Quote (juliusjuice @ May 7 2010 12:31pm)
first, i do NOT believe the world will end in 2012. but i want to hear some explanations on how mayans, etc could predict something like this (tho they didnt). ill go first.
the mayans and egyptians had a few things in common. both had a fascination with and incredible ability to measure cosmic alignment, and both built pyramids.what if the mayans knew something about gamma ray bursts? ofc they wouldnt know what they were, just that they came in cycles, sometimes worse than others. if their culture still remembered from the last age of aquarius (happens every 8,500 years, a really long time to keep a document except on something like a pyramid...). they way a gamma ray burst works is it somes from a black hole an a straight "narrow" line. we would have to be very unlucky to get hit directly by a bad one, but it is very possible. these bursts give off an equal amount of energy possesed by the entire earth every few minutes. there is absolutely no way to shield something from it (unless you have another black hole blocking you). luckily the alignment of our spiral galaxy shields us from the supermassive black hole at milky way's center, these would have to come from other galaxies that are in a perfect line with our solar system. is it possible that mayans could predict something that we barely understand even now? keep in mind they were thousands of years ahead of their time, but how many thousands? were pyramids supposed to be continuously built to shelter people from these bursts? the emissions from these supermassive balck holes are the most powerful concentration of energy know in the universe. the only event that would be greater would be the big bang itself. (dont know about supernovas but my book doesnt mention them)
First off I doubt the pyramids were designed to shelter people from gamma ray bursts. I don’t think they could predict that, we cant even predict that. The whole 2012 being the end of the world is something that has been made up more recently, like within the last decade or less. The reasons for this is that many ancient cultures, including the myans, Egyptians and others marked a date, roughly in the month of December, 2012 as a special date, the day day at which these cultures all stopped their calendars. This is because their calendars were created by tracking the planets. This date was and agreeable is, by even modern scientists the approximate time when all of the planets will align. This only happens every few thousands of years or something, quite a spectacular event really, however, as cool and rare as it is, it means one thing and one thing only…that planets are in a line…nothing magical, not the end of the world.
Keep in mind that scholars has been predicting the end of the world since the idea of the world having and end was invented....probably tens of thousands of years ago. And ever single one of their predictions have been wrong.
This post was edited by Spartikis on May 7 2010 01:14pm