2012: Is this the End?

By Rachel Higgins and Jamie Ballestrin

Ancient Mayan prophets left behind a significant relic, a single calendar, which expires on the numerologically pleasing date of 12-21-2012. This date, according to the doomsday prophesiers, marks several notable events: Earth’s alignment with the galactic equator, the sun reaching its solar maximum, and a tremendous leap in human evolution.

So how is it all going to end? Will polar shifting shake us like a snow globe? Will destructive solar storms send us into a technological dark age? Or will we have a global re-awakening and go on a magical ride into the fourth dimension?

Inventing new ways to scare ourselves has become an increasingly complicated task. By creatively blending and omitting facts, 2012 evangelists have successfully rutted a niche in our culture.

According to the first prophecy, the End of Time begins when Earth aligns itself between our sun and the black hole along the galactic equator. The gravitational forces are supposed to be so tremendous that the Earth will be greatly affected.

“There is a giant black hole in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, and like any concentration of mass it exerts gravitational force on the rest of the galaxy,” NASA Astrobiology Institute senior scientist David Morrison wrote in his “Ask an Astrobiologist” column. However, “The galactic center is very far away, approximately 30,000 light years, so it has negligible effects on the solar system or the Earth.”

Since this is the catalyst for polar shift, 2012 theorists have omitted the latter piece of information. Nevertheless, let’s pretend it actually could happen.

They claim that a geophysical pole shift will practically turn our world upside-down, and that recent evidence suggests that this has happened in the past. In theory, the gravity from the galactic alignment (from the sun, a black hole or both) would “pull” on the Earth’s outer core, forcing the tectonic plates to slip much faster than usual, causing earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis – thus shifting the earth’s weight significantly enough to cause it to tilt.

In the process, entire continents might shift from the tropics to the arctic as the Earth redistributes the weight to correct itself. Although it may seem theoretically possible for the Earth to undergo a pole shift, it’s highly unlikely. What 2012 evangelists have put together is a distorted prophecy based on two different scientific theories: pole shift and pole reversal.

The Pole Shift Theory has a long history of disturbing the masses. As early as 1842, French mathematician

The most renowned proponent for Pole Shift Theory was Charles H. Hapgood – a history professor, not a geologist. In 1958 he wrote, “The Earth’s Shifting Crust,” which outlined his theory of “Earth Crust Displacement.”

He believed that if the mass of the polar ice caps changed, the Earth’s rotational forces would cause the outer crust to slip until the planet’s weight reached equilibrium. By the 1960s, Hapgood’s concept was dismissed by the scientific community as Plate Tectonic theory gained new ground. Still, 2012 evangelists insist that recent geological evidence proves that the Earth has undergone several of these transformations in the past.

In pole reversal, the magnetic poles switch, with north becoming south and vice versa. By studying the magnetism of ancient rocks, scientists have discovered that pole reversals have occurred at irregular intervals throughout Earth’s history. The last time was about 780,000 years ago.

Researchers believe that this phenomenon is the result of movement of molten iron in the Earth’s outer core that takes place over thousands of years. Although recent studies show disturbances in our magnetic field, this doesn’t prove that we are in the midst of a pole reversal.

“From paleomagnetic records, the intensity of the field does indeed decrease, by as much as 90 percent, at the
Earth’s surface during a reversal,” according to the website for the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Geomagnetism Program. “But those same paleomagnetic records also show that the field intensity has often exhibited significant variation, with both decreases and increases in intensity, without there always being a coincident reversal.”

These recent findings have inspired yet another alternative for our demise: solar storms literally creating another Dark Age.

A solar storm is a sudden eruption of magnetic energy released on or near the surface of the sun, accompanied by bursts of electromagnetic radiation and particles. On Earth, this radiation can cause disturbances in electrical
grids and communication systems and create colorful auroras in the night sky.

Solar flares seem to be connected with the reversal of the sun’s magnetic poles during its 11-year cycle, and the next solar maximum is expected in 2012.

“The sun is unpredictable, and it can send a massive coronal mass ejection in our direction at any point in time, regardless of the sunspot cycle, according to www.2012hoax.org. “The `maximum’ is the maximum amount of sunspots and other magnetic solar activity. It does not mean that the sun only sends out solar flares during solar max.”

Although solar radiation frequently penetrates the Earth’s atmosphere, it usually causes little or no damage. However, one incident in the past has researchers scrambling to protect our infrastructure. The National Academies Press held a workshop in 2008 regarding “societal and economic impacts of severe weather events,” citing an incident that shouldn’t be ignored.

On Sept. 1, 1859, a severe solar storm caused telegraph communications throughout the United States and Europe to fail, and created strange auroras over Rome, Havana, Hawaii and the South Pole. Should a similar event occur in our lifetime, the damage would be far more extensive because our entire infrastructure is so intricately linked. Power grids and satellite communication systems all could be knocked offline at once.

More recently, a solar storm in 1989 caused the Hydro-Quebec power grid in Canada to go offline for more than
nine hours. The resulting damage and loss of revenue were estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

This evidence almost vindicates doomsday evangelists; however, they never quite explained how the Maya knew about the world’s end. Who were these ancient oracles, and did they really have the gift of foresight?

The Mayan civilization was one of the most advanced Mesoamerican cultures to thrive throughout Mexico and Central America. At the height of their civilization, from 300 to 500 AD, the Maya had made considerable advances in mathematics, astronomy, writing and literature. Their intellectual achievements helped them not only
to devise a highly accurate 365-day calendar, but to chart celestial bodies across the sky and predict summer and winter solstices.

Their mastery of calendars and astronomy almost seem esoteric in nature, leading some to speculate that their achievements are otherworldly. Apocalyptic visionaries do not find it is coincidental that the winter solstice should fall on the last day of the Mayan Long Count calendar – Dec. 12, 2012. They believe the Maya deliberately ended the calendar on this date because they literally envisioned the end of time.

Anthropologists also have been anticipating this event for years now, and agree that the Maya revered this date as a time of great change.

The Long Count calendar is a lengthy and complicated device that measures time from the beginning of the Mayan creation myth through the winter solstice of 2012. The Maya considered Aug. 11, 3114 BCE (Gregorian)
as the dawn of their creation and recorded it as Day Zero. From this date forward they counted 5,125.37 years until they reached the end date of Dec. 21, 2012.

The cyclical nature of the calendar suggests that the date will turn over like an odometer and begin again at Day Zero. Anthropologists believe that the turn of their calendar represents a renewal or rebirth of civilization, similar to our ideas about New Year’s resolutions. So far, no evidence has been found indicating that the Maya felt otherwise. Furthermore, the Mayan inscriptions that have been found consistently show that they expected life to go on as usual.

The current doomsday scenarios are a result of “contemporary confusion from projections, assumptions and misunderstanding about the science and beliefs of several ancient cultures of the Americas,” wrote Mark Van Stone of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, in his article “It’s Not the End of the World: What the Ancient Maya Tell Us About 2012.”

They never had mystical scriptures or remarkable prophetic visions regarding 2012 – or about any year for that matter.

Along with the astronomical theories, some believe in the more intense, mind-altering ideas of men like the late writer Terence McKenna.

McKenna believed in far more complicated concepts than more doomsday theorist. To sum up his beliefs: The universe’s goal is to connect information, which gets rid of entropy – the disruptive and disorderly state of matter. His graph, derived from the I-Ching, shows that November 2012 is when all the points in the universe reach their goal and everything is interconnected.

He also believed that the use of psychedelics would help us understand how it will feel when the universe connects us all to everything. He describes this shift as the entrance into the fourth, fifth and sixth dimensions.

While his theories are similar to McKenna’s, they don’t agree on everything. Stewart said he’s never touched any type of psychedelic drug, and thinks McKenna is a fool to think the simulation of these dimensions through drugs would prepare us for the real thing.

He wouldn’t let us downstairs, although he provided some snap-shots. He didn’t want his photo taken, and said we could only photograph the outside of his property without any distinguishing features. After 15 minutes, he seemed to grow nervous, as if he’d divulged top secret information that he’d get in trouble for leaking. Then he asked us to leave.

Will the world come to an end in 2012? We are burdened every day by the poor economy, war, terrorism, global warming, disease and whatever else the media tells us to worry about, but it’s the change that we find most challenging. Life on this planet constantly evolves, and we’ve all managed to survive so far. However, it is this constant state of flux that has some people believing we are at the dawn of our next evolutionary cycle.

Still, how many truly believe? Has the John Cusack movie “2012” actually left anyone running scared? Many people take these threats seriously and have built online communities, in order to share information and prepare for our inevitable doom, including 2012forum.com. This is countered by Facebook groups such as “The World Won’t End in 2012, Marty McFly Has Been to 2015” and “I’m gonna wake up on December 22nd, 2012 and say, `Fail.’”

So what can we gather from all of this? Is it nonsense? Maybe. But does it really matter?

It is comforting to know that the majority of our youth, our future, believes that there is some sort of a collective consciousness or spiritual awakening. Who knows, maybe the Mayans are correct, and we are to witness a rebirth of civilization, instead of meeting our doom.

In the end, it is the people like David of San Francisco who turn the fear into something more useful and constructive.

“Some people are so consumed in the `What if...’ that we forget about the `What is,’ he wrote. “I choose to live my life as I do every day, and being grateful for what I have. Today is my five-year anniversary with my partner, Jason. That’s what I live for. If God or some spiritual being has decided that my time is in December of 2012, then so be it. And If I worry about what will happen later, then I will have missed the 798 days that I still have left.”