“It's not carved in stone,” certainly doesn't apply in this case.
- the most recent superwave of radiation being 14,950 years ago.
Note: Since this article was first published, viewzone has received more information on "doomsday," including visual and scientific evidence that a solar "extinction event" happened in the past. See Part 2 - The Previous Doomsday of 12,950 BC: what was it like? for details.
ViewZone asked me to write a story about the Mayan Calendar. There is a common belief that the calendar holds a prophecy that the world will end in 2012. I knew very little about the whole topic when I began doing the research. I like to think I had an open mind. My investigation began with mainstream archaeology and expert interpretations of the calendar. But it soon took a turn that made my hair literally stand on end. I am now convinced that these prophecies are true.
To understand what is likely to happen to Earth and its people, you will need to remain calm and try to follow the facts. It's not as simple as some people describe. It requires an understanding of some fairly complicated science, but I think I can explain this in a way that you will easily understand.
The Calendar -- A Descrption
First, the Mayan calendar is also sometimes called the Aztec Calendar. This calendar is recorded as a carving on the Aztec "sun stone," currently on exhibit in the National Museum of Anthropology and History located within Chapultepec Park, Mexico City. There's a lot we could say about this carved stone but most of those details are irrelevant to the "end times."
Our modern calendar, called the Gregorian Calendar, has days, weeks, months and years. In the Mayan Calendar it's more complex. In fact, it's really three calendars at the same time.
First there's a religious calendar that takes 260 days to complete a full religious cycle. There are 20 "weeks" made up of 13 days. Each week has a special name, a graphic logo and unique meaning associated with it. This reminds me of the Chinese years which cycle through "the year of the rat" and "the year of the monkey," etc., each with it's special image and meaning.
Graphic logos for each of the 20 religious weeks.
Next there is the solar calendar. This has 365 days, like our modern calendar. It's divided in 18 months of 20 days each. At the end of the cycle there's five special days considered to be unlucky because they don't belong to any month. Each of the months has a special name, graphic logo and some special significance, similar to the icons for the weeks in the religious calendar.
So it is possible, for any specific date, the calculate the religious week and the solar month and to predict the influences that might be guiding fate. But that's not really what's involved with the prophecy of 2012. To understand that we must look at the third calendar, called the long count.
While the first two cycles could be thought of as cogs or gears (see below) revolving through time, the long count is a linear number of days, starting from the first day, "1," and counting through each day to the present. Any day in history can be recorded using the long count and, with some simple mathematics, the corresponding religious week and solar month can also be found.
In writing this article, I thought about creating a javascript program that would do this calculation. My friend, Gene Matlock, then told me that when he was in Mexico, he found a place that sold wooden, mechanical calculators with gears that did just that. He said that Mexicans sometimes used these mechanical calendars to foretell the future or to find auspicious times for special events like marriage or births. Anyway, although it might be nice to know the religious and solar significance, it's the long count that foretells Doomsday.
Cog or "gears" can be used to compute the religious and solar cycles for any date.
The days of the long count are numbered with an unusual system. Instead of writing numbers as we do, from right to left with each place being a multiple of 10 (i.e. 10000, 1000, 100, 10, 1), the Mayans had only 5 places.
The first place recorded a number from 0 to 20. To the left, the second place could have a range from 0 to 17; the third from 0 to 19; the fourth from 0 to 19 and the last from 0 to 12. The numbers were written from right to left, like our system, separated by a dot. Instead of multiples of 10, the first place had a multiple of 1 (like our system); the second place a multiple of 20; the third a multiple of 360; the fourth a multiple of 7200 and the fifth a multiple of 144000.
So a long count number, for example, could be written as 4.12.5.9.0 and would be calculated as follows:
(4 x 144000) + (12 x 7200) + (5 x 360) + (9 x 20) + (0 x 1) or a long count of 664,380.
It's not too difficult to realize that the maximum number which can be recorded this way would be12.19.19.17.20, although some researchers like to write it as 13.0.0.0.0. This amounts to a long count number of 1,872,000 days or 5125.36 years of our modern calculations. Obviously, the calendar is very old!
Over the years, archaeologists have found carved monuments that recorded the long count for known dates in Mayan history. Once a date was fixed in time, it was easy to determine "day 1" as August 11th, 3114 BC. And it was also easy to calculate the date at which the calendar would end --December 21st, 2012.
 The 'Comalcalco Brick' [right], is the second fragment known to reference to Dec. 21, 2012 or Dec. 23, 2012.The date inscribed on the brick is a 'Calendar Round', a combination of a day and month position that will repeats every 52 years. The brick date does coincide with the end of the 13th Baktun; Baktuns were roughly 394-year periods and 13 was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas. The Mayan Long Count calendar begins in 3114 B.C., and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.The third glyph on the brick seems to read as the verb huli, "he/she/it arrives." Both inscriptions — the Tortuguero tablet and the Comalcalco brick -- were probably carved about 1,300 years ago and both are cryptic in some ways. The Tortuguero inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation. However, erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible, though some read the last eroded glyphs as perhaps saying, "He will descend from the sky." |
Trust me, just because the calendar ends doesn't prove that time, or the world, or life will end. We need to look carefully at December 21, 2012 and try to understand why the Mayans never calculated a date beyond this point in time. To do this we must move from Archaeology to the science of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
It's all about the Sun
It's ironic (or maybe not) that the Mayan Calendar is often called the "sun stone." While the calendar does have "solar" days, acknowledging the 365 days it takes for Earth to rotate around the Sun, it is also true that the Sun plays a key role in the final day of the "long count." To understand what will happen to the Sun on December 21, 2012, we need to review some scientific terms like "ecliptic," "barycenter," and "sunspots." These are important in the discussion that follows. We'll start with the most difficult one first.
You've no doubt heard that Earth revolves around the sun. Well, actually, that's not quite true! Have you heard the term "center of gravity"? It's a technical-sounding term for something pretty simple. It's the exact center of all the material (that is, mass) that makes up the object. For example, if you have a straight stick, like a ruler or yardstick, there's a place at the middle where you can balance it on your finger. That's its center of gravity.   The actual center of gravity could be close to the surface or deep inside, depending on whether the object is flat like a ruler or a dinner plate, or "three-dimensional," like a box or a ball. And if you let the object spin (like when you throw it), it will try to spin about that point. In the case of the Earth and the sun, both bodies actually revolve, or spin, around the very center of the mass (similar to center of gravity) between them. This point is called the "barycenter." Earth and the sun are "connected" by the gravity pulling them together. It's just like the light end and heavy end of the sledge hammer. Compared to the size of the sun, Earth is about like a flea on a cat! So the center of mass between the Earth and the sun is almost--but not quite--the very center of the sun. In the case of a planet the size of Jupiter, which is 318 times as massive as Earth, the barycenter of Jupiter and the sun is a bit further from the sun's center. So, as Jupiter revolves around the sun, the sun itself is actually revolving around this slightly off-center point, located just outside its center. Thus, a planet the size of Jupiter will make the sun (or any star) appear to wobble a tiny bit. This picture shows you that the center of mass and barycenter can be slightly different points. It isn't meant to be very accurate!  We can take advantage of this bit of knowledge and look for large planets in other solar systems by learning to detect this type of tiny wobble in the star's position. |
For now, let's forget all the small planets and focus on Jupiter. It makes one complete trip around the Sun every 11.861773 years. There's a new theory put forth by Dr. Rollin Gillespie which shows that Jupiter, and to a smaller degree the other less massive planets, may trigger the 11 year cycle of sunspots and solar flares. source:
I know I had a difficult time coping with this topic, both emotionally and spiritually. I can't say that I have perfected the right "attitude" about what the future holds. To be honest, I think I always held back from accepting the facts. I had hope. But this new evidence forces me to open my eyes and soul to setting my life in order. I hope it will do the same for you.
Although "doomsday" is frequently linked with the Mayan calendar, this is just coincidental. December 21, 2012 is a significant day in astronomy because of a number of important events that will impact our Sun. It would be a "doomsday" even if we never knew about the Mayan calendar. Yet, the more we understand this ancient civilization and appreciate their knowledge of astronomy, we must assume they knew this date to be auspicious. So let's just talk about astronomy here. There's a lot of information. I'll try to make it easy to understand.
Glazed donuts on the Moon
Let's begin back in the 1960s with the Apollo 11 manned landing on the moon. On one of their EVA's (extra-vehicular activities), the astronauts photographed and took samples from some small craters, about 20cm to 1.5 meters across. When they examined the floors of these craters they noticed what looked like glazed donuts. These were actually chunks of moon dirt that were coated by glass.The glazed areas are clearly concentrated toward the top surfaces of protuberances, although they exist also on some sides. Points and edges appear to be strongly favored for the glazing process. In some cases, droplets appear to have run down an inclined surface for a few millimeters and congealed there. [1]Hardly anyone in the general public was made aware of this discovery and, even if they were, thay could hardly have realized the significance.
But in 1969, an article in Science by T. Gold [1] proposed a theory of how they were made. Glass, as we know, is made from melting sand. It occurs natually near sources of high temperature, such as volcanos and meteor impacts. The atom bomb tests in New Mexico's White Sands area produced a small "lake" of glass at ground zero. So it was never a question about the lunar glass also having been created by something very hot.
The fact that the glaze was confined to small patches, 0.5 to 10mm, suggested to scientists that the surface had been zapped rather than slow-cooked. And the likely source of this zap was our Sun. Gold estimated that the solar luminosity would have had to increase by 100 times what it is normally, for a duration of from 10 to 100 seconds.
Also, because of the lack of debris or dirt covering this glass, it must have occurred within the last 30,000 years. This made Gold propose that the Sun -- our Sun -- does this every 10,000 years or more. He suggested that future research should look for a "trigger" event -- possibly a large comet or asteroid impacting the surface of the Sun. He estimated this would only have to be 100 km and weigh 3 x 1021grams.
Decades passed and this theory didn't receive much attention. Then, as it often does, the theory got a fresh look by a genius, Dr. Paul LaViolette. He was not satisfied with the source of the glass being caused by a solar blast, mainly because the output would have had to be on the scale of a nova, not just a flare. He envisioned another possibility.LaViolette envisioned a large solar flare or coronal mass ejection (CME) that would become magnetically entrapped in the Earth's magnetosphere [2]. The magnetosphere would then hold on to this fireball of radiation like a magnetic thermos bottle, allowing the Moon and Earth to be exposed for a duration of time long enough to really "flash bake" their surfaces.
Critics quickly denounced LaViolette's theory citing evidence of "cosmic dust" and rare elements in the lunar glass and concluding that the heat source was from a meteor impact. [3]
But LaViolette proposed that this cosmic dust was likely present on the surface of the Moon during the time it was melted into the glass. In fact, he proposed that the entire solar system was full of this cosmic dust at the time of this solar eruption. He was vindicated when polar ice cores showed unusual cosmic dust deposits at srata marking the end of the last ice age [4]. This time period, about 12,950 BCE, approximates the current age of the Moon glass. So where did all this cosmic dust come from?
This was confirmed when the IRAS and Ulysses spacecrafts showed infrared images of the solar system, surrounded by whispy clouds of cosmic dust that increase in density just beyond Saturn.
So if the cosmic dust is surrounding the heliopause, what would make it suddenly enter the heliopause and how would this coincide with huge solar flares? LaViolette envisioned something disrupting the heliopause from the outside, impacting it and drawing cosmic dust inside with it and energizing the Sun. The energy of such an impact would be immense. The most logical place to look for such enormous energy was the Milky Way Galaxy.
The smoking gun
Examining the shape of the cosmic dust clouds, the IRAS satellite team reported that the cloud was tilted relative to the solar system's ecliptic -- the narrow plane containing our planets. LaViolette realized that this odd alignment tracked back to the Galactic center. This was quickly verified by NASA's Ulysses spacecraft and New Zealand's AMOR space radar observatory. Whatever caused the last ice age to end, the Sun to flare up and caused the glass to form on the Moon, came from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The plot was getting more interesting.Astronomers have known about intense radiation from space since the 1970s. Multiple bursts of powerful gamma rays were routinely detected and believed to originate from stars in the Milky Way. Assuming this energy originated locally, astronomers concluded this type of gamma ray burst was insignificant and harmless. Then, in December 1997, they had the technology and good luck to catch a strong gamma ray burst and track it. The source was not inside the Milky Way Galaxy. It was from a distant galaxy billions of light years away.
A review of other bursts showed that their assumptions had been wrong. All of the gamma ray bursts they were observing were from other galaxies far, far away. The amount of energy coming from objects so distant was a real shock. No one had ever imagined such powerful bursts could be generated by galactic centers. The thought of a burst coming from our own Milky Way galactic center was abysmal. A burst of the same intensity as the 1997 event, originating from inside the Milky Way, would deliver 100,000 time the lethal dose of radiation, killing every life form that was exposed. Could that really happen to us?This question was answered on August 27th, 1998 when an unusual 5 minute gamma ray pulse was located just 20,000 light years away in the constellation of Aquila. This may sound like a huge distance, but to astronomers this is just "next door." The Milky Way Galaxy, for example, is just 100,000 light years from end to end.
The 1998 event was close enough and strong enough to ionize Earth's upper atmosphere, damage a couple of spacecraft and disrupt global communication. Since then astronomers place gamma ray bursts from the Glaxy's core at the top of the list of things we don't want to happen.
Before Aquila, scientists just feared exploding stars -- novas and supernovas. Now things are different. It's like living in a ghetto and fearing drive-by shootings and random bullets. Then one day you learn that there's a nuclear bomb down the street, waiting to explode.
Not in my galaxy!Ironically, all of these facts are incorporated in LaViolette's "superwave" theory. He concludes that there are cyclical and frequent explosions from the Galaxy's core. These waves of radiation advance outward to the edges of the Galaxy, impacting everything and causing stars to erupt in their path. He believes this is what has happened many times to our own solar system -- the most recent superwave of radiation being 14,950 years ago. He envisions the shock wave -- or superwave -- dragging cosmic dust along with it as it enters the heliopause and energizes our Sun.
Ice core samples support this view. Evidence of the effects from cosmic dust show at ice core strata corresponding to the years 11,880 to 11,785 BCE*. This evidence, along with the Moon glass, the presence of cosmic dust and the abrupt and atypical end of the last ice age -- all point to an intimate relationship between extreme solar activity and gama radiation from the Milky Way Galaxy's center. [* These dates have been updated following more precise research from Dr. LaViolette.]
Something has changed
More troubling is the suggestion by some scientists that this powerful radiation may not require a dramatic burst or explosion to cause eruptions in the Sun. Physicists at nearly a dozen research institutions, including New York University, have discovered evidence for very high energy gamma rays emitting from a narrow band at the equator of the Milky Way. These gamma ray levels mark the highest energies ever detected from the Galaxy.
Perhaps related to this is the puzzling fact that, even though we have witnessed no Galactic explosions or "bursts", the measurements of cosmic dust streaming inside the heliopause as been steadily increasing [6] to almost three times since the last solar maximum in 2001.
During the solar maximum of each 11 year cycle, the polarity of the Sun shifts -- North becomes South and visa versa. This brief period of magnetic instability allows some cosmic dust to enter the heliopause because the Sun's "shields" are reduced. But once the new polarity is established, the Sun usually quickly blocks the dust. This time it didn't happen. Cosmic dust has been streaming in from the Glactic center and astronomers are at aloss to explain why.
It's likely that the solar system is already experiencing the invasive energy from the Galactic equator as we move into position and align with it on 2012.
Yes, there's more!
What will it be like when this happens to us? Perhaps the most dramatic evidence of what we can expect in 2012 comes from the most unlikely place -- ancient petroglyphs! Ancient rock carvings from around the globe, created during the last solar "zap" 14,950 years ago, seem to illustrate a spectacular event that happened when the Earth was last hit by extremely high radiation. This is a little difficult to explain, but I'll try.
Viewed from the top, the aurora actually forms a luminous and electrically charged cup (or chalice) shape extending into space from each pole.Extremely high energy -- the type that would have caused the Moon glass and zapped the Earth -- creates a more elaborate discharge. Physicists call it a z-pinch formation. The z-pinch has been extensively researched by a group headed by Anthony L. Peratt with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM and is described in his paper, Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity Part II: Directionality and Source[5]. In this paper, Dr. Peratt illustrates the shape and characteristics of this high energy discharge on the Earth and shows thousands of petroglyph sites all over the globe where this z-pinch was observed and recorded in ancient carvings.
The term z-pinch originates from experiments where physicists made extremely high current to flow through thin wires that were arranged vertically in a tubular formation. They noticed that the energy quickly vaporized the wires, but the magnetic field generated by these paths remained and contained (or "pinched") the stream of energy, collapsing the streams of energy toward the center of the tube-like configuration -- called the z-axis. When the streams of energy converge, they form unique shapes that persist and can be observed as Birkeland elements, named for their discoverer.
If the Earth was zapped by high energy radiation, either from the Sun or the Galactic core, the planet would be surrounded with distinct lines of energy, converging at the North and South pole. These bands would continue to extend well out from the planet's poles and into space and would be visible from almost every point on Earth -- each with its own unique perspective.
Recent global archiving of global petroglyphs have demonstrated that these shapes were correctly recorded in rock carvings by humans who withnessed this event!
So what do we know for sure?
The recent data shows that dramatic and potentially deadly effects can result from solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Substantial data suggests that an event, similar to the one anticipated in the 2012 "doomsday" scenario, occurred about 14,950 years ago and was recorded by ancient humans. This event appears to have lasted for several years in duration and was responsible for the abrupt end of the last ice age as well as a substantial culling of the human population.
The surprising findings of LaViolette, supported by other research, suggests that the extreme solar event corresponded to powerful radiation coming from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and was associated with gamma rays and cosmic dust. Recent observations have shown a dramatic increase in gamma ray energy in the Galaxy's equator which will be in maximum alignment with our solar system on December 12, 2012. The past records in ice cores (strata from 13,880 to 13,785 BCE) suggest that intense radiation from this last event could have lasted many years. It seems highly likely that this alignment will cause another extreme solar event since other factors precipitating a "solar maximum" (i.e. the opposition of majorplanetary barycenters) also converge on this exact date.The fact that galactic centers routinely radiate lethal gamma rays makes it unlikely that life, at least as we understand it, can survive in the universe. Sooner or later it is destined to be zapped.
A new genetic study of Y-chromosome variation by Dr. Marcus Feldman of Stanford University shows that the population from which the world's present population is derived consisted of about 2,000 individuals. Somehow, humans, flora and fauna did survive the past doomsday and some may yet survive past 2012. Indeed, many of the ancient prophecies I have encountered in my travels around the world have spoken of a "bright light" or "flash" followed by the "good seed" (i.e. humanity) which would rise up and repopulate the world.[7]
Organisms on Earth, including humans, have evolved during quiet times -- between the lethal blasts from our own Milky Way center. This means that we are indeed quite unique (and lucky). But it also means that our ultimate demise is part of the natural order. This universe is larger than ourselves and our lives. We are just transient phenomena, seemingly running counter to the laws of entropy, yet a part of the cosmic reality. This is neither good or bad. It simply is.
And yet there is part of us that may continue. This hope is what we must hold on to. Tell me what you think.
Just In:
Mass Extinction: Why Did Half of N. America's Large Mammals Disappear 13.8 and 11.4 Thousand Years Ago?
As reported in ScienceDaily, years of scientific debate over the extinction of ancient species in North America have yielded many theories. However, new findings from J. Tyler Faith, GW Ph.D. candidate in the hominid paleobiology doctoral program, and Todd Surovell, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming, reveal that a mass extinction occurred in a geological instant.
During the late Pleistocene, 40,000 to 10,000 years ago, North America lost over 50 percent of its large mammal species. These species include mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, among many others. In total, 35 different genera (groups of species) disappeared, all of different habitat preferences and feeding habits.
What event or factor could cause such a mass extinction? The many hypotheses that have been developed over the years include: abrupt change in climate, the result of comet impact, human overkill and disease. Some researchers believe that it may be a combination of these factors, one of them, or none.
A particular issue that has also contributed to this debate focuses on the chronology of extinctions. The existing fossil record is incomplete, making it more difficult to tell whether or not the extinctions occurred in a gradual process, or took place as a synchronous event. In addition, it was previously unclear whether species are missing from the terminal Pleistocene because they had already gone extinct or because they simply have not been found yet.
However, new findings from Faith indicate that the extinction is best characterized as a sudden event that took place between 13.8 and 11.4 thousand years ago. Faith's findings support the idea that this mass extinction was due to human overkill, comet impact or other rapid events rather than a slow attrition.
"The massive extinction coincides precisely with human arrival on the continent, abrupt climate change, and a possible extraterrestrial impact event" said Faith. "It remains possible that any one of these or all, contributed to the sudden extinctions. We now have a better understanding of when the extinctions took place and the next step is to figure out why."
Comments? || Doomsday Part 1 || Viewzone Magazine
References
[1] Gold, T. "Apollo II Observations of a Remarkable Glazing Phenomenon on the Lunar Surface." Science165 (1969):1345.
[2] Excerpt from Paul LaViolette's 1983 Ph.D. dissertation, "Galactic Explosions, Cosmic Dust Invasions, and Climate Change."
[3] Morgan, Laul, Ganapathy, and Anders (1971 Morgan, J. W., Laul, J. C., Ganapathy, R., and Anders, E. "Glazed Lunar Rocks: Origin by Impact." Science 172(1971):556
[4] Zook, H. A., Hartung, J. B., and Storzer, D. "Solar Flare Activity: Evidence for Large Scale Changes in the Past." Icarus 32(1977):106
[5]Anthony L. Peratt, Fellow, IEEE, John McGovern, Alfred H. Qoyawayma, Life Member, IEEE, Marinus Anthony Van der Sluijs, and Mathias G. Peratt, Member, IEEE, "Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity Part II: Directionality and Source," IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. 35, NO. 4, August 2007.
[6] Markus Landgraf, Max Plank Institute.
[7] www.viewzone.com/comanche2.html -also- www.viewzone.com/firsttongue.yemen.html -also- www.viewzone.com/oklahoma11.html
See also Mega Fauna Extinction (1.6mb pdf file)
Wow, this is better than crop circles! I haven't seen anything this interesting since I last picked up the Weekly World News!
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