Why the World Didn't End Yesterday   
       
   NASA is so sure the world won't come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, they have   
   already released this news item for the day after.   
       
   Dec. 22, 2012: If you're reading this story, it means one thing:  The World   
   Didn't End Yesterday.   
       
   According to media reports of an ancient Maya prophecy, the world was supposed   
   to be destroyed on Dec. 21, 2012.   
       
   Apparently not.   
       
   "The whole thing was a misconception from the very beginning," says Dr. John   
   Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy.  "The Maya calendar did   
   not end on Dec. 21, 2012, and there were no Maya prophecies foretelling the   
   end of the world on that date."   
       
   The truth, says Carlson, is more interesting than fiction.   
       
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY_Gc1bF8ds   
   A new ScienceCast video explores what the Maya really thought about Dec. 21,   
   2012. Play it   
       
   Carlson is a hard-nosed scientist--a radio astronomer who earned his degree   
   studying distant galaxies.  He became interested in the 2012 phenomenon in the   
   early 70s  when he attended a meeting of the American Association for the   
   Advancement of Science and learned about the lost civilization of the Maya.   
       
   Where the rain forests of Mesoamerica now stand, a great civilization once   
   flourished. The people of Maya society built vast cities, ornate temples, and   
   towering pyramids. At its peak around 800 A.D., the population numbered more   
   than 2,000 people per square mile in the cities -- comparable to modern Los   
   Angeles County.  The Maya mastered astronomy, developed an elaborate written   
   language, and left behind exquisite artifacts.   
       
   Most compelling to Carlson was the Maya's expansive sense of time. "The times   
   Mayas used dwarf any time scales currently used by modern astronomers," he   
   explains. "According to our science, the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years   
   ago.   
       
   There are dates and time references in Mayan ruins that stretch back a billion   
   billion times farther than that."   
       
   The Maya Long Count Calendar was designed to keep track of such long   
   intervals. "It is the most complex calendar system ever developed by people   
   anywhere."   
       
   Written using modern typography, the Long Count Calendar resembles the   
   odometer in a car.  It's a modified base-20 system in which rotating digits   
   represent powers of 20 days. Because the digits rotate, the calendar can "roll   
   over" and repeat itself; this repetition is key to the 2012 phenomenon.   
       
   http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/06oct_maya/   
       
   What caused the fall of the Maya? Using NASA data, one archeologist believes   
   he has found the answer. According to Maya theology, the world was created   
   5125 years ago, on a date modern people would write "August 11, 3114  BC." At   
   the time, the Maya calendar looked like this: 13.0.0.0.0   
       
   On Dec. 21, 2012, it is exactly the same: 13.0.0.0.0   
       
   In the language of Maya scholars, 13 Bak'tuns or 13 times 144,000 days elapsed   
   between the two dates.   This was a significant interval in Maya theology,   
   but, stresses Carlson, not a destructive one.  None of the thousands of ruins,   
   tablets, and standing stones that archeologists have examined foretell an end   
   of the world.   
       
   Modern science agrees. NASA experts recently gathered in a Google hangout to   
   review their own findings with the public.   
       
   Don Yeomans, head of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, stated that no known   
   asteroids or comets are on a collision course with Earth.   
       
   Neither is a rogue planet coming to destroy us. "If there were anything out   
   there like a planet headed for Earth," said NASA astrobiologist David   
   Morrison, "it would already be [one of the] brightest objects in the sky.   
   Everybody on Earth could see it. You don't need to ask the government, just go   
   out and look.  It's not there."   
       
   Lika Guhathakurta, head of NASA's Living with a Star Program, says the sun is   
   not a threat, either. "The sun has been flaring for billions of years--long   
   before the Maya even existed--and it has never once destroyed the world."   
       
   "Right now the sun is approaching the maximum of its 11-year activity cycle,"   
   she added, "but this is the wimpiest solar cycle of the past 50 years. Reports   
   to the contrary are exaggerated."   
       
   What would an ancient Maya think about all this hoopla?  Carlson believes he   
   knows the answer.   
       
   "If we could time warp a Maya to the present day, they would say that Dec. 21,   
   2012, is a very important date.  Many Maya believed that their gods who   
   created the world 5125 years ago would return.  One of them in particular, an   
   enigmatic deity named Bolon Yokte' K'uh, would conduct old rites of passage,   
   to set space and time in order, and to regenerate the cosmos."  The world   
   would be refreshed, not destroyed.   
       
   "I have been waiting to experience this day for more than 30 years," he says.   
       
   For him, "experiencing Dec. 21, 2012" means visiting the Maya homeland in the   
   Yucatan, and thinking back to the height of Maya civilization, when ancient   
   humans contemplated expanses of time orders of magnitude beyond modern   
   horizons.   
       
   And, of course, appreciating the fact that The World Didn't End Yesterday.   
       
       
   Author: Dr. Tony Phillips| Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit:   
   Science@NASA   
       
       
   Regards,   
       
   Roger   
      
   --- D'Bridge 3.82   
    * Origin: NCS BBS (1:3828/7)