End of the Mayan calendar

by Katie Gilbert

The pictures of the big round calendar all over the Internet say the same thing: the world is going to end.

The Mayans have predicted it. All of Earth's beings have just 11 months to live it up before the world crashes down around us.

This belief is based on the end date of the Mayan calendar: Dec. 21. However, that big round, stone calendar all over the Internet is actually the Aztec calendar.

The two are based on the same 260-day yearlong cycle but they have different markings for numerals, start dates and seasonal changes.

If the picture in our minds of the Mayan calendar is wrong, then what does that say about the rest of the myth?

Professor Ted Fortier gave his two cents to clarify where the press and public have gone wrong. He outlines three things that make this myth what it is: a myth.

1. The Mayans had to keep track of the weather and passage of time in order to ensure good crops annually. For this reason, they created their own calendar. It happens to end Dec. 21, 2012 not because that is the date the world ends, but because the calendar had to end on some date.

The Mayans were a strong culture that lasted about 500 years but then their culture collapsed for an unknown reason. With their collapse inevitably came the end of their counting days.

"Just like a blackberry [calendar] can't go on forever, neither could theirs," said Fortier.

2. The belief that the end of the calendar is the end of the world is a western conception.

According to indigenous cultures, the end of the Mayan culture dates "the last of the worlds," which is more of a shift than an endpoint.

"This is the end of a cycle in which the Westerners have dominance. In this next world it is believed that the brown people are going to rise up and reclaim the earth," Fortier said.

This lends one truth to the myth. The end of the world may well be the end of the world—the end of white supremacy that is.

3. Then again the Mayan end may not be an end date at all Fortier explained.

The Mayans saw time as a circular, instead of linear, path with a distinct start and end date. Thus Dec. 21 may be just the day that time starts all over again. We will see the light of Dec. 22, but for the Mayans it will be next day one, year one.

This is the same reason other culture aren't as concerned with deadlines and schedules as the Western world is.

Fortier sees the Mayan calendar myth as an insight into the Western mind and an interesting phenomenon.

"People predict the end of the world often," Fortier said, "but I think it is really interesting that people are actually looking back at indigenous wisdom. The problem is that when you look at indigenous cultures without background knowledge you can misinterpret it.

Fortier hopes the apocalypse hubbub will realign western thought.

"One of my hopes that maybe it will be time that we switch perspectives on the world and start looking at the earth and the end of the world as something more precious than we have been dealing with," Fortier said. "And maybe it is time to look to the first people of the earth to that."

 

The galactic alignment

by Bianca Sewake

According to the History Channel (which has become the authority on apocalyptic theory and aliens), the Galactic Alignment "is when the sun appears to rise in a direct line with the center of the Milky Way galaxy." With the sun, Earth too will align at the center. When this happens, it is predicted that this alignment will "trigger unspeakable chaos."

This myth sprang up from observations made by the ancient Mayans, who on their calendar had predicted the coming of this alignment and referred to it as "the dark rift." Other civilizations have also predicted that on this particular day, a series of disastrous events could take place, which could explain the reason the Mayans ended their calendar on Dec. 21: to warn future generations.

As sophisticated and advanced as the Mayans were in astrological calculations, there is an obvious gap between science then and now.

"The physical universe is very different from the universe that was imagined by the astrologists," said astronomy professor Joanne Hughes Clark. "People who study astrology and are very into the influences that planets, stars and the moons might have on human effects. They can't get out of the mind-set that these alignments that they've grown up believing have influences on other people are really chance alignments," she said.

Misunderstandings have turned the galactic alignment prediction into something much bigger than it ever was. According to experts, the Mayans probably weren't even predicting anything to happen on Dec. 21.

"This is what the Dec. 21 nonsense came from: The word for the most significant digit in the Mayan long count is called the baktun, when the calendar rolls over to 0,0,0,0 in December. And that's why it's currently popular because people like to cling to the mystical aspects of this," said astronomy professor Jeffrey Brown.

As far as the planet aligning in the center of the Milky Way, Clark said, "It's not going to happen." Earth will continue to remain within the Milky Way galaxy as it always has been, but will in no way find itself at the center of it, as the theory claims.

If it were possible, it would pose a threat.

"There's probably a large black hole at the center of the galaxy. However, we are not going to end up anywhere near the center. It's gravitationally impossible," Clark said.

Earth is thankfully safe from drifting to the center of the galaxy to meet its impending doom.

"You can't get there from here. You just can't. It is less likely you'll end up there than if you start with a shovel in your backyard digging a hole, which will end up in the center of the earth. It's just not going to happen," Brown said.

The claim by apocalyptic theorists that there will be alignments to mark the end of world is not likely and doesn't have anything to back it up, besides beliefs in mystical hubbub.

"There's nothing happening in terms of celestial phenomenon in December. There's no special angles, there's no conjunctions, no oppositions, no transits, no eclipses, no nothing that's happening in December. What is happening is this coincidence between this several hundred-year-old calendar and it wrapping around because of the way it's constructed that just happens to occur," Brown said.

However, there will always be a group of people who believe the theory.

"There's always apocalyptic cults that arise when you have the turn of a millennium in somebody's calendar, but you have to realize that all of these calendars are just arbitrary. People just pick a specific date and start the calendar," Clark said.

These apocalyptic cults and theorists can influence people to think a certain way, which poses a problem.

"There's a spin they put on [these theories]. It's difficult to understand the motives of these people," Brown said."There's interesting astronomical events that are going to happen this year, but it has nothing to do with [doomsday]."

For now, the only purpose the story serves is to terrify children.

"It can be dangerous because this one is absolutely not true," Clark said. "It spreads fear. It spreads panic. It makes little kids worry."

 

The coming of the anti-Christ

by Katie Gilbert

It is the New Year and some believe it will be the last we will experience in history.

The various myths of the earth's possible demise have been labeled "the 2012 phenomenon" as there are more than four theories floating around of how we will all die this year.

However, the end of the world has been predicted many times before.

Nostradamus has been predicting tragedies for centuries and now he is being joined by the various prophecies of Harry Camping and others. Much like the Y2K theory, however, it doesn't look like any of them will pan out.

Joining these other theories is Rapture or "Judgment Day," vying for attention among other top myth contenders.

It doesn't like any myth is going to cross the finish line now or anytime soon though.

In the case of the Rapture, the myth doesn't align with sources.

As the story goes, the anti-Christ is going to descend upon us and condemn all the atheists to eternal hell. But then again this was supposed to happen last May as well.

In some versions of this myth, the anti-Christ is going to be Obama. In others it will be a Jew, Arab or Muslim man. The only commonality is that whoever this being is, they will be someone we already know and we will be surprised by their identity.

According to supporters of the myth, everyone who accepts Jesus as their Lord and Savior will be saved and the rest will fall prey to the anti-Christ.

Seattle University theology professor Wes Howard-Brook disagrees. As he puts it, "everything is being taken out of context."

He explained that this myth is a 19th century concept from a branch of Christian speculation called millennialism. He summed up their speculations as "a set of predictions" and nothing more.

He went on to explain that the term "anti-Christ" used to refer to a group of people who were, simply put, disbelievers. In other words, followers of the anti-Christ were not dark evil beings that were bent on the Earth's destruction.

In reference to the myth, Howard-Brook sums it up as rumor that has gone too far. He blames the misconception on how people are reading the Bible.

He explained that people are reading too much into the holy book. They are taking the words of God out of context.

"The best way to understand the Bible," Howard-Brook said, "is to read it in its actual context. It's very dangerous to take things out of context."

Maybe then the endless round of catastrophic prediction will be put to an end.

 

Magnetic reversals and supervolcanoes

by Grace Stetson

Many of the end-of-the-world alarmist fears focus on geophysical disaster, whether by earthquakes, floods or tsunamis. While the entertainment industry has cashed in on these fears, it is difficult to understand the logic behind many of these arguments.

A popular theory on the impending demise of Earth is magnetic reversal.

According to the British Geological Survey, magnetic reversals are the process of the north and south magnetic poles flipping and changing places. Although this may seem frightening, environmental science professor Davin Henrikson says that there is truly no danger in magnetic reversals.

"There are technologies that depend on the north and south, [like] a basic compass," said Henrikson. "But if the poles were to flip tomorrow, it's understood that physically, we would feel nothing, but our compasses would be pointing backwards."

Henrikson said that the poles move constantly, but that no effects have truly been seen. It's not atypical for the Earth to shift its poles.

"We see excursions [where the magnetic field regenerates itself with the same polarity] occurring now, where the magnetic north pole is moving about 40 miles per year," he said.

Physics department chair and professor David Boness said that it really isn't predictable as to when the next polarity reversal will occur.

"On some websites about 2012, there's a claim that the Earth will flip-flop its spin, but that's not correct," he said. "The earth cannot suddenly change its rotational pole unless something massive hits it."

Yet, as Boness explained, geomagnetic reversal could conceivably lead to a few more cases of cancer during the reversal process due to less solar wind screening.

"Life itself, and most species, have made it through many reversals," he said.

An even more frightening doomsday scenario are the threat of supervolcanoes. Unlike regular volcanoes, supervolcanoes are enormous regions with huge pools of magma underground.

"Supervolcanoes can be tied into extinctions," Henrikson said. "The big one that is being worried about now is in Sumatra."

The supervolcano Henrikson is referring to is Lake Toba, which exploded 75,000 years ago and was the largest known explosive eruption anywhere on Earth in the last 25 million years.

"When Toba erupted 74,000 years ago, it was more than 1,000 times as powerful as Mount St. Helens going off in 1980," Boness said.

The eruption of Toba had blast and climatic effects that almost made humans extinct.

"It obviously didn't kill everyone, but according to geneticists, only a few thousand people survived," Boness said.

An even closer threat to the United States? Yellowstone National Park, where the surface has been bulging upwards measurably more each year, leading scientists to believe that the supervolcano will eventually blast.

"The amount of material put up into the air [if Yellowstone was to blow now] would affect worldwide climate," said Henrikson. "We're talking about complete devastation all the way to the Great Lakes."

Yet while the changes have become more apparent in the past few decades, there is no predicting when Yellowstone or any other supervolcano will erupt. According to Henrikson, the times predicted for these disasters to occur are just that: predictions.

"No one can predict the future," he said. "When we are given those estimates, they are just estimates. No one knows exactly what will happen."

As to whether either of the professors believes that the world will end? Hardly.

"You can check in with me on Jan. 1, 2013," said Boness.