2012: Six End-of-the-World Myths Debunked Myth 3

2012 MYTH 3

Galactic Alignment Spells Doom

Some sky-watchers accept 2012 will abutting with a "galactic alignment," which will action for the aboriginal time in 26,000 years (for example, see the Web website Alignment 2012).

In this scenario, the aisle of the sun in the sky would arise to cantankerous through what, from Earth, looks to be the beggarly of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which in acceptable examination altitude appears as a blurred band beyond the night sky.

Some abhorrence that the agenda will somehow betrayal Earth to able alien galactic armament that will accelerate its doom—perhaps through a "pole shift" (see above) or the active of the supermassive atramentous aperture at our galaxy's heart.

Others see the declared accident in a absolute light, as heralding the aurora of a new era in animal consciousness.

NASA's Morrison has a altered view.

"There is no 'galactic alignment' in 2012," he said, "or at atomic annihilation out of the ordinary."

He explained that a blazon of "alignment" occurs during every winter solstice, if the sun, as apparent from Earth, appears in the sky abreast what looks to be the beggarly of the Milky Way.

Horoscope writers may be aflame by alignments, Morrison said. But "the absoluteness is that alignments are of no absorption to science. They beggarly nothing," he said. They actualize no changes in gravitational pull, solar radiation, all-embracing orbits, or annihilation abroad that would appulse activity on Earth.

The belief over alignments isn't surprising, though, he said.

"Ordinary ample phenomena are absorbed with a faculty of blackmail by humans who already anticipate the apple is traveling to end."

Regarding galactic alignments, University of Texas Maya able David Stuart writes on his blog that "no age-old Maya argument or artwork makes advertence to annihilation of the kind."

Even so, the end date of the accepted Long Count cycle—winter acme 2012—may be affirmation of Maya ample skill, said Aveni, the archaeoastronomer.

"I don't aphorism out the likelihood that astrochemistry played a role" in the alternative of 2012 as the cycle's terminus, he said.

Maya astronomers congenital observatories and, by celebratory the night skies and application mathematics, abstruse to accurately adumbrate eclipses and added angelic phenomena. Aveni addendum that the alpha date of the accepted aeon was acceptable angry to a solar acme passage, if the sun crosses anon overhead, and its terminal date will abatement on a December solstice, conceivably by design.

(Take a Maya Empire quiz.)

These choices, he said, may announce that the Maya agenda is angry to melancholia agronomical cycles axial to age-old survival.