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- Nope, for a wide variety of reasons.
- Let's just say that my daughter is already planning an end of the world party, lol. We think it's great fun. Last I heard, scientists determined that the only reason the Mayan calender ended was because they ran out of room.
- No, I do not believe in that. ^^ What Audaria said.
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...then it restarts a whole new calendar, etc. Yeah, no doomsday.
I belong to an ethnic group people are fond of ascribing mystical powers to, and lemme tell ya, it's a shade irritating- I can only imagine what actual Mayans (those not playing into this, and there are some who are) actually think of this whole "end of the Long Count and the world/return of Kukulcan" business, which, let's be frank, is mainly a first-world occultist interpretation. No offense meant to anybody who believes it, of course, I just don't know that the interpretation is borne out by actual Mayan mythology aside from some very ambiguous, incomplete stelae and a lot of questionable conjecture as to their meanings. - IMHO, there are going to be alot of very embarrassed people when December 22nd, 2012 comes around.
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If it does, I will be pissed, because that's a month before my 21st birthday. :[ The Mayans don't want me to go drinking or go to Vegas. PFFT.
In all seriousness, though, no, I don't believe it. I haven't really looked into it at all, but from what I've heard I've just came to the conclusion that I don't believe it'll happen. :) - @Shepherdmoon: and a lot of very, very cheap books tossed into bargain-bins like there was right after Y2K.
- Besides, the world already ended...remember the prediction for a month or two ago?
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We as a species have been predicting the end of the world for centuries:
“Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”
That's from Assyria, dated about 2800 BC.
I am intrigued, though, by the idea that every man wanting to write a book was a sign of the end to the Assyrians... - Hahahaha Djabriil, that is indeed interesting.
- I was thinking, if "screenplay" were to be substituted for "book", it might even make the prophecy a smidge more timely... or, to "every man wants to write a book", add "ostentatiously on their laptops at Starbucks, for the benefit of onlookers".
- Did you hear that everyone who plays Glitch will eventually turn into a pickle? It's true! I know because I read it on the Internet.
- Yeah! Totally! It was on Wikipedia, so I know it's true.
- OMG, for reals??? I need to get in a sandwich, STAT!!!11!!1 lol
- Oh, about that!? Sandwiches will become poisonous to the human body on October 6, 2012!!
- IS THERE NOWHERE TO RUN?!
- NOWHERE! 'SPESH CUZ THE WORLD WILL BE TAKEN OVER BY ALIENS IN TWO MONTHS!
- CURSE MY VINEGARY HEART!!! WHAT WILL BECOME OF MY BABY GHERKINS???
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I don't think the end of the Mayan calendar indicates the end of the world, but I'm a little worried about the November 2012 elections. As an Alaskan and former Minnesotan, I'm very worried that either Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman might end up in the oval office.
PS I also know someone who said the current pope would be the last, because the end-of-times were supposed to come during the the reign of a Pope Benedict. I'm just saying ... - Oh thank you kastlin! Those 2 are HUGE worries for me as well! I shudder to think!
- I don't worry too much about the end of the world. When it's ended, I won't be here. Better to focus on what I'm doing while I'm still about.
- Well that should certainly make Mickle Pickle happy
- LOL! Love the pickle humour. :)
- What Zeezee said. No way of knowing, no point in worrying.
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Heck no GemGem......
How do i know the World will not end 2012?..Lol, because Mor furniture store is extending credit till 2016!...lol - I don't believe it. BUT when googling such stuff to calm my young grandson down, I did find that scientists are on edge about a predicted sunspot that would be happening right around that time. They think it might have a serious effect on the earth, but I really skipped over that because I didn't want to alarm the kid. I feel when the time has come, the time will have come.
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The world will come to an end one day,and no later than when our sun goes supernova.
There's a time for everything ~including the end of this solar system (but I seriously doubt it will be December 2012). - Our Sun isn't big enough to go supernova, but it will become a red giant, getting so large that it either engulfs the earth or is at least close enough to it for solar prominences to lick at it. All life on earth will be dead before then as the sun gradually brightens with time and it gets hot enough to evaporate all of the oceans, turning Earth into something like what Venus is right now. We still have a few billion years before that happens. In the mean time, we're much more likely to get wiped out by other things, like global warming or the inevitable collision with a large asteroid or comet. The latter happens on average every few tens of millions of years, and we're due for another any time now, plus or minus a few million years. Every time, there have been mass extinctions on Earth, with only a small percentage of the species surviving. Good luck to the human race...
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Qizara, you can tell your grandson that there is absolutely no way scientists could possibly predict a particular sunspot happening at any particular time. We are heading toward solar maximum now (just coming out of an unusually long minimum), but when we do get there in a few years it is predicted to be much more mild than past maxima, so will have even less of an effect overall on us than what we've seen in previous years. You never know for sure, though--solar activity is pretty unpredictable. The worst it will do if we get a strong geomagnetic storm from a solar flare, though, is knock out some power plants and fry some electronics (especially our satellites that aren't protected by the Earth's atmosphere). It could start fires (which it has done in the past--back in the days when they used telegraph wires), but it won't directly affect human beings otherwise.
In short: whatever article(s) you are referencing are utter and complete lies. - i dont think it will "end" the world, i think that the big sunspot thing, will end the world how we know it, e.g no electricity, due to a big emp, if it does end, i will probably be too drunk to realise
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Sunspots don't hurt the Earth at all. If there is a large enough solar flare to eject massive amounts of energized charged particles and x-rays directly toward the Earth, those particles and radiation can damage satellites. All of the x-rays and the vast majority of the charged particles will be absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere or deflected into space by its magnetic field. Enough can (and has) gotten through to temporarily disrupt radio communications and knock out power. A few years ago power was knocked out to a whole providence in Canada because of a solar flare. But, they got it back up and everything was OK, and nobody died... and life as we know it continues unchanged. The worst solar flare in written history shorted out telegraph wires, causing wide-spread fires. The technology is different now, so this won't happen again. A nice side of it: Northern/Southern lights are more powerful, and can be seen closer to the equator than usual, giving some people an unusual treat.
Overall, in the rare case of a really bad solar flare hitting the Earth: radio may not work for a little while, but it will again after it passes. Some places may lose power for a little while until the workers restore it. The worst thing that could happen is we may lose some satellites, but those can be replaced. No biggy. Kids (and adults) can go read a book or play outside for awhile while they wait for the power or the satellite TV to come back on. There are more scary things to worry about.
Also, solar flares like this are completely and utterly unpredictable. There is NO WAY to know that one is going to happen before it happens. We have some warning before it gets here when we see it appear on the Sun, as it takes awhile to travel to Earth. Otherwise, it is impossible to predict. Anyone that tells you different is lying, or misinformed. -
For anyone basing their predictions on the Maya calendar, you have to understand that the whole idea is that time is cyclical, and therefore always keeps going. The world will not end at the end of their calendar anymore than it will when your clock reaches 11:59, or a Western calendar reaches December 31. It just goes back to the top of the calendar and keeps rolling.
People have been predicting that the end of civilization is going to happen any day now, ever since they invented....civilization. You can read ancient Egyptian papyrus that say it, Medieval manuscripts, and hundreds of others. They have all had complicated evidence to prove that the end was coming, *right then*. Guess what, every single one of them was WRONG, just like this one. - I think people are just tired of Hollywood playing with their emotions and want this zombie-apocalypse business to finally kick in already :)
- Nope. When MY calendar ends, I just go get a new calendar.
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Nope, just like Kaessa says. Also: Science can't predict the weather accurately more than 3 days ahead. Things like climate change are true, but that's climate, not weather. (Climate is much easier to study the past of). Asteroids, sunspots, volcanoes, gods raining down wrath... This is all speculation.
Phil Plait has an awesome book, "Death from Above." Long story short: anything that's possible is unlikely, and we'd have pretty much no advanced warning anyway. But you should grab the book. - Phil Plait is awesome in general. Anyone who gets their own comic-ified title sequence for a Discovery Channel show about actual science pretty much wins.
- We make new calendars every year, I don't think that the world is going to end every year. Why would I think that it is going to end on this date just because an ancient civilization who couldn't properly diagram the heavens or even TELL time with any kind of useful accuracy decided that their calendar would end that day?
- The Mayans ran out of stone. :D