2012 Doomsday prediction - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological

Eschatology

Eschatology is a part of theology, philosophy, and futurology concerned with what are believed to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world or the World to Come...

beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012. This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar

Mesoamerican Long Count calendar

The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal and base-18 calendar used by several Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is sometimes known as the Maya Long Count calendar...

. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae related to this date have been proposed.

A New Age

New Age

The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...

interpretation of this transition postulates that this date marks the start of time in which Earth and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation

Spiritual transformation

Spiritual transformation has a variety of overlapping meanings that carry distinct connotations:*In psychology, spiritual transformation is understood within the context of an individual's meaning system, especially in relation to concepts of the sacred or ultimate concern...

, and that 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era. Others suggest that the 2012 date marks the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios suggested for the end of the world include the arrival of the next solar maximum

Solar maximum

Solar maximum or solar max is the period of greatest solar activity in the solar cycle of the sun. During solar maximum, sunspots appear....

, or Earth's collision with a black hole

Black hole

A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...

, passing asteroid

Near-Earth object

A near-Earth object is a Solar System object whose orbit brings it into close proximity with the Earth. All NEOs have a perihelion distance less than 1.3 AU. They include a few thousand near-Earth asteroids , near-Earth comets, a number of solar-orbiting spacecraft, and meteoroids large enough to...

or a planet called "Nibiru

Nibiru collision

The Nibiru collision is a supposed disastrous encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object which certain groups believe will take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Planet X or Nibiru...

".

Scholars from various disciplines have dismissed the idea of such cataclysmic events occurring in 2012. Professional Mayanist

Mayanist

A Mayanist is a scholar specialising in research and study of the Central American pre-Columbian Maya civilization. This discipline should not be confused with Mayanism, a collection of New Age beliefs about the ancient Maya....

scholars state that predictions of impending doom are not found in any of the extant classic Maya accounts

Maya codices

Maya codices are folding books stemming from the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, written in Maya hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican bark cloth, made from the inner bark of certain trees, the main being the wild fig tree or Amate . Paper, generally known by the Nahuatl word amatl, was named by...

, and that the idea that the Long Count calendar "ends" in 2012 misrepresents Maya history and culture. Astronomers and other scientists have rejected the proposed events as pseudoscience

Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...

, stating that they are contradicted by simple astronomical observations.

Mesoamerican Long Count calendar

December 2012 marks the conclusion of a b'ak'tun—a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar which was used in Central America

Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...

prior to the arrival of Europeans. Though the Long Count was most likely invented by the Olmec

Olmec

The Olmec were the first major Pre-Columbian civilization in Mexico. They lived in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco....

, it has become closely associated with the Maya civilization

Maya civilization

The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...

, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD. The writing system

Maya script

The Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs or Maya hieroglyphs, is the writing system of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica, presently the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered...

of the classic Maya has been substantially deciphered, meaning that a corpus

Text corpus

In linguistics, a corpus or text corpus is a large and structured set of texts...

of their written and inscribed material has survived from before the European conquest

Spanish conquest of Yucatán

The Spanish conquest of Yucatán was the campaign undertaken by the Spanish conquistadores against the Late Postclassic Maya states and polities, particularly in the northern and central Yucatán Peninsula but also involving the Maya polities of the Guatemalan highlands region...

.

Unlike the 52-year Calendar Round

Calendar round

In the Mesoamerican calendars, calendar round dates are composed by interlacing the dates of a 260-day period with dates from a 365-day period...

still used today among the Maya, the Long Count was linear rather than cyclical, and kept time roughly in units of 20: 20 days made a uinal, 18 uinals (360 days) made a tun, 20 tuns made a k'atun, and 20 k'atuns (144,000 days or roughly 394 years) made up a b'ak'tun. Thus, the Mayan date of 8.3.2.10.15 represents 8 b'ak'tuns, 3 k'atuns, 2 tuns, 10 uinals and 15 days.

Apocalypse

There is a strong tradition of "world ages" in Mayan literature, but the record has been distorted, leaving several possibilities open to interpretation. According to the Popol Vuh
Popol Vuh
Popol Vuh is a corpus of mytho-historical narratives of the Post Classic Quiché kingdom in Guatemala's western highlands. The title translates as "Book of the Community," "Book of Counsel," or more literally as "Book of the People."...

, a compilation of the creation accounts of the K'iche' Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world. The Popol Vuh describes the gods first creating three failed worlds, followed by a successful fourth world in which humanity was placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous world ended after 13 b'ak'tuns, or roughly 5,125 years. The Long Count's "zero date" was set at a point in the past marking the end of the third world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to 11 August 3114 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar

Proleptic Gregorian calendar

The proleptic Gregorian calendar is produced by extending the Gregorian calendar backward to dates preceding its official introduction in 1582.-Usage:...

. This means that the fourth world will also have reached the end of its 13th b'ak'tun, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, on December 21, 2012. 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". In 1966, Michael D. Coe

Michael D. Coe

Michael D. Coe is an American archaeologist, anthropologist, epigrapher and author. Primarily known for his research in the field of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican studies , Coe has also made extensive investigations across a variety...

wrote 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 13th [b'ak'tun]. Thus ... our present universe [would] be annihilated [in December 2012] when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion."

Objections

Coe's interpretation was repeated by other scholars through the early 1990s. In contrast, later researchers said that, while the end of the 13th b'ak'tun would perhaps be a cause for celebration, it did not mark the end of the calendar. "There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012," said Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone. "The notion of a "Great Cycle" coming to an end is completely a modern invention." In 1990, Mayanist scholars Linda Schele

Linda Schele

Linda Schele was an expert in the field of Maya epigraphy and iconography. She played an invaluable role in the decipherment of much of the Maya hieroglyphics. She produced a massive volume of drawings of stelae and inscriptions, which, following her wishes, are free for use to scholars...

and David Freidel

David Freidel

David A. Freidel is an American academic archaeologist, Mayanist scholar and author. He is best known for the books he co-authored with Linda Schele, Maya Cosmos and Forest of Kings. Friedel received both his B. A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University. He is married to Carolyn...

argued that the Maya "did not conceive this to be the end of creation, as many have suggested." Susan Milbrath, curator

Curator

A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...

of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History

Florida Museum of Natural History

The Florida Museum of Natural History is the State of Florida's official state-sponsored and chartered natural history museum. Its main facilities are located on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida....

, stated that "We have no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end" in 2012. "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle," said Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies. The 2012 phenomenon, she said, is "a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in." "There will be another cycle," said E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University

Tulane University

Tulane University is a private, nonsectarian research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States...

Middle American Research Institute. "We know the Maya thought there was one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea of another one after this."

Prior associations

The European association of the Maya with eschatology

Eschatology

dates back to the time of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

, who was compiling a work called Libro de las profecias during the voyage in 1502 when he first heard about the "Maia" on Guanaja, an island off the north coast of Honduras. Influenced by the writings of Bishop Pierre d'Ailly

Pierre d'Ailly

Pierre d'Ailly was a French theologian, astrologer, and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church....

, Columbus believed that his discovery of "most distant" lands (and, by extension, the Maya themselves) was prophesied and would bring about the Apocalypse

Apocalypse

An Apocalypse is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e. the veil to be lifted. The Apocalypse of John is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament...

. End-times fears were widespread during the early years of the Spanish Conquest as the result of popular astrological

Astrology

Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...

predictions in Europe of a second Great Flood for the year 1524.

In the early 1900s, German scholar Ernst Förstemann

Ernst Förstemann

Ernst Wilhelm Förstemann was a German historian, archivist and librarian, director of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden...

interpreted the last page of the Dresden Codex

Dresden Codex

The Dresden Codex, also known as the Codex Dresdensis, is a pre-Columbian Maya book of the eleventh or twelfth century of the Yucatecan Maya in Chichén Itzá. The Maya codex is believed to be a copy of an original text of some three or four hundred years earlier...

as a representation of the end of the world in a cataclysmic flood. He made reference to “destruction of the world,” “apocalypse,” and “the end of the world”, though he made no reference to the 13th baktun or 2012 and it was not clear that he was referring to a future event. His ideas were repeated by archaeologist Sylvanus Morley

Sylvanus Morley

Sylvanus Griswold Morley was an American archaeologist, epigrapher, and Mayanist scholar who made significant contributions toward the study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early twentieth century....

, who directly paraphrased Förstemann and added his own embellishments, writing "Finally, on the last page of the manuscript, is depicted the Destruction of the World… Here, indeed, is portrayed with a graphic touch the final all-engulfing cataclysm" in the form of a Great Flood. These comments were later repeated in Morley's book The Ancient Maya, the first edition of which was published in 1946.

Mayan references to b'ak'tun 13

It is not certain what significance the classic Maya give to the 13th b'ak'tun. Most classic Maya inscriptions are strictly historical and do not make any prophetic declarations. One item in the Mayan classical corpus, however, does mention the end of the 13th b'ak'tun: Tortuguero Monument 6.

Tortuguero

The Tortuguero

Tortuguero (Maya site)

Tortuguero is an archaeological site in southernmost Tabasco, Mexico which supported a Maya city during the Classic period. The site is noteworthy for its use of the B'aakal emblem glyph also found as the primary title at Palenque...

site, which lies in southernmost Tabasco

Tabasco

Tabasco officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Tabasco is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 17 municipalities and its capital city is Villahermosa....

, Mexico, dates from the 7th century AD and consists of a series of inscriptions mostly in honor of the contemporary ruler Bahlam Ajaw. One inscription, known as Tortuguero Monument 6, is the only inscription known to refer to b'ak'tun 13. It has been partially defaced; Sven Gronemeyer and Barbara MacLeod have given this translation:

tzuhtzjo:m uy-u:xlaju:n pik

chan ajaw u:x uni:w

uhto:m il[?]

ye'ni/ye:n bolon yokte

ta chak joyaj

It will be completed the 13th b'ak'tun.

It is 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in

and it will happen a 'seeing'[?].

It is the display of B'olon-Yokte

in a great "investiture".

Very little is known about the god Bolon Yokte'. According to an article by Mayanists Markus Eberl and Christian Prager in British Anthropological Reports, his name is composed of the elements "nine", 'OK-te' (the meaning of which is unknown), and "god". Confusion in classical period inscriptions suggests that the name was already ancient and unfamiliar to contemporary scribes. He also appears in inscriptions from Palenque

Palenque

Palenque was a Maya city state in southern Mexico that flourished in the 7th century. The Palenque ruins date back to 100 BC to its fall around 800 AD...

, Usumacinta, and La Mar as a god of war, conflict, and the underworld. In one stele

Maya stelae

Maya stelae are monuments that were fashioned by the Maya civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. They consist of tall sculpted stone shafts and are often associated with low circular stones referred to as altars, although their actual function is uncertain. Many stelae were sculpted in low relief,...

he is portrayed with a rope tied around his neck, and in another with an incense bag, together signifying a sacrifice to end a cycle of years.

Based on observations of modern Mayan rituals, Gronemeyer and MacLeod claim that the stele refers to a celebration in which a person portraying Bolon Yokte' K'uh was wrapped in ceremonial garments and paraded around the site. They note that the association of Bolon Yokte' K'uh with b'ak'tun 13 appears to be so important on this inscription that it supersedes more typical celebrations, such as "erection of stelae, scattering of incense" and so forth. They furthermore assert that this event was indeed planned for 2012, and not the 7th century. However, Mayanist scholar Stephen Houston

Stephen D. Houston

Stephen Douglas Houston is an American anthropologist, archaeologist, epigrapher and Mayanist scholar, who is particularly renowned for his research into the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica...

contests this view, arguing that future dates on Mayan inscriptions were simply meant to draw parallels with contemporary events, and that the words on the stela describe a contemporary rather than a future scene.

Dates beyond b'ak'tun 13

Mayan inscriptions occasionally mention predicted future events or commemorations that would occur on dates far beyond the completion of the 13th b'ak'tun. Most of these are in the form of "distance dates": Long Count dates given together with an additional number, known as a Distance Number, which when added together make a future date. On the west panel at the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of text projects forward to the 80th 52-year Calendar Round from the coronation of the ruler K'inich Janaab' Pakal. Pakal's accession occurred on 9.9.2.4.8, equivalent to 27 July 615 AD in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The inscription begins with Pakal's birthdate of 9.8.9.13.0 (March 24) and then adds the Distance Number 10.11.10.5.8 to it, arriving at a date of October 21, 4772 AD, more than 4,000 years after Pakal's time.

Another example is Stele 1 at Coba

Coba

Coba is a large ruined city of the Pre-Columbian Maya civilization, located in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. It is located about 90 km east of the Maya site of Chichen Itza, about 40 km west of the Caribbean Sea, and 44 km northwest of the site of Tulum, with which it is...

, which gives a date of , or twenty units above the b'ak'tun, placing it either 4.134105 × 10²⁸ (41 octillion) years in the future, or an equal distance in the past. This date is 3 quintillion times the age of the universe

Age of the universe

The age of the universe is the time elapsed since the Big Bang posited by the most widely accepted scientific model of cosmology. The best current estimate of the age of the universe is 13.75 ± 0.13 billion years within the Lambda-CDM concordance model...

as determined by cosmologists.

New Age beliefs

Many assertions about the year 2012 form part of a non-codified collection of New Age

New Age

beliefs about ancient Maya wisdom and spirituality. Archaeoastronomer

Archaeoastronomy

Archaeoastronomy is the study of how people in the past "have understood the phenomena in the sky how they used phenomena in the sky and what role the sky played in their cultures." Clive Ruggles argues it is misleading to consider archaeoastronomy to be the study of ancient astronomy, as modern...

Anthony Aveni

Anthony Francis Aveni is an American academic anthropologist, astronomer, and author, noted in particular for his extensive publications and leading contributions to the field of archaeoastronomy. With an academic career spanning over four decades, Aveni is recognized for his influence on the...

says that while the idea of "balancing the cosmos" was prominent in ancient Maya literature, the 2012 phenomenon does not draw from those traditions. Instead, it is bound up with American concepts such as the New Age

New Age

movement, millenarianism

Millenarianism

Millenarianism is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000 year intervals...

, and the belief in secret knowledge from distant times and places. 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". Aveni

Anthony Aveni

, who has studied New Age and SETI

SETI

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Some of the most well known projects are run by the SETI Institute. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for intelligent life...

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."

Origins

In 1975, the ending of b'ak'tun 13 became the subject of speculation by several New Age

New Age

authors, who asserted it would correspond with a global "transformation of consciousness". In Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth Age of Consciousness, Frank Waters

Frank Waters

Frank Waters was an American writer. He is known for his novels and historical works about the American Southwest...

tied Coe's original date of December 24, 2011, to astrology and the prophecies of the Hopi

Hopi

The Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...

, while both José Argüelles

Jose Arguelles

Joseph Anthony Arguelles , better known as José Argüelles, was a world-renowned author, artist, visionary and educator. He was the founder of Planet Art Network and the Foundation for the Law of Time. He held a Ph.D...

(in The Transformative Vision) and Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna

Terence Kemp McKenna was an Irish-American philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, lecturer and writer on many subjects, such as human consciousness, language, psychedelic drugs, the evolution of civilizations, the origin and end of the universe, alchemy, and extraterrestrial beings.-Early...

(in The Invisible Landscape) discussed the significance of the year 2012, but not a specific day. It was only in 1983, with the publication of Robert J. Sharer's revised table of date correlations in the 4th edition of Morley's The Ancient Maya, that each became convinced that December 21, 2012, had significant meaning. By 1987, the year in which he organized the Harmonic Convergence

Harmonic Convergence

The Harmonic Convergence is the name given to the world's first globally synchronized meditation, announced by José Argüelles, and which occurred on August 16–17, 1987, which also closely correlated to an exceptional alignment of planets in our solar system, see below .The timing of the Harmonic...

event, Arguelles was using the date December 21, 2012 in The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology. He claimed that on August 13, 3113 BC the Earth began a passage through a "galactic synchronization beam" that emanated from the center of our galaxy, that it would pass through this beam during a period of 5200 tuns (Maya cycles of 360-days each), and that this beam would result in "total synchronization" and "galactic entrainment" of individuals "plugged into the Earth's electromagnetic battery" by 13.0.0.0.0 (December 21, 2012). He believed that the Maya aligned their calendar to correspond to this phenomenon. Anthony Aveni

Anthony Aveni

has dismissed all of these ideas.

Galactic alignment

There is no significant astronomical event tied to the Long Count's start date. However, its supposed end date has been tied to astronomical phenomena by esoteric, fringe

Fringe science

Fringe science is scientific inquiry in an established field of study that departs significantly from mainstream or orthodox theories, and is classified in the "fringes" of a credible mainstream academic discipline....

, and New Age

New Age

literature that places great significance on astrology

Astrology

Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...

. Chief among these is the concept of the "galactic alignment."

Precession

In the Solar System

Solar System

The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...

, the planets and the Sun

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...

lie roughly within the same flat plane, known as the plane of the ecliptic

Plane of the ecliptic

The plane of the ecliptic is the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. It is the primary reference plane when describing the position of bodies in the Solar System, with celestial latitude being measured relative to the ecliptic plane. In the course of a year, the Sun's apparent path through...

. From our perspective on Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

, the ecliptic

Ecliptic

The ecliptic is the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun. In more accurate terms, it is the intersection of the celestial sphere with the ecliptic plane, which is the geometric plane containing the mean orbit of the Earth around the Sun...

is the path taken by the Sun across the sky over the course of the year. The twelve constellation

Constellation

In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....

s that line the ecliptic are known as the zodiac

Zodiac

In astronomy, the zodiac is a circle of twelve 30° divisions of celestial longitude which are centred upon the ecliptic: the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year...

and, annually, the Sun passes through all of them in turn. Additionally, over time, the Sun's annual cycle appears to recede very slowly backward by one degree every 72 years, or by one constellation every 2,160 years. This backward movement, called "precession

Precession of the equinoxes

In astronomy, axial precession is a gravity-induced, slow and continuous change in the orientation of an astronomical body's rotational axis. In particular, it refers to the gradual shift in the orientation of Earth's axis of rotation, which, like a wobbling top, traces out a pair of cones joined...

", is due to a slight wobble in the Earth's axis as it spins, and can be compared to the way a spinning top wobbles as it slows down. Over the course of 25,800 years, a period often called a Great Year

Great year

The Great Year is an archaic cosmological conception, found in different cultures, which acquired new interpretations with the development of astronomical knowledge In the Western tradition Plato has been the main source for the idea, so it was also frequently called 'Platonic year'...

, the Sun completes a full, 360-degree backward circuit through the zodiac. In Western astrological traditions, precession is measured from the northern hemisphere

Northern Hemisphere

The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of its equator—the word hemisphere literally means “half sphere”. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator...

's spring equinox, or the point at which the Sun is exactly halfway between its lowest and highest points in the sky. Presently, the Sun's spring equinox position is in the constellation Pisces

Pisces (constellation)

Pisces is a constellation of the zodiac. Its name is the Latin plural for fish, and its symbol is . It lies between Aquarius to the west and Aries to the east...

and is moving back into Aquarius

Aquarius (constellation)

Aquarius is a constellation of the zodiac, situated between Capricornus and Pisces. Its name is Latin for "water-bearer" or "cup-bearer", and its symbol is , a representation of water....

. This signals the end of one astrological age

Astrological age

An astrological age is a time period which astrology postulates parallels major changes in the development of Earth's inhabitants, particularly relating to culture, society and politics. There are twelve astrological ages corresponding to the twelve zodiacal signs in western astrology. At the...

(the Age of Pisces) and the beginning of another (the Age of Aquarius

Age of Aquarius

The Age of Aquarius is either the current or new age in the cycle of astrological ages. Each astrological age is approximately 2,150 years long, on average, but there are various methods of calculating this length that may yield longer or shorter time spans depending upon the technique used...

).

Similarly, the Sun's winter solstice

Winter solstice

Winter solstice may refer to:* Winter solstice, astronomical event* Winter Solstice , former band* Winter Solstice: North , seasonal songs* Winter Solstice , 2005 American film...

position, its lowest point, is currently in the constellation of Sagittarius

Sagittarius (constellation)

Sagittarius is a constellation of the zodiac, the one containing the galactic center. Its name is Latin for the archer, and its symbol is , a stylized arrow. Sagittarius is commonly represented as a centaur drawing a bow...

, one of two constellations in which the zodiac intersects with the Milky Way

Milky Way

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System. This name derives from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky...

. Every year, on the winter solstice, the Sun and the Milky Way, from the surface of the Earth, appear to come into alignment, and every year, precession causes a slight shift in the Sun's position in the Milky Way. Given that the Milky Way is between 10° and 20° wide, it takes between 700 and 1400 years for the Sun's winter solstice position to precess through it. It is currently about halfway through the Milky Way, crossing the galactic equator.

Mysticism

Mystical speculations about the precession

Precession

Precession is a change in the orientation of the rotation axis of a rotating body. It can be defined as a change in direction of the rotation axis in which the second Euler angle is constant...

of the equinoxes and the Sun's proximity to the center of the Milky Way

Milky Way

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System. This name derives from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky...

appeared in Hamlet's Mill
Hamlet's Mill
Hamlet's Mill by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend Hamlet's Mill (first published by Gambit, Boston, 1969) by Giorgio de Santillana (a professor of the history of science at MIT) and Hertha von Dechend Hamlet's Mill (first published by Gambit, Boston, 1969) by Giorgio de Santillana (a...

(1969) by Giorgio de Santillana

Giorgio de Santillana

Giorgio Diaz de Santillana was an Italian-American philosopher of science and historian of science, and professor at MIT....

and Hertha von Deschend. These were quoted and expanded upon by McKennas

Terence McKenna

in The Invisible Landscape (1975). The significance of a future "galactic alignment" was noted in 1991 by astrologer

Astrology

Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...

Raymond Mardyks, who asserted that the winter solstice

Winter solstice

Winter solstice may refer to:* Winter solstice, astronomical event* Winter Solstice , former band* Winter Solstice: North , seasonal songs* Winter Solstice , 2005 American film...

would align with the galactic plane

Galactic plane

The galactic plane is the plane in which the majority of a disk-shaped galaxy's mass lies. The directions perpendicular to the galactic plane point to the galactic poles...

in 1998/1999, writing that an event that "only occurs once each 26,000 year cycle and would be most definitely of utmost significance to the top flight ancient astrologers." Astrologer Bruce Scofield notes, "The Milky Way crossing of the winter solstice is something that has been neglected by Western astrologers, with a few exceptions. Charles Jayne made a very early reference to it, and in the 1970s Rob Hand mentioned it in his talks on precession but didn't elaborate on it. Ray Mardyks later made a point of it, and after that John [Major] Jenkins

John Major Jenkins

John Major Jenkins is an American author and independent researcher, best known for his works that theorize certain astronomical and esoteric connections of the calendar systems used by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica...

, myself, and Daniel Giamario began to talk about it."

Adherents to the idea, following a theory first proposed by Munro Edmonson, allege that the Maya based their calendar on observations of the Great Rift

Great Rift (astronomy)

In astronomy, the Great Rift is a series of overlapping, non-luminous, molecular dust clouds that are located between the Solar System and the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy at a distance of about 100 parsecs or about 300 light years from Earth...

or Dark Rift, a band of dark dust clouds in the Milky Way, which, according to some scholars, the Maya called the Xibalba be or "Black Road." John Major Jenkins claims that the Maya were aware of where the ecliptic intersected the Black Road and gave this position in the sky a special significance in their cosmology. According to Jenkins, precession will align the Sun precisely with the galactic equator at the 2012 winter solstice. Jenkins claimed that the classical Maya anticipated this conjunction and celebrated it as the harbinger of a profound spiritual transition for mankind. New Age proponents of the galactic alignment hypothesis argue that, just as astrology

Astrology

Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...

uses the positions of stars and planets to make claims of future events, the Mayans plotted their calendars with the objective of preparing for significant world events. Jenkins attributes the insights of ancient Maya shamans about the galactic center

Galactic Center

The Galactic Center is the rotational center of the Milky Way galaxy. It is located at a distance of 8.33±0.35 kpc from the Earth in the direction of the constellations Sagittarius, Ophiuchus, and Scorpius where the Milky Way appears brightest...

to their use of psilocybin mushrooms, psychoactive toad

Psychoactive toad

Psychoactive toad is a name used for toads from which psychoactive substances from the family of bufotoxins can be derived. The skin and poison of Bufo alvarius contain 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin. Other species contain only bufotenin. 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin both belong to the family of...

s, and other psychedelics. Jenkins also associates the Xibalba be with a "world tree", drawing on studies of contemporary (not ancient) Maya cosmology.

Criticism

Astronomers such as David Morrison

David Morrison (astrophysicist)

Dr. David Morrison is director of the Carl Sagan Center for Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute, former director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute, and senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute, at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He is the past...

argue that the galactic equator is an entirely arbitrary line, and can never be precisely drawn because it is impossible to determine the Milky Way's exact boundaries, which vary depending on clarity of view. Jenkins claims he drew his conclusions about the location of the galactic equator from observations taken at above 11000 feet (3,352.8 m), an altitude that gives a clearer image of the Milky Way than Mayans had access to. Furthermore, since the Sun is half a degree wide, it requires 36 years for it to precess across any single point. Jenkins himself notes that even given this determined location for the line of the galactic equator, its most precise convergence with the center of the Sun already occurred in 1998, and so asserts that, rather than 2012, the galactic alignment instead focuses on a multi-year period centred on 1998.

There is no clear evidence that the classic Maya were aware of precession. Some Maya scholars, such as Barbara MacLeod, Michael Grofe, Eva Hunt, Gordon Brotherston, and Anthony Aveni

Anthony Aveni

, have suggested that some Mayan holy dates were timed to precessional cycles, but scholarly opinion on the subject remains divided. There is also little evidence, archaeological or historical, that the Maya placed any importance on solstices or equinoxes. It is possible that only the early Mesoamericans observed solstices, but this is also a disputed issue among Mayanists. There is also no evidence that the classic Maya attached any importance to the Milky Way; there is no glyph in their writing system to represent it, and no astronomical or chronological table tied to it.

Timewave zero and the I Ching

"Timewave zero" is a numerological

Numerology

Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs...

formula that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of "novelty", defined as increase over time in the universe

Universe

The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...

's interconnectedness, or organized complexity. According to Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna

, the universe has a teleological attractor at the end of time

Ultimate fate of the universe

The ultimate fate of the universe is a topic in physical cosmology. Many possible fates are predicted by rival scientific theories, including futures of both finite and infinite duration....

that increases interconnectedness, eventually reaching a singularity

Technological singularity

Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...

of infinite complexity in 2012, at which point anything and everything imaginable will occur simultaneously. He conceived this idea over several years in the early to mid-1970s while using psilocybin mushrooms and DMT

Dimethyltryptamine

N,N-Dimethyltryptamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound of the tryptamine family. DMT is found in several plants, and also in trace amounts in humans and other mammals, where it is originally derived from the essential amino acid tryptophan, and ultimately produced by the enzyme INMT...

.

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

King Wen sequence

The King Wen sequence is an arrangement of the sixty-four divination figures in 易經 Yì Jīng, the I Ching or Book of Changes. They are called hexagrams in English because each figure is composed of six 爻 yáo—broken or unbroken lines, that represent 陰 yin or 陽 yang respectively.The King Wen sequence...

of the I Ching
I Ching
The I Ching or "Yì Jīng" , also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes and Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts...

, the graph appears to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity's biological

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

and sociocultural

Sociocultural evolution

Sociocultural evolution is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have changed over time...

evolution. He believed that the events of any given time are recursively

Recursion

Recursion is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are exactly parallel with each other the nested images that occur are a form of infinite recursion. The term has a variety of meanings specific to a variety of disciplines ranging from...

related to the events of other times, and chose the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...

as the basis for calculating his end date of November 2012. When he later discovered this date's proximity to the end of the 13th b'ak'tun of the Maya calendar, he revised his hypothesis so that the two dates matched.

The first edition of The Invisible Landscape refers to 2012 (but no specific day during the year) only twice. In the 1993 second edition, McKenna employed Sharer's date of December 21, 2012 throughout.

Other concepts

In India, the guru Kalki Bhagavan

Kalki Bhagavan

Kalki Bhagavan is the name given to the hindu guru Vijay Kumar by his disciples. He was born on 7 March 1949 as Vijay Kumar, in Natham district, Tamil Nadu, and worked as a clerk at the Life Insurance Corporation in the early 1980s before becoming an administrator of a school in Rajupeta village...

has promoted 2012 as a "deadline" for human enlightenment since at least 1998. Over 15 million people consider Bhagavan to be the incarnation of the god Vishnu

Vishnu

Vishnu is the Supreme god in the Vaishnavite tradition of Hinduism. Smarta followers of Adi Shankara, among others, venerate Vishnu as one of the five primary forms of God....

and believe that 2012 marks the end of the Kali Yuga

Kali Yuga

Kali Yuga is the last of the four stages that the world goes through as part of the cycle of yugas described in the Indian scriptures. The other ages are Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga and Dvapara Yuga...

, or degenerate age.

In 2006, author Daniel Pinchbeck

Daniel Pinchbeck

Daniel Pinchbeck is an author living in New York’s East Village, where he is editorial director of Reality Sandwich, a blog website centered around New Age philosophy and activism. He is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism and 2012:...

popularized New Age concepts about this date in his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, linking b'ak'tun 13 to beliefs in crop circles, alien abduction, and personal revelations based on the use of entheogens and mediumship

Mediumship

Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...

. Pinchbeck claims to discern a "growing realization that materialism and the rational, empirical worldview that comes with it has reached its expiration date ... [w]e're on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness that's more intuitive, mystical and shamanic."

Beginning in 2000, the small French village of Bugarach

Bugarach

Bugarach is a commune in the Aude department in southern France.-Geography:Bugarach is at the foot of Pic de Bugarach, a mountain peak and the highest summit in the Corbières mountains...

, population 189, began receiving visits from "esoterics"—mystic believers who have concluded that the local mountain, Pic de Bugarach

Pic de Bugarach

The Pic de Bugarach or Pech de Bugarach is the highest summit in the Corbières mountains in the French Midi....

, is the ideal location to weather the transformative events of 2012. In 2011, the local mayor, Jean-Pierre Delord, began voicing fears to the international press that the small town would be overwhelmed by an influx of thousands of visitors in 2012, even suggesting he may call in the army.

Doomsday theories

A far more apocalyptic view of the year 2012 that has spread in various media describes the end of the world or of human civilization on that date. This view has been promulgated by many hoax pages on the Internet, particularly on YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

. The History Channel has aired a handful of special series on doomsday that include analysis of 2012 theories, such as Decoding the Past
Decoding the Past
Decoding the Past is a History Channel paranormal television series that "decodes" the past by looking for unusual, and mysterious things written about throughout history that may give clues as to what will happen in the future.-Episodes:...

(2005–2007), 2012, End of Days (2006), Last Days on Earth
Last Days on Earth
The Last Days on Earth is a 20/20 science special which aired on ABC in August 2006 and has been aired on The History Channel. The show counts down the seven most likely ways in which the world could end, including gamma ray bursts, machine rule, asteroids, super volcanoes, nuclear war, pandemic...

(2006), Seven Signs of the Apocalypse (2007), and Nostradamus 2012 (2008). In his book 2012: It's Not the End of the World Peter Lemesurier has listed many misleading statements in these films. The Discovery Channel

Discovery Channel

Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...

also aired 2012 Apocalypse in 2009, suggesting that massive solar storms

Geomagnetic storm

A geomagnetic storm is a temporary disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere caused by a disturbance in the interplanetary medium. A geomagnetic storm is a major component of space weather and provides the input for many other components of space weather...

, magnetic pole reversal, earthquakes, supervolcano

Supervolcano

A supervolcano is a volcano capable of producing a volcanic eruption with an ejecta volume greater than 1,000 cubic kilometers . This is thousands of times larger than most historic volcanic eruptions. Supervolcanoes can occur when magma in the Earth rises into the crust from a hotspot but is...

es, and other drastic natural events may occur in 2012. Author Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock is a British writer and journalist. Hancock specialises in unconventional theories involving ancient civilizations, stone monuments or megaliths, altered states of consciousness, ancient myths and astronomical/astrological data from the past...

, in his book Fingerprints of the Gods
Fingerprints of the Gods
Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization is a book first published in 1995 by Graham Hancock, in which he echoes nineteenth century writer Ignatius Donnelly, author of Atlantis: The Antediluvian World , in contending that some previously enigmatic ancient but...

, interpreted Coe's remarks in Breaking the Maya Code as evidence for the prophecy of a global cataclysm.

Other alignments

Some people have interpreted the galactic alignment apocalyptically, claiming that when it occurs, it will somehow create a combined gravitation

Gravitation

Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their mass. Gravitation is most familiar as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped...

al effect between the Sun and the supermassive black hole

Supermassive black hole

A supermassive black hole is the largest type of black hole in a galaxy, in the order of hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses. Most, and possibly all galaxies, including the Milky Way, are believed to contain supermassive black holes at their centers.Supermassive black holes have...

at the center of our galaxy (known as Sagittarius A*), thus creating havoc on Earth. Apart from the fact noted above that the "galactic alignment" already happened in 1998, the Sun's apparent path through the zodiac as seen from Earth does not take it near the true galactic center, but rather several degrees above it. Even if this were not the case, Sagittarius A* is 30,000 light years from Earth, and would have to be more than 6 million times closer to cause any gravitational disruption to Earth's Solar System. This reading of Jenkins's theories was included on the History Channel documentary, Decoding the Past. However, Jenkins has complained of the fact that a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

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".

Some believers in a 2012 doomsday have used the term "galactic alignment" to describe a very different phenomenon proposed by some scientists to explain a pattern in mass extinctions supposedly observed in the fossil record. According to this hypothesis

Shiva Hypothesis

Named after the Hindu god of destruction, the Shiva Hypothesis is a hypothesis that purports to explain an apparent pattern in mass extinctions caused by impact events....

, mass extinctions are not random, but recur every 26 million years. To account for this, it suggests that vertical oscillations made by the Sun as it orbits the galactic center cause it to regularly pass through the galactic plane

Galactic plane

The galactic plane is the plane in which the majority of a disk-shaped galaxy's mass lies. The directions perpendicular to the galactic plane point to the galactic poles...

. When the Sun's orbit takes it outside the galactic plane which bisects the galactic disc, the influence of the galactic tide

Galactic tide

A galactic tide is a tidal force experienced by objects subject to the gravitational field of a galaxy such as the Milky Way. Particular areas of interest concerning galactic tides include galactic collisions, the disruption of dwarf or satellite galaxies, and the Milky Way's tidal effect on the...

is weaker. However, when re-entering the galactic disc—as it does every 20–25 million years—it comes under the influence of the far stronger "disc tides", which, according to mathematical models, increase the flux of Oort cloud

Oort cloud

The Oort cloud , or the Öpik–Oort cloud , is a hypothesized spherical cloud of comets which may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun. This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun...

comets into the inner Solar System by a factor of 4, thus leading to a massive increase in the likelihood of a devastating comet impact. However, this "alignment" takes place over tens of millions of years, and could never be timed to an exact date. Evidence shows that the Sun passed through the plane bisecting the galactic disc only three million years ago and is now moving farther above it.

A third suggested alignment is some sort of planetary conjunction occurring on December 21, 2012. However, there will be no alignment of planets on that date. Multi-planet alignments did occur in both 2000 and 2010, each with no ill result for the Earth. Jupiter

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

is the largest planet in the Solar System; larger than all other planets combined. When Jupiter is near opposition, the Earth experiences less than 1% the gravitational force it feels daily from the Moon.

Geomagnetic reversal

Another idea tied to 2012 involves a geomagnetic reversal

Geomagnetic reversal

A geomagnetic reversal is a change in the Earth's magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged. The Earth's field has alternated between periods of normal polarity, in which the direction of the field was the same as the present direction, and reverse...

(often incorrectly referred to as a pole shift by proponents), possibly triggered by a massive solar flare

Solar flare

A solar flare is a sudden brightening observed over the Sun surface or the solar limb, which is interpreted as a large energy release of up to 6 × 1025 joules of energy . The flare ejects clouds of electrons, ions, and atoms through the corona into space. These clouds typically reach Earth a day...

, that would release an energy equal to 100 billion atomic bombs. This belief is supposedly supported by observations that the Earth's magnetic field

Magnetic field

A magnetic field is a mathematical description of the magnetic influence of electric currents and magnetic materials. The magnetic field at any given point is specified by both a direction and a magnitude ; as such it is a vector field.Technically, a magnetic field is a pseudo vector;...

is weakening, which could precede a reversal of the north and south magnetic poles

Poles of astronomical bodies

The poles of astronomical bodies are determined based on their axis of rotation in relation to the celestial poles of the celestial sphere.-Geographic poles:...

.

Critics, however, claim that geomagnetic reversals take up to 7,000 years to complete, and do not start on any particular date. Furthermore, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , pronounced , like "noah", is a scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere...

now predicts that the solar maximum

Solar maximum

Solar maximum or solar max is the period of greatest solar activity in the solar cycle of the sun. During solar maximum, sunspots appear....

will peak in May 2013, not 2012, and that it will be fairly weak, with a below-average number of sunspots. In any case, there is no scientific evidence linking a solar maximum to a geomagnetic reversal, which is driven by forces entirely within the Earth. Instead, a solar maximum would be mostly notable for its effects on satellite and cellular phone communications. David Morrison attributes the rise of the solar storm idea to physicist and science popularizer Michio Kaku

Michio Kaku

is an American theoretical physicist, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics in the City College of New York of City University of New York, the co-founder of string field theory, and a "communicator" and "popularizer" of science...

, who claimed in an interview with Fox News that a solar peak in 2012 could be disastrous for orbiting satellites.

Planet X/Nibiru

Some proponents of doomsday in 2012 claim that a planet called Planet X, or Nibiru, will collide with or pass by Earth in that year. This idea, which has appeared in various forms since 1995, initially predicted Doomsday in May, 2003, but proponents later abandoned that date after it passed without incident. The idea originated from claims of channeling

Mediumship

Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...

of alien beings and has been widely ridiculed. Astronomers have calculated that such an object so close to Earth would be visible to anyone looking up at the night sky.

Other catastrophes

Other speculations regarding doomsday in 2012 have included predictions by the Web Bot

Web Bot

Web Bot, or the Web Bot Project, refers to an Internet bot software program that is claimed to be able to predict future events by tracking keywords entered on the Internet. It was created in 1997, originally to predict stock market trends...

project, a computer program that purports to predict the future using Internet chatter. However, commentators have rejected the programmers' claims to have successfully predicted natural disasters, which web chatter could never predict, as opposed to human-caused disasters like stock market crashes.

Also, the 2012 date has been loosely tied to the long-running concept of the Photon Belt

Photon belt

The Photon Belt is a pseudo-scientific belief, largely linked to some parts of the New Age Movement...

, which predicts a form of interaction between Earth and Alcyone

Alcyone (star)

Alcyone is a star system in the constellation Taurus. It is the brightest star in the Pleiades open cluster, which is a young cluster, aged at less than 50 million years. Alcyone is approximately 370 light years from Earth. It is named after the mythological figure Alcyone, one of the...

, the largest star of the Pleiades cluster. Critics have argued that photons cannot form belts, that the Pleiades, located more than 400 light years away, could have no effect on Earth, and that the Solar System, rather than getting closer to the Pleiades, is in fact moving farther away from them.

Some media outlets have tied the possibility that the red supergiant

Red supergiant

Red supergiants are supergiant stars of spectral type K or M. They are the largest stars in the universe in terms of volume, although they are not the most massive...

star Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse, also known by its Bayer designation Alpha Orionis , is the eighth brightest star in the night sky and second brightest star in the constellation of Orion, outshining its neighbour Rigel only rarely...

may undergo a supernova

Supernova

A supernova is a stellar explosion that is more energetic than a nova. It is pronounced with the plural supernovae or supernovas. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months...

at some point in the future to the 2012 phenomenon. However, while Betelgeuse is certainly in the final stages of its life, and will die as a supernova, there is no way to predict the timing of the event to within 100,000 years. To be a threat to Earth, a supernova would need to be as close as 25 light years to the Solar System. Betelgeuse is roughly 600 light years away, and so its supernova will not affect Earth.

Another claim involves alien invasion

Alien invasion

The alien invasion is a common theme in science fiction stories and film, in which extraterrestrial life invades Earth either to exterminate and supplant human life, enslave it under a colonial system, harvest humans for food, steal the planet's resources, or destroy the planet altogether.The...

. In December 2010, an article, first published in examiner.com

Examiner.com

Examiner.com is a media company based in Denver, Colorado, that operates a network of local news websites, allowing "pro–am contributors" to share their city-based knowledge on a blog-like platform, in 238 markets throughout the United States and parts of Canada with two national editions, one for...

and later referenced in the English-language edition of Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....

claimed, citing a Second Digitized Sky Survey

Digitized Sky Survey

The Digitized Sky Survey is a digital version of several photographic atlases of the night sky, and an ongoing project to produce more digital versions of photographic astronomical datasets.- Versions and source material :...

photograph as evidence, that SETI

SETI

had detected three large spacecraft due to arrive at Earth in 2012. Astronomer and debunker Phil Plait noted that by using the small-angle formula, one could determine that if the object in the photo was as large as claimed, it would have had to be closer to Earth than the Moon, which would mean it would already have arrived.

Cultural influence

The phenomenon has produced hundreds of books, as well as hundreds of thousands of websites. "Ask an Astrobiologist", a NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

public outreach website, has received over 5000 questions from the public on the subject since 2007, some asking whether they should kill themselves, their children or their pets. Many contemporary fictional references

2012 in fiction

This is a list of references to the year 2012. Several publications and media references reflect a popular prediction that the end of the world may occur in the year of 2012.-Literature:* "Angel Fire East" by Terry Brooks is set in Christmas of 2012...

to the year 2012 refer to December 21 as the day of a cataclysmic event, including the bestselling book of 2009, Dan Brown

Dan Brown

Dan Brown is an American author of thriller fiction, best known for the 2003 bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code. Brown's novels, which are treasure hunts set in a 24-hour time period, feature the recurring themes of cryptography, keys, symbols, codes, and conspiracy theories...

's The Lost Symbol.

The 2009 disaster film 2012
2012 (film)
2012 is a 2009 American disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich. It stars John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, and Woody Harrelson. It was produced by Emmerich's production company, Centropolis Entertainment and was distributed by Columbia Pictures...

was inspired by the phenomenon, and advance promotion prior to its release included a stealth marketing campaign in which TV spots and websites from the fictional "Institute for Human Continuity" called on people to prepare for the end of the world. As these promotions did not mention the film itself, many viewers believed them to be real and contacted astronomers in panic. Although the campaign was heavily criticized, the film became one of the most successful of its year, grossing nearly $770 million worldwide.

Lars von Trier

Lars von Trier

Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective, although his own films have taken a variety of different approaches, and have frequently received strongly divided critical opinion....

's 2011 film Melancholia features a plot in which a planet emerges from behind the Sun onto a collision course with Earth. Announcing his company's purchase of the film, the head of Magnolia Pictures

Magnolia Pictures

Magnolia Pictures is an American film distributor, and is a holding of 2929 Entertainment, owned by Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban. Magnolia was formed in 2001 by Bill Banowsky and Eamonn Bowles, and specializes in both foreign and independent films....

said in a press release, "As the 2012 apocalypse is upon us, it is time to prepare for a cinematic last supper." makes reference to the phenomenon.

The phenomenon has also inspired successful pop music

Pop music

Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

hits such as "2012 (It Ain't the End)

2012 (It Ain't the End)

-Music video:The music video for "2012 " was shot in Los Angeles on July 19, 2010, with Nicki Minaj. The video is set to lots of flashing lights and a typical hip-hop club scene environment. But in post-production, Sean says the music video's director Erik White will be zooming out to show parties...

" (2010) performed by Jay Sean and "Till the World Ends

Till the World Ends

"Till the World Ends" is a song by American recording artist Britney Spears, released as the second single from her seventh studio album, Femme Fatale. It was written and produced by Dr. Luke and Max Martin, with additional writing by Kesha and Alexander Kronlund, and additional production by...

" (2011) performed by Britney Spears

Britney Spears

Britney Jean Spears is an American recording artist and entertainer. Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears began performing as a child, landing acting roles in stage productions and television shows. She signed with Jive Records in 1997 and released her debut album...

.

In 2011, the Mexico tourism board stated its intentions to use the year 2012, without its apocalyptic connotations, as a means to revive Mexico's tourism industry, which had suffered as the country gained a reputation for drug wars and kidnapping. The initiative hopes to draw on the mystical appeal of the Mayan ruins.

Citations

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Mesoamerican Long Count calendar

Apocalypse

Objections

Prior associations

Mayan references to b'ak'tun 13

Tortuguero

Dates beyond b'ak'tun 13

New Age beliefs

Origins

Galactic alignment

Precession

Mysticism

Criticism

Timewave zero and the I Ching

Other concepts

Doomsday theories

Other alignments

Geomagnetic reversal

Planet X/Nibiru

Other catastrophes

Cultural influence

See also

Citations