Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Will the World End in 2012?

Given a significant portion of the Earth's population got a sudden preoccupation of the Mayan calendar during the last two years, is there really something to this the world will end in December 23, 2012 nonsense?

By: Ringo Bones

To cut to the chase, the only that's both interestingly "scientific" about the world ending in December 23, 2012 nonsense is the part where our planet Earth's 23 and a half degree axial tilt of rotation will align the Sun with the galactic center of our Milky Way galaxy near the end of 2012 - around December in fact according to the Mayan calendar. But is there any cause for alarm?

Astronomers have known for quite awhile now that the 26,000-year cycle of the Earth's rotational tilt had been shifting the Earth's celestial alignment at a rate of one degree for every 72 years since humanity began to carefully observe the stars in the nighttime sky. But is the hubbub surrounding the 2012 end-of-the-world obsession of a significant number of the Earth's populace nothing more that a quirk of celestial geometry?

Strangely enough, the 2012 galactic alignment will coincide with peak in Solar activity in the summer solstice of 2012 - thus the preoccupation by doomsayers that this quirk could allow the Sun to supposedly trigger massive geologic upheavals near the tail end of 2012. From the Mayans to Nostradamus, the galactic alignment had since been used as a rather hackneyed temporal signpost to mark a world-ending catastrophe. Could geometry spell doom for our seemingly eternal planet Earth?