2012 Movie Unleashes Doomsday Theories, Irks NASA

by Roy Mark

According to Sony Pictures, “Never before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists and governments. 2012 is an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world.” (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures)

What is so important about the winter solstice of 2012? Nothing, say NASA scientists, but in disaster scenario land, the end of time is coming on Dec. 21, 2012, because that is the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar. Combined with the astronomical meaning of the Mayan Sacred Tree, it somehow all adds up to disaster.

This theory involves a cover-up, always a key element in a good tale. According to legend, ancient Sumerians discovered a planet they called Niburi. It is, indeed, one bad boy according to the theory: five times larger than Earth, 100 times the mass of Earth and hurtling toward a collision with Earth on—you guessed it—Dec. 21, 2012. The theory also is that NASA knows this but keeps the public in the dark. (Image courtesy of NASA)

This is the alignment of the December solstice sun with the Galactic equator, and it won’t be pretty. This alignment occurs only once every 26,000 years and is what, as the theory goes, the ancient Maya were pointing to with the 2012 end-date of their Long Count calendar. Of course, the original prediction for this Galactic alignment was 1998, but why let that get in the way of a good story? (Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures)

Both Mayan and ancient Hindu calendars began at about the same time over 5,000 years ago, and both calendars predict a totally new world after about 5,000 years into their calendars. Coincidence? True? Accurate? Anything goes in the Internet world of doomsday predicting.

According to Hopi Indian seers, the end is near. It may or may not have anything to do with the Hopi belief that those who steal rocks from the moon are asking for doom. In any event, the Hopi think the world will soon go through a period of destruction. Why not Dec. 21, 2012? Internet doomsdayers easily make the leap of faith. (Image courtesy of Goldwater Library)

The Web Bot Project, developed in the late 1990s, was created to assist in making stock market predictions using a system of spiders to crawl the Internet searching for keywords. Surprise! It turns out it can predict far more than stock market quotes. The bot program also predicts a worldwide calamity taking place in the year 2012. (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures)

To quote NASA: “A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. However, many of the disaster Websites pull a bait-and-shift to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway.”