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Why the World Didn't End Yesterday, presented by Science@NASA
Dec. 22, 2012: If you're watching this video, it means one thing:
The World Didn't End Yesterday.
According to media reports of an ancient Maya prophecy,
the world was supposed to be destroyed on Dec. 21, 2012.
But look around you.
'The whole thing was a misconception from the very beginning,'
says Dr. John Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy.
'The Maya calendar did not end on Dec. 21, 2012,
and there were no Maya prophecies foretelling the end of the world on that date.'
The truth, he says, is more interesting than fiction.
Carlson is a hard-nosed scientist--
a radio astronomer who earned his degree studying distant galaxies.
He became interested in the 2012 phenomenon 35 years ago
when he attended a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
and learned about the Maya.
Where the rain forests of Mesoamerica now stand,
a great civilization once flourished.
The people of Maya society built vast cities
with a population density comparable to modern Los Angeles County.
They mastered astronomy and developed an elaborate written language.
Most impressive, to Carlson,
was their expansive sense of time.
'The times Mayas used dwarf those currently used by modern astronomers,' he explains.
'According to our science,
the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago.
There are dates in Mayan ruins that stretch back
a billion billion times farther than that.'
The Maya Long Count Calendar was designed to keep track of such long intervals.
'It is the most complex calendar system ever developed.'
Written using modern typography,
the Long Count Calendar resembles the odometer in a car.
Because the digits rotate,
the calendar can 'roll over' and repeat itself;
this repetition is key to the 2012 phenomenon.
According to Maya theology,
the world was created 5125 years ago,
on a date we would write 'August 11, 3114 BC.'
At the time, the Maya calendar looked like this: 13.0.0.0.0
On Dec. 21, 2012, it is exactly the same: 13.0.0.0.0
In the language of Maya scholars,
'13 Bak'tuns' elapsed between the two dates.
This was a significant interval in Maya theology,
but, stresses Carlson,
not a destructive one.
None of the thousands of ruins, tablets,
and standing stones that archeologists have examined
foretell an end of the world.
Modern science agrees.
NASA experts recently gathered in a Google hangout to share their findings.
Don Yeomans, head of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program,
stated that no known asteroids or comets were on a collision course with Earth.
Neither is a rogue planet coming to destroy us.
'If there were anything out there like a planet headed for Earth,'
said NASA astrobiologist David Morrison,
'it would already be [one of the] brightest objects in the sky.
Everybody on Earth could see it.
You don't need to ask the government, just go out and look.
It's not there.'
Lika Guhathakurta, head of NASA's Living With a Star Program,
said the sun is not a threat, either.
'The sun has been flaring for billions of years--
long before the Maya even existed
--and it has never once destroyed the world.'
'Right now the sun is approaching the maximum of its 11-year activity cycle,'
she added,
'but this is the wimpiest solar cycle of the past 50 years.
Reports to the contrary are exaggerated.'
To Carlson, Dec. 21, 2012, is not a day of dread.
On the contrary, he says,
'I have been waiting to experience this day for more than 30 years.'
For him, 'experiencing Dec. 21, 2012'
means visiting the Maya homeland in the Yucatan,
and thinking back to the height of Maya civilization,
when ancient humans contemplated expanses of time orders of magnitude
beyond modern horizons.
And, of course,
appreciating the fact that The World Didn't End Yesterday.
Got more questions about Dec. 21 2012?
Check www.nasa.gov/2012 for answers.
And for breaking science news, stay tuned to science.nasa.gov.