared first on Robert JR Graham.

Sunday, 24 August 2014

The 2012 phenomenon

2012 phenomenon

The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012,^[1]^[2]^[3] which is said to be the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mayan Long Count calendar. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae related to this date have been proposed.

A New Age interpretation of this transition posits that during this time Earth and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era.^[4] Others suggest that the 2012 date marks the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios posited for the end of the world include the Earth’s collision with a passing planet (often referred to as “Nibiru“) or black hole, or the arrival of the next solar maximum.

Scholars from various disciplines have dismissed the idea of catastrophe in 2012. Mainstream Mayanist scholars state that predictions of impending doom are not found in any of the existing classic Maya accounts, and that the idea that the Long Count calendar “ends” in 2012 misrepresents Maya history.^[3]^[5] The modern Maya do not consider the date significant, and the classical sources on the subject are scarce and contradictory, suggesting that there was little if any universal agreement among them about what, if anything, the date might mean.^[6]

Additionally, astronomers and other scientists have rejected the apocalyptic forecasts as pseudoscience, stating that the anticipated events are contradicted by simple astronomical observations.^[7] NASA has compared fears about 2012 to those about the Y2K bug in the late 1990s, suggesting that an adequate analysis should preclude fears of disaster.^[7] None of the proposed alignments or formulae have been accepted by mainstream scholarship.

The Long Count and apocalypse

There is a strong tradition of “world ages” in Maya literature, but unfortunately the record has been distorted, leaving several possibilities open.^[12] According to the Popol Vuh , a book compiling details of creation accounts known to the K’iche’ Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world.^[13] The Popol Vuh describes the first three creations that the gods failed in making and the creation of the successful fourth world where men were placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous world ended after 13 b’ak’tuns. The Long Count’s “zero date” was set at a point in the past marking the end of the previous world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to either 11 or 13 August 3114 BC in the Proleptic Gregorian calendar, depending on the formula used.^[14]^[a] This means that it too will have reached the end of its thirteenth b’ak’tun, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, on either December 21 or December 23, 2012.^[1]^[a]

In 1957, Mayanist and astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson wrote that “the completion of a Great Period of 13 b’ak’tuns would have been of the utmost significance to the Maya”.^[15] In 1966, Michael D. Coe more ambitiously asserted in The Maya that “there is a suggestion … that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the thirteenth [b'ak'tun]. Thus … our present universe [would] be annihilated [in December 2012]^[b] when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion.”^[16] In 1988, anthropologist Munro S. Edmonson added that “there appears to be a strong likelihood that the oral calendar, like the year calendar, was motivated by a long-range astronomical prediction, one that made a correct solsticial forecast 2,367 years into the future in 355 B.C.” (sic)^[17]

Timewave zero and the I Ching

“Timewave zero” is a numerological formula that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of “novelty”, defined as increase in the universe‘s interconnectedness, or organised complexity,^[66] over time. According to Terence McKenna, who conceived the idea over several years in the early-mid 1970s while using psilocybin mushrooms and DMT, the universe has a teleological attractor at the end of time that increases interconnectedness, eventually reaching a singularity of infinite complexity in 2012, at which point anything and everything imaginable will occur simultaneously.^[66]

McKenna expressed “novelty” in a computer program, which purportedly produces a waveform known as timewave zero or the timewave. Based on McKenna’s interpretation of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching,^[45] the graph appears to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity’s biological and cultural evolution. He believed the events of any given time are recursively related to the events of other times, and chose the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the basis for calculating his end date in November 2012. When he later discovered this date’s proximity to the end of the 13^th b’ak’tun of the Maya calendar, he revised his hypothesis so that the two dates matched.^[67]

New Age beliefs

Many assertions about 2012 are a form of Mayanism,^[c] a non-codified collection of New Age beliefs about ancient Maya wisdom and spirituality. In 1975, the ending of the b’ak’tun cycle became the subject of speculation by several New Age authors, who believe it will correspond to a global “consciousness shift”. In his book Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth Age of Consciousness, Frank Waters tied Coe’s December 24, 2011^[b] date to astrology and the prophecies of the Hopi,^[43] while both José Argüelles and Terence McKenna (in their books The Transformative Vision^[44] and The Invisible Landscape^[45]^[46] respectively) discussed the significance of the year 2012, but not a specific day. In 1987, the year in which he held the Harmonic Convergence event, Arguelles settled on the date of December 21 in his book The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology,^[47]^[48] in which he claimed on that date the Earth would pass through a great “beam” from the centre of the Galaxy, and that the Maya aligned their calendar in anticipation of that event.^[49]

Established themes found in 2012 literature include “suspicion towards mainstream Western culture”, the idea of spiritual evolution, and the possibility of leading the world into the New Age by individual example or by a group’s joined consciousness. The general intent of this literature is not to warn of impending doom but “to foster counter-cultural sympathies and eventually socio-political and ‘spiritual’ activism”.^[2] Aveni, who has studied New Age and SETI communities, describes 2012 narratives as the product of a “disconnected” society: “Unable to find spiritual answers to life’s big questions within ourselves, we turn outward to imagined entities that lie far off in space or time—entities that just might be in possession of superior knowledge.”^[50]

Doomsday theories

A far more apocalyptic view of the year 2012 has also spread in various media. This view has been promulgated by many fringe or hoax sites on the internet, particularly on YouTube,^[73] and by the History Channel, with such series as Decoding the Past (2005–2007) based loosely on John Major Jenkins’ theories. However, Jenkins has berated the fact that a science fiction writer co-authored the documentary and went on to characterize it as “45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism”.^[74] The show proved popular and was followed by many sequels: 2012, End of Days (2006), Last Days on Earth (2006), Seven Signs of the Apocalypse (2007), and Nostradamus 2012 (2008).^[75] The Discovery Channel also aired 2012 Apocalypse in 2009, suggesting that massive solar storms, magnetic pole reversal, earthquakes, supervolcanoes, and other drastic natural events may occur in 2012.^[76] Author Graham Hancock, in his book Fingerprints of the Gods , interpreted Coe’s remarks in Breaking the Maya Code^[77] as evidence for the prophecy of a global cataclysm.^[78] Evangelical Christian minister John Hagee has also suggested in his book Can America Survive? 10 Prophetic Signs That We Are The Terminal Generation that Earth may suffer a doomsday scenario on 12/12/12 (December 12, 2012). This book was publicly endorsed by conservative media personality Glenn Beck.^[79]