Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation Into Civilization's End

http://www.apocalypse2012.com/us/

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_n.htm

on what might happen. The guy seemed pretty convincing.

Millenarianism in a different garb.

"Oh, please."

These year-specific end-of-the-world predictions are stupid and pathetic. The sad thing is, when the world doesn't end, the wackos invariably say that that proves they were right! (Fortunately, they acted in time to stop it, earning the thanks of a grateful nation.)

I'll be 50.

Fifty is easy, I promise. :)

He is totally convinced. When not talking about that, he is as normal as can be, but someone has taken over that corner of his brain. He came from Montana and they must have some powerful talkers out there.

We humor him!

in the Netherlands who claim Earth will hit a charged photoncloud in 2012. Which will act like a giant EMP. Wouldn't be that bad, now, would it?

(sorry, couldn't resist)

Did they find out from the "Pleiadian extraterrestrials", perchance?

http://www.2012.com.au/photon_belt2.html

Your input clarifies a lot! Thanks!

(would this sort of cloud be the same thing that's responsible for 'pan-spermia'? Any clues?)

Old Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" I can legitimately say I have and am..

lkjljk

llkj

We should reject modern science in favor of, say, 1930s science.

And we should reject 1930s science in favor of, say, 1850s science.

And so on.

We can not figure out how they did it nor duplicate them but ancients were inept.........Go figure...

What makes you think we couldn't duplicate an ancient pyramid? We have no need to do so, but we could.

Not knowing in detail how they did it doesn't mean they had technology superior to ours. It only means that our knowledge about the past is incomplete, as it probably always will be.

I want to be oriented to the stars in the same fashion as the Great Pyramid.

I want it to be as level, the blocks to fit as closely together and for the blocks to show no damage from moving.

And I want it built with no mechanized equipment.

How long would it take to build it and what would be the cost?

Doesn't matter.

We could do it, we'd probably need thousands of slaves and dozens of years though.

What do you think it would cost to build?

Just curious...

Along with a guarantee from the UN and every world government that I wont' be tried for crimes against humanity for capturing and using slave labor in it's construction, as well as free use of any rock quarry I wish, and my choice of building sites.

Just kiddin.
BHN

*the dark cloaked figure runs quickly back into it's hole*

:evilgrin: :rofl:
BHN

and took decades to build. In today's dollars, it would be almost as much as, say, the Iraq quagmire!

But we'll leave that aside for now.

"They" a.k.a. "we" know perfectly well how the pyramids were built. Ancient people were neither mysteriously endowed with special power nor were they fools and rubes.

All it would take to build another pyramid with the same technology is a wildly wealthy, young, extreme megalomaniac obsessed with building a pyramid. With access to a quarry, incredibly cheap labor, some very skilled craftspeople and a near total lack of interest in any other life goals or concerns, that megalomaniac would have a great chance of repeating the feat of Giza.

In other words, what you really need, is a Pharaoh.

Our Pharaoh built Microsoft. God willing, it will not last as long.

And it isn't just the Egyptian pyramids. We have NO IDEA of how the massive walls of South America came to be, nor can we duplicate them.
http://www.world-mysteries.com/gw_rnincas.htm

They put most of the blocks on the bottom, then a smaller layer on top of that, than a smaller layer on top of that, and so on.

We don't know all the specifics about what they used for certain aspects of the engineering, but we can easily repeat the same things using their level of technology. Some of them were quite ingenious, and have been replicated on various scales by archaeologists and architects in controlled trials, from building small scale examples of the pyramids, to raising obelisks.

The ancient egypitians were anything but inept. Same with most ancient socieities. Just because they didn't have our level of technology didn't make them fools.

:shrug:

They were pretty good astronomers, they could predict eclipses with good accuracy. But then again, so could the Babylonians, Sumerians, or anybody else who had a counting system and spent a lot of nights outdoors.

I'm not saying that I think the world will end on 2012, but it is an interesting topic... and it is, albeit vaguely, science-based.

2012 has no significance in the Babylonian or Sumerian calenders.

Doesn't really have a significance in the Mayan calender either. It's just the end of the long count, an artifact of their base 20 counting system.

It's got nothing to do with science at all. Just numerology.

There's lots of info out there if you want it. I have no dog in this fight, as I don't really care and just find it interesting, so I'm not going to argue about it. But that year WAS significant to many ancient cultures, and the Mayans also wrote of that year being the year of great change, not just in the calendar.

There were no cultures that gave a shit about 2012, even the Mayans.

the Mayan calendar never went past that time, or for around this time, they must've been pretty savvy, from what I've read about them.

Maybe 2012 was just where they finally decided they had mapped it out far enough.

There are Mayan inscriptions that refer to events that take place in 4772 A.D.

Nice try though.

by whatever means.
We need that.
we need People at the helm, not the Cheney's.

What did they know about astronomy that we don't know about?

Sure, we have more knowledge now... well, scientists do, and they're able to use telescopes and use computers to calculate complicated data. But the ancients had an understanding that modern man doesn't seem to have, and that was the ability to know the multitude of things they knew by just closely observing the sky. The average person today probably can't even identify the North Star in the sky.

That said, what they knew that we didn't I suppose remains to be seen.

"The average person today probably can't even identify the North Star in the sky."

Could the average Mayan?

Thats what I thought.

This is what I love about followers of woo-woo pseudo-scientific bullshit. Did you really think "Yes" with no example of why you are right would fly?

If you don't care about this bullshit, why are you posting about it and trying to start debates?

Read up on it if you want. If you don't, don't. But leave me the fuck alone.

The one about Mayans understanding astronomy better than us?

Don't want people calling you on bullshit like this, don't post about it!

Want me to "leave you the fuck alone"? Don't post bullshit, as fact, and expect no one to call you on it. It's a public message board, and if you're going to post woo-woo nonsense, there are people around that *will* call you out on it every time...

This poster is well known for carrying a big stir-the-shit stick.
My advice, ignore.

BHN

No sweat off my balls.

And you're right. It's not personal. I'll call this type of bullshit out, no matter who is posting it.

Oh wait, I forgot, sometimes the tag teams get confused
by more than one note...
:rofl:
Lovely choice of words, btw.
And such an image!
BHN

Maybe the Mayans have the answers to forum thread structure in their calendar.

Did they understand main sequence stars, neutron stars, red shift, the size and distance of galaxies, orbital mechanics? So, they had a calendar and could predict eclipses. We can do that, and so did many early cultures. Today we can with far greater accuracy - we can even predict when tiny asteroids will eclipse stars not even visible to the maked eye to the milisecond

Nonsense, except they might have had a better understanding of astronomy than the average creationist.

:)

But my question is the standard response to anyone who says the world is about to end. (especially rapture ready folks)

So, can I have your stuff? (variation on the Monty Python line: "So, can we have your liver then?")

It's also a standard line for gamers when someone pitches a fit and says "I'm quitting"

I figure there's got to be something to this.

Off subject, but there's this guy who has filed over 60 FOIA requests on Hillary and UFOs - apparently, there was a lot more going on during those days than just Bill's BJs. Interesting stuff
http://www.presidentialufo.com/hillary_clinton_election.htm

. . . whenever I hear a prophesy, I prophesied that it won't happen. So far I'm totally accurate. But Oprah doesn't want me. Not even Coast to Coast.

2112, not 2012!







:evilgrin:

What happen?

Somebody set us up the bomb.

The Dingh Bhats were an ancient culture in lower southwest east central Asia that thrived long before the Egyptians built the pyramids. The Dingh Bhats invented many technologies that we take for granted today, including the hole, the pile of rocks, and using car keys to clean out your ears--clearly they must have had divine or extraterrestrial help to conceive of these wonders thousands of years before the Mayans failed to invent the wheel and tens of thousands of years before the Gameboy even existed! The Dingh Bhat calendar ended in 1627, so there is no need to worry. The world already ended in 1627, so how could it end in 2012?

So the interesting thing is the merge between what real scientists predict and what ancient civilizations predicted.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10mar_stormwarning.htm

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0306_060307_sunspots.html

Both of those articles say that the solar peak will start between 2008 and 2012, that really has nothing to do with this woo-woo crap about the ancients...

Right, 1958, the last time the world ended.

Good fucking grief. If you want to peddle this, fine. But please don't drag "scientists" and "NASA" into it. Yes, the sun experiences cycles which average around 11 years, culminating in peak periods of sunspot activity.

(Wow- and ONE OF THOSE PEAKS coincides with the end of the Mayan Calendar! Holy fucking shit! :wow: What are the odds? Hmmm, actually, something like one in 11.)

It appears that NASA has reason to believe that the next peak period may be a strong one- like the one we had in 1958.

That does NOT MEAN the world is ending. For fuck's sake. "What is interesting" how people who apparently have no grasp of real science whatsoever can misinterpret what "real scientists predict" so it lines up with whatever they've been told in a book they bought for $19.95 at Isis Rising is in the crystals or the auras or shirley maclaine's all-prophesizing laundry stains.

"The only way to reconcile science and religion is to set up something which is not science and something that is not religion." - H.L. Mencken

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Interesting from a personal perspective-
I remember remarking to a friend somewhere in that time frame
that it felt as the the center of gravity was shifting
in the universe. People I knew were experiencing
subtle, but profound changes in their lives.
Sort of a collective consciousness tweaking, if you will.
WE certainly do live in interesting times,
of that there is no doubt.
BHN

""One big difference is how modern physicists view and how the ancient Mayas viewed "Time". Today, physicists view Time as being linear. Time according to modern precepts flows in a straight line. Time can slow down, as per Albert Einstein, but it always flows in one direction. In contrast, the Mayas believed essentially that Time flows in a circle. ""

I've believed this well before reading about Hunab Ka. It makes so much more sense to me. Everything is round. from the smallest particles to the biggest concievable universe. It's round. It's a womb, not a penis.

They are the ones who requested a documentarian
visit so they could warn the "younger brothers" (us)
about the death of the mother. (earth)
They knew the shit was hitting the fan decades ago (climate change)
due to changes they were witnessing on their sacred mountain
which they call the "Heart of the World."
They say that they are the "Elder brothers" and they have
been keeping us safe, but their warning was that
we were doing SO much damage to the mother that they could
no longer keep up. They were asking that we heed their
warnings and work with them to save the mother.
Check it out-
http://www.taironatrust.org
Perhaps the most incredible thing about them is
the fact that their prophecies and philosophies about
the laws of nature and our part in it as nearly identical to that
of the Hopi, who, until quite recently, they had no contact with
what so ever.
Do a search on Kogi and Hopi.
It'll blow your mind.
BHN

If not, you have no respect for indigenous peoples
and are part of the "left" who so closely resembles the "right."
Sometimes the resemblance here on DU is surreal, at best.
BHN

And WTF is "It's round. It's a womb, not a penis." about? don't tell me you are one of those nitwits that think every tall object is a phallic symbol... :eyes:

please don't insult me. not that it matters much to me, I've have had better insults in my life and survived.

everything is round. from the very little to the biggest. Planets don't go off track like penises? It's all a circle. it's round. It's confirmed. sorry that your 'manhood' has been contested. wasn't a personal point at all to you. but you have made it so.

"Planets don't go off track like penises?"

Planets are round because of gravity.

What's your point?

symbols.
the world has been ruled by linear domination like there is no tomorrow. and no past to learn from.
it's all really round, and we will see some changes, hopefully. No thrust, no penetration, no domination.

What if time's shaped like a banana?

you don't want exchange.

peel that banana of yours and be happy.

"you don't want exchange."

Did I tell you to push off?

you don't want to hear or dialogue honestly.
you want to hang onto that uber Ego of yours that you have been blessed with from birth.

You were saying something about how everything's circular, except for penises, so I asked you about bananas.

Then you got mad at me.

If you're going to argue that everything is circular except for penises but not bananas, then maybe you should explain yourself a little more clearly.

"you want to hang onto that uber Ego of yours that you have been blessed with from birth."

Aren't people with uber Egos the ones that get upset when people ask them to explain their Banana Penis theory?

I have the circle thing, not the thrust thing.

Because then you're going to be in trouble.

right now.

:shrug:

I guess at which point time would conform to the shape of the bottle and then be bottle-like in shape.

I think time is shaped like an eggplant.

Pass the joint, please.

:D

Sounds fascinating, doesn't it? Do some research. I have to admit isn't easy in the huge amount of BS around the topic. There's $$$ to be made, after all.

Methinks not.

BHN

some don't get it, I guess.

Clearly the basher did not read the thread or the article I was
commenting on.
De ja vu 2004 DU anyone?
Bash first, read later, how familiar.
:rofl:
BHN

How did the Mayans determine the center of the galaxy? Did they have a radio telescope? I know there's a big one in Arecibo, but I don't think the Mayans built it.

As you posted yours after I posted my response to the Carreon link. Can't go faster than the speed of light :P

He's been out there, you know...

what I think our collective problem is.... EGO.
we are 'the shit' ain't we. We Know It All.

everything else is woo woo.

http://www.lawoftime.org/home.html

:rofl:

Because it is.

End of Line.

You get one point.

Anyone who puts "ancient wisdom" ahead of reason and science are morons.

Google : solar storm 2012

Solar flares and coronal mass ejections are common when solar activity reaches the maximum point of the cycle every 11 years.

The next cycle is supposed to be pretty heavy, but not as heavy as the one that peaked in 1958.


I did hear that there's a particular danger to those who practice thin sheeted metal haberdashery though.

This is no different than the rapture freaks.

Just because scientists that study the sun, say it's going into a new phase in 2012, does not in any way support this nonsense.

quite ancient.
quite wise.
quite reasoned.
not moronic at all.

see ya in 2012!

seems they had that calendar thingie right. amazingly right.
why is historical knowledge considered 'primitive'....
howq has modern knowledge and tech improved on the calendar?

And several different calendars. That's mostly aesthetics though.

"howq has modern knowledge and tech improved on the calendar?"

Well, we've accurately measured a year. We understand the difference between a "lunar year" and a proper one. Heliocentrism. Precision clocks.

That sort of thing.

I find it amazing that a 'primitive' society could be so knowlegeable in science and astronomy. and find even more so that some want to make this a woo woo thing.

Just asking why it's a threat. Why some brown people beyond the ages could possibly have smarts!

"I find it amazing that a 'primitive' society could be so knowlegeable in science and astronomy."

I don't. Other primitive cultures made the same sort of astronomical observations.

"and find even more so that some want to make this a woo woo thing. "

Yes, I also find it amazing that people want to rewrite Mayan history into a woo woo thing.

"Just asking why it's a threat. Why some brown people beyond the ages could possibly have smarts!"

I don't find brown people a thousand years ago having smarts a threat. I find white people nowadays being stupid a threat.

...the Mayan calender ends then, not the calender itself.

I think we all want different. I do.

Dangerous combination, but I see by your profile
you are quite young, so there IS hope for you.

Do yourself a favor and do some research on the
pharma cartel and their activities in trying to
patent "woo-woo" remedies developed by indigenous peoples.

I repeat, you are forgiven due to your age.
1986- same year my daughter was born, so now, I get your
spouting.
If I may give you a little advice, the best developments
in your field of study were made by those who
kept an open mind.
Try it, you never know what you might learn.
BHN

He appears to know more about them then you do about medicinal chemistry and patent law.

the end of the world.
The new ager bullshit has completely twisted and distorted
the Mayan, Hopi and other indigenous prophecies.
One of my friends, now deceased, was a world renowned
scholar and anthropologist on the Mayan, so don't even try.

And no, I will not engage in your childish attempts to bait
and stir up shit over things you are clearly ignorant of as well.
Nice try, but as I have told you before,
I've watched your antics on DU for a long time
and know not to waste my breath on fools
and keyboard warriors.
C'ya.
BHN

The day before the first day on the next calendar.

"The new ager bullshit have completely twisted and distorted
the Mayan, Hopi and other indigenous prophecies."

That's exactly my point, although I'm not sure what the Hopi have to do with this.

"And no, I will not engage in your childish attempts to bait
and stir up shit over things you are clearly ignorant of as well."

What is it you think I'm ignorant of? I'm willing to bet I know quite a bit more than you give me credit for.

"I've watched your antics on DU for a long time
and know not to waste my breath on fools
and keyboard warriors.
C'ya.
BHN"

So this is an admission you've lost the argument, right?

How can there even BE an argument or discussion for that matter
when we are working from two very different sets of knowledge on the matter?
Go do some research and then we'll talk.
Maybe.
I'll get back to you on that because honestly, I find your
dialectic skills to resemble Bill O'Reilly a little too closely.
BHN

And then takes off his mike and walks out of the room when he loses an argument.

:shrug:

:evilgrin:

I also post in the skeptics group and so I don't fall for scaremongering.

You are correct, the "new age" movement has completely distorted
the Mayan prophecies, or turned it to "fear mongering" as you say.
Now go learn what the prophecies really say before you dig yourself deeper...
As a bio-tech major, you may learn something useful about "change."

BHN

That the Mayans were wiped out by the EVUL pharmas who exploited them to death?
I got it now...Cortez was a big Pharma shill!!! He came just to surpress all them cancer cures right?
What the prophecies say is really irrelevant. Considering how WRONG all those prophecies were about the year 2000 why should ANYONE take this junk seriously?

Talk about crashing and bashing a thread while
cherry picking bits to hobble together as some sort of logical
statement.
Where IS that button!
Ah, there it is...
BHN

That is to say, not very much. Thats the whole point.

science and tech has obviously had many positives.
and also the most threatening - gmo's, WMD's etc.

even tho they knew scientific (?) stuff.

huh?

It wasn't even a very good calendar.

I'm not talking about the ones you buy down at Borders.

the Mayans.
those primitives.

There are a number of primitive cultures that created calendars.

:shrug:

very primitive, those guys.

At least when it came to calendar making. Also there were primitive mesopotamian cultures, the Hebrews, Chinese...

What's your point?

but that's the way it goes. white empiracle assumes the knowledge.

The Mayans had no knowledge of the Julian calendar, for example. But I still don't know what your point is.

"white empiracle assumes the knowledge."

Come again?

Aided, one would imagine, by their knowledge of anatomy.

Most philosophers of science agree it is a way of approaching knowledge.

The way is to observe the world , look at known facts, and use one's intuition to create a hypothesis -- a first guess at what else might be true about the world. Everyone does this at times, but the next step separates science from other methods of understanding the world. A scientist then attempts to construct a way of testing the hypothesis, as free as possible from the scientist's own biases. This is really quite a profound demand on the scientist (philosophers of science have noted its moral, and even spiritual, dimensions, not that most scientists take the methodology of their profession to those lofty heights).

If the hypothesis is testable, the scientist tests it. The scientist usually shares his or her results and encourages others to also construct experiments to test the hypothesis (philosophers are divided as to whether sharing one's results is strictly necessary in order for the process to be called science, and most, citing examples where sound research was done in secret, agree it isn't). Scientists then accept the results of the testing (at least ideally... in the real world you do occasionally get scientists who cling to a pet idea regardless of the evidence, but that's a matter of not practicing science, not a failure of the scientific method. Scientists after all are human, and like the rest of us can stubbornly stick to stupid ideas out of an oversensitive ego).

Notice something? Nowhere here is anything about Monsanto forcing genetically engineering on the third world, or foisting dangerous drugs at high prices on the population, or any of the other abuses people sometimes blame on science. Those abuses are corporate and governmental abuses, abuses built upon facts discovered by scientists, but then abusers exploit all facts, whether found by scientists or not. Waterboarding was not discovered through scientific research, but it's nonetheless a discovery eagerly abused around the globe by dictators and dictator-wannabes. And yes, some scientists are knowingly complicit in perpetrating corporate and government abuse, but then so too are some priests, and scientists lay less claim to being of good character by virtue of their profession than do priests.

To the best of our knowledge the Maya did not practice science. Sure, they discovered facts about the world, and they did make an effort, as we all do, to test the ideas they formed about the world. But they did not, to anyone's knowledge, attempt to get themselves and their biases out of the testing process, and they appeared to be willing, as most people not actively performing science are, to accept untested ideas as facts. Archeologists could, I suppose, always surprise us with evidence that they did have the scientific method, but given that the evidence to this date all indicates otherwise, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Science has proven itself to be a very potent way of winnowing facts from the chaos of observable phenomena. It's in fact the most powerful method humans have found for finding facts (which is why corporate and government abusers of science can be so destructive). It isn't able to address all truth, however -- only falsifiable claims (i.e., claims that can be examined and tested in a scientific manner and, could, in principle, be found to be false). Philosophy, the arts, spirituality, etc., are largely untestable. Science is not the Borg that came to assimilate beauty, love, goodness, and faith. All matters truly of the heart are untouched and untouchable by science.

What isn't untouched are a lot of claims made under the rubric of spirituality. When someone claims that certain physical phenomena will cause the sun to become unstable at a certain date, it's testable through the scientific method, even if the claims were made as a result of some sort of revelation. The same goes for a lot of other allegedly spiritual claims being made by both new age practitioners and fundamentalists. Older, more established religions had their battles with science over their myths about the real world, lost their battles, and came to terms with science for the most part. I suspect that these newer movements will need to go through the same process.

Oh yeah: I'm not a scientist (though at one point I wanted to become one, and I studied physics as far as my weak mathematical skills would allow me to go). I am, however, a mystic (lives go in odd directions sometimes, and mine seems to be one odd pretzel). Despite being on "the other side" of this putative battle, for very good reason I emphasize to my students that they can't expect to perceive truth beyond reason unless they first understand reason.

Good thing someone asked Guiliani and Kucinich about this.

Martin claims that these aliens, flying aboard 'The Great Mother Ship' to which he is taken every time he is willingly "abducted," have given him this knowledge so that he can produce and sell hand-drawings of these symbols, which will allow passage aboard the Mother Ship when the Earth is 'transformed' in 2012. Martin claims that each symbol is uniquely tuned to its buyer.

Martin also plugged his hand drawn symbols, which are available for purchase at his website<2> and can allegedly be used as "tickets" to ride in the mother ship when the Earth is destroyed in 2012.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riley_Martin

www.rileymartin.tv

but alien to what our common thoughts are.
common thoughts:
take what you can get
screw anyone over whenever you can
some people are not people
be mean and get a charge out of it
be afraid of being a human being, you serve others first - the corps, the hamster wheel.

this way we have ain't working too well.

I think about committing suicide every time I hear "In the Year 2525." That's kind of the same, right?

I just checked my calendar! It ends on 12/31!!!!

The end is near!!

Going by the "logic" of this woo-woo crap, for the world to not end on 2012, a Mayan would have to be sitting somewhere right now, making a calendar forever...

The Mayans said in the year 4772 A.D. there would be a big "anniversary" of the ascension of King Pacal.

If Joseph can spout this:

"whatever energy typically streams to Earth from the center of the Milky Way will indeed be disrupted on 12/21/12 at 11:11 p.m. Universal Time"

as quoted in the USA Today article, then it's not science - it's bollocks. And with the executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies calling it "a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in", it would seem that the claims about what the Mayans said are bollocks too.

Some of the space agencies are predicting an increased period of solar storm activity from about 2008-2011 or 2012 --that's close enough right? . There's your proof you narrow-minded skeptic you....;-)

First the usatoday link .... is really weak. It belongs in the funny section next to the horoscopes.

Second: That dude in the first link is HILLARIOUS. All of his links are to BUY HIS BOOK. Hmmmmmmmmmm.


AND



AND



A link to his My Space page. That's where I almost peed.

No lectures or appearances scheduled eh? I'm SHOCKED.

I will be so glad when 2013 rolls around so we can move past this mass psychosis and irrational fear that has so many people in its grip. Not trying to offend those who think the end is coming. I am just not convinced our end is imminent.

The End Is Nigh!

Enjoy.