Jay Cronley: Mayan calendar could bring alien visitors, a swim in a black hole
BY JAY CRONLEY World Staff Columnist
Sunday, December 02, 2012
12/02/12 at 4:34 AM
Saturday, the 22nd of this month, figures to be one of the busiest shopping days ever.
That's because the world is scheduled to end Dec. 21.
Some people will use any reason to put off Christmas shopping.
It's the Mayans causing a bump in the Earth's road to somewhere.
The Mayan calendar, which ends Dec. 21, has been studied by people ranging from nerds and nuts sitting on vortices in Sedona to actual scholars with advanced degrees of science, not degrees of fever.
The Mayan Long Count calendar is the one about to run out of days two weeks from Friday and is causing all the glances skyward to make sure the sun is where it should be, and not approaching.
The Long Count calendar was grandfathered - back-dated, with the starting point of the earth put at Aug. 31, 3114 B.C.
Close encounters of the Mayan kind: Some Mayan messages seem to have taken the form of tea leaves.
Different readers come up with wildly varying interpretations.
On the down side, the end-of-days gang believes that a catastrophic space event will eliminate the Earth from the scheme of things, the sun and this planet possibly aligning with a black hole that has the power to ruin all in its path.
People are easily frightened. Look around. That's why.
Imagine what the survivalists must think, hunkered down in the sticks with thousands of cans of Spam, hearing that something from space, not the government, could be coming.
More temporal believers of the Mayan Long Count calendar see an arrival from space in a somewhat more civil light.
Mayan carvings read like books.
Many carved images suggest the return of a visitor from space Dec. 21 - that or a Chicago Bears victory over the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday.
Party like it's Dec. 21: There have been some pretty salty prophecies issued by individuals and ancient cultures down through time, with Nostradamus and the Mayans running neck and neck in claiming most disasters foreseen, so their backers say.
Previous successes in math and astronomy, like the reasonably correct dating of the Earth's age, have caused many to take the Mayan calendar seriously.
So what's a person to do?
There have been some pretty raucous hurricane parties.
Imagine a last-of-the-world gathering based on the premise that anything that happens here ends here.
Original Print Headline: Mayan calendar claim jumps the tracks
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