Here are my notes on this topic which may be of use to other club members responding to general public questions during summer star parties regarding the Doomsday 2012 new age theory. This month's _Catalyst_ magazine (March 2008 at 14-16) has an extensive article interviewing John Major Jenkins << http://www.alignment2012.com/ >>, a new age author, who has popularized that claim that the approaching 13th b'ak'tun of the Mayan calendar which ends near or on the winter solstice of Dec. 21, 2012, predicts the end of the current spiritual age and, prefaced by the calamities of death, famine and destruction, the coming of a new and better age. This new age myth smells like it will have some traction in the popular mind and that traction will increase through 2012. So anticipating getting hit with general public questions on this one during star parties (yes, I still get "Planet X" inquiries), I decided to start a myth busting folder on the Doomsday 2012 new age theory. The major warrants in the Doomsday 2012 argument are: 1) The Mayan's thought that the Earth was destroyed and recreated on the 13 b'ak'tun of the Mayan long count calendar. 2) There will be an unusual grouping of five planetary bodies on the morning of the winter solstice 2012. The following bodies will be within 32 degrees of each other: Saturn, Mercury, Venus, the Moon and the Sun. 3) The Sun, Earth and galactic center will be aligned for the first time in 26,000 years due to the Earth's precession. The Mayans knew and predicted this a couple of thousand of years ago. There are other miscellaneous supporting warrants supporting the Doomsday 2012 scenario that I have not looked into. For example, that there is an unusual number of inbound comets around that time. A rebuttal to each of the three major warrants listed above are: 1) The Mayan's thought that the Earth was destroyed and recreated on the 13 b'ak'tun of the Mayan long count calendar. The Mayan's counted in base 20. The Mayan ceremonial calendar uses a base 20 counting system structured around a long-count of 144,000 days per b'ak'tun. (Simiarly, much of our use of 360 degrees to measure angular size is a historical legacy of the Sumerian's use of a base 60 counting system.) Twenty b'ak'tun make one complete cycle of the Mayan long count calendar. Like the Chinese after the early 1900s, the Mayans used two calendars. The Mayans have the long-count calendar to record relative historical and astronomical dates. They also used a more practical solar calendar for civil administrative purposes. (The Chinese used a solar-lunar calendar through the early 1900s. Since then, the western Gregorian calendar is used for civil administrative purposes and the traditional solar-lunar calendar for ceremonial purposes.) The Dec. 12, 2012 date relates to the 13 b'ak'tun cycle, or 1,872,000 days (13 * 144,000 days per b'ak'tun) since Sept. 6, 3114 BCE (Julian). Checking the wikipedia entry, there appears to be no archeological consensus that the Mayan's intended the 13th b'ak'tun to be the end of a counting or creation cycle, as opposed to the more logical 20 b'ak'tun or 2,880,000 days after Sept. 6, 3114 BCE (Julian). The wikipedia entry goes on to quote Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. that interpreting Dec. 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting is "a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in."
From an astronomical perspective, there seems to be no logical connection between precession spanning 26,000 years or 9,496,500 days (26,000 * 365.25) and the Mayan long count calendar. 9,496.500 days is not an exact multiple of 1 b'ak'tun. 9,496,500 / 144,000 days = 65.94 or approx. 66 b'ak'tun.
The scientific achievement of the Mayan calendar is that they appear to have the only ancient calendar that approximates the concept of scientific or linear time embodied in the modern Julian calendar and universal time. Historical calendars make time variable in that it is reckoned from the variable solar or lunar year and not the passage of simple linear time. 2) There will be an unusual grouping of five planetary bodies on the morning of the winter solstice 2012. The following bodies will be within 32 degrees of each other: Saturn, Mercury, Venus, and the Moon. They will all be near the Sun. Saturn, Mercury and Venus will be within 24 degrees of each other. Adding the Moon means 4 bodies will be within 32 degrees of each other. Amateur John Rummel previously looked at the probability of three planets being grouped in the sky. He looked at the frequency of Jupiter, Venus and Mars groupings: http://webpages.charter.net/darksky25/Astronomy/Articles/April2000.html http://webpages.charter.net/darksky25/Astronomy/Articles/March2000.html The author did not state the conjunction tolerance used, but state that groupings for those three planets occur on average every 18 1/2 years. See also Brian Monson's page computing the frequencies of three planet conjunctions between Mars, Jupiter and Saturn within 10 degrees at once every 100 years. http://drumright.ossm.edu/astronomy/conjunctions.html The two above examples involve two or three superior planets. Groupings of inferior planets like Mercury and Venus with one superior planet would be more common, since the inferior planets have orbital periods substantially less than that of the Earth's. As Monson points out, in the 4.5 billion year history of the Earth, there have been 45,000,000 events where Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have been within 10 apparent degrees and we are still here, apparently suffering no ill effects from their repeated occurence. In the near past, similar wide-angle multi-planet groupings have occured, without notable ill effect, as documented in APOD (Astronomical Pictures of the Day) images on: Dec. 9, 2006 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061209.html July 15, 2002 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050715.html May 10, 2002 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020510.html April 14, 2002 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020418.html May 9, 2000 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020509.html April 29, 2000 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020429.html March 10, 2000 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000310.html Dec. 4, 1997 - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap971204.html 3) The Sun, Earth and galactic center will be aligned for the first time in 26,000 years due to the Earth's precession. The Mayans knew and predicted this a couple of thousand of years ago. With respect to the Sun-Milky Way alignment, the inclination of the ecliptic to the galactic equator is such that around the winter solstice, the Sun usually is near the galactic center. Granted the position of the Sun with respect to the galactic center and the winter solstice does change with precession over a 26,000 year period. 2,000 years agos the Mayans would have seen their winter solstice's many degrees from the current position near the galactic center. Mayan knowledge of precession - which in the west was identified by Ptolemy - around 100 C.E. - is less clear. For the last several hundred years, the Sun has been near the galactic center around the winter solstice without any special ill effects on that date. The converse is true. The winter solstice, in its modern Christainized form, is celebrated as a season of peace, goodwill and a time for cease-fires in regional conflicts. In otherwords, good things are expected to happen at that time of year, not bad things. Here's the position of the Sun, in galactic lat and longitude around Dec. 21 from 2008 through 2020, extracted from the JPL NASA Horizon's web applet. The Horizon's web applet doesn't allow you to put non-integer days. Because an interval of 365.25 days could not be used, there is some drift in the dates which is not signficant to the result: Date__(UT)__HR:MN GlxLon GlxLat ******************************************** 2008-Dec-21 00:00 6.054683 0.576538 2009-Dec-21 00:00 5.927047 0.800198 2010-Dec-21 00:00 5.796699 1.027998 2011-Dec-21 00:00 5.665830 1.256292 2012-Dec-20 00:00 5.539531 1.477225 2013-Dec-20 00:00 5.406701 1.708264 2014-Dec-20 00:00 5.276395 1.936201 2015-Dec-20 00:00 5.149486 2.157423 2016-Dec-19 00:00 5.017871 2.386990 2017-Dec-19 00:00 4.890353 2.609797 2018-Dec-19 00:00 4.759728 2.837003 2019-Dec-19 00:00 4.626869 3.068853 2020-Dec-18 00:00 4.498718 3.291268
From 2008-2020, there does not seem to be anything special about 2012 with respect to the annual cross of the Sun, in its progression in the ecliptic, as it crosses the galactic plane.
Looking at Dec. 21, 2012, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly unusual about the Sun's position, as compared to its usual annual progression when crossing the galactic plane around the winter soltisce: Date__(UT)__HR:MN GlxLon GlxLat ******************************************** 2012-Dec-21 00:00 6.045898 0.593780 2012-Dec-21 01:00 6.066992 0.556968 2012-Dec-21 02:00 6.088086 0.520154 2012-Dec-21 03:00 6.109180 0.483341 2012-Dec-21 04:00 6.130273 0.446528 2012-Dec-21 05:00 6.151366 0.409714 2012-Dec-21 06:00 6.172459 0.372900 2012-Dec-21 07:00 6.193552 0.336086 2012-Dec-21 08:00 6.214645 0.299272 2012-Dec-21 09:00 6.235738 0.262458 2012-Dec-21 10:00 6.256831 0.225644 2012-Dec-21 11:00 6.277923 0.188830 2012-Dec-21 12:00 6.299016 0.152015 2012-Dec-21 13:00 6.320108 0.115200 2012-Dec-21 14:00 6.341201 0.078386 2012-Dec-21 15:00 6.362293 0.041571 2012-Dec-21 16:00 6.383386 0.004756 2012-Dec-21 17:00 6.404478 -0.032059 2012-Dec-21 18:00 6.425571 -0.068875 2012-Dec-21 19:00 6.446664 -0.105690 2012-Dec-21 20:00 6.467757 -0.142505 2012-Dec-21 21:00 6.488850 -0.179320 2012-Dec-21 22:00 6.509943 -0.216136 2012-Dec-21 23:00 6.531036 -0.252951 In short, that special ill effects may be seen on Dec. 21, 2012 as a result of a "special" alignment between the Sun, the Earth and the Milky Way galactic core seems unsupported by common experience. Such alignments currently occur around the winter solstice without any ill effects. In conclusion, there seems to be no association between the Mayan calendar and Earth's precession. There is no association between the "end" of the Mayan calendar in the 20th b'ak'tun and any alignment between the Earth, Sun the galactic core. Such alignments have occurred routinely for the last 100 years without ill effect. A 24 degree conjunction between two inferior planets and one superior planet is not extraordinary and there seems to be little reason to suppose, based on past experience with such events, that anything bad will happen when it occurs again in the future. The Mayans should be respected for their creation of the first true linear time calendar. The root warrant that the Mayans attached the significance to a 13th b'ak'tun as the end of a creation cycle marked by earthly destruction has been questioned by a Mayan archeological expert. I hope these notes are useful to club members, who will undoubtedly be fielding questions from the general public about the March 2008 _Catalyst_ article during summer star parties. The Doomsday 2012 new age theory provides another opportunity for amateur astronomers to teach teenagers (and older adults) basic critical thinking and scientific reasoning skills that are the foundation of our hobby. - Kurt ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs