I'm an amateur reader of the Mayan culture and other "end times" prophecies just for entertainment. I was wondering though, if someone might have a credible link to information regarding the "alignment" between the "center of the galaxy" and our sun.

About 95% of the reading I've done is written by hacks trying to get their own agenda out there but I'm wondering if there is any true astrological truth to the matter. I'm new here as a member to universe today but I've been reading the news on this site for a couple of years. So I know that someone on this site will be able to point me in the right direction, if there is such a direction.

Thanks

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DEUCE

The center of the galaxy is in the constellation Sagittarius. The rotational axis of the Sun never points at Sagittarius. What alignment are you thinking of? Just simply when Earth passes most closely to the line defined by the two points (The Sun and Sgr A*)?

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he's asking about the alignment that's going to bring the end of the world as we know it, as foretold by many prophets looking to make profits.

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There are about fifty threads on this topic already.
It so happens, in the current epoch, that the position of the sun in the sky at winter solstice aligns with the plane of the galaxy, in approximately the direction of the galactic centre. This happens every year, with no noticeable effect. Precession of the equinoxes moves the alignment gradually so that there is a moment of "best alignment". We don't need to wait until 2012 for it to occur, however: it happened a few years ago.

Grant Hutchison

According to my starry night software the sun passes though the galactic longitudinal equator on December 9, 2012 at 12:47:29 AM Eastern US Time. On that day absolutely nothing will happen. The world and solar system will continue to exist as they always have. There is no empirical evidence to state otherwise that something bad will happen. Other stars have passed though the galactic equator and nothing happened to them. The sun moves though the equator every 2 or 3 years and we are all still alive.

Alignments with the galactic equator, and with the zero meridian of galactic longitude happen every year, not just in 2012. I'm not sure what you mean by "longitudinal equator", but it's perhaps worth pointing out that the sun is not passing through the equatorial plane of the galaxy at that time; we're well away from it, and moving farther.

Grant Hutchison

"Astrological truth" is an oxymoron.

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The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

One more for The 2012 Collection!

2003 no, 2012 si
2012
Pole shift / Planetary alignment 2012?
2012 alignment question
about the Mayan 2012 item
2012 Debunking?
Possible asteroid impact in 2012?
2012 asteroid?
We don't have to worry about 2012!
More on 2012 from India Daily
2012 Completion of conspiracy?
Here's what's REALLY going to happen in 2012...
crop circles, Planet X and 2012
Planet X, crop circles and 2012 cataclysma
According to the Mayans, what will happen on 23rd Dec. 2012?
More 2012 Nonsense
NEO 2012?
Dangerous NEO in 2012?
Christmas 2012
2012 mayan calender end of world
Regarding the supposed polar shift/new ice age in 2012
New 2012 threat?
2012 look at this thing on the sun
Russian Expert Predicts Global Cooling from 2012
Pole shift idea origins
Dec 20 2012
2012 Stuff
Horizon Project-New End of World Scare?
Date: December 21st 2012
Earth passing thru Galactic center in 2012 - didn't that already happen?
2012: What do you think well happen (if anything)
So what will we see in 2012?
Galactic Tsunami?
Plane of the ecliptic of the galaxy?
Earth's Magnetic Field & 2012
2012?
Any truth to this?
How can the sun be aligned with Galactic centre?
the whole 2012 poles flip nonsense
Planet X Official Advertisement
What year are we in
Quick question about the sun
Galactic Alignment

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Thanks for the input... Like I said, most of the info I've read is written by hacks trying to get their own agenda out there. I'm not a believer that time is going to stop in 2012 or that we will all be transformed into hippies but I just wanted to see if I could look into the sky and watch an event that supposedly only happens every 13,000 years. If so, I guess I have a few years.

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DEUCE

Yes, you have a few problems :
1) To watch it happen, you'd need to be able to see the Sun, in which case you wouldn't be able to see the Milky Way.
2) It happened a few years ago, so you'll have a very long wait until the next time.
3) The alignment with the winter solstice happens every 26,000 years or so, in time with the precession of the equinoxes; the 13,000-year figure presumably relates to a solstice: the next alignment will be with the summer solstice.

Grant Hutchison

The last doomsday date that I remember the nuts making a big deal about was the 1999/2000 date. After it became clear that nothing was going to happen on that date, the nuts fell back to the ole Mayan Calendar 2012 date. I wonder if anybody knows the date of their next fall back date? I know we have that asteroid heading our way in 20 to 30 years, but surely these guys must have something to be worried about before then.

I don't know of any such before the various asteroid encounters, but one that I know is coming up is Sir Isaac Newton's "prediction" of the apocalypse in 2060. It's never too early for doomsday, you know! Five decades worth of pot-boiler books. Whoopee!

As for computer-generated mayhem, the next date will be sometime in 2038 when the UNIX time flips back to 1901. (Number of seconds stored as a 32-bit signed quantity; rolls from +2 billion and something to -2 billion and something.) I'm sure most UNIX/Linux systems will be storing the number of seconds from 1970 January 1 as 64-bit numbers by then. Darn!

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Trantor,

You forgot Planet X! The BA mopped the floor with Nancy (Lieder) on C2C (Coast to Coast)! Of course, that didn't stop her, but she did lose many of her followers.

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Interesting! I didn't think her followers were capable of that kind of change. Well, that is good news. I guess there is hope after all. Of course, that is assuming that some of them didn't just quit Nancy Lieder's group and then joined up with some other far-out cult/doomsday group.

The entire Maya culture or just the "end times"?
'Cause the rest of the Maya culture is pretty cool, too.

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Here is a 26 second YouTube clip that actually explains it all without saying a word. I get it now.

Basically, the Galactic plane runs through our sky. Because the galaxy is really big, and we're not (thank you Warners), the Galactic plane extends far above and below the Solar plane, but does not actually cross it, in a physical sense. At two points along the ecliptic (Solar plane), the Galactic plane seems to cross it, as seen from Earth. It's a perspective thing. The Galactic plane just extends out so far that it's long enough to look like it dips below the ecliptic. On the Winter Solstice, from 1994, to 2012, the disk of the Sun will cover that spot where the Galactic plane seems to cross the ecliptic.

Maybe someone else can say it better, but basically, it's an event about like an airplane blocking out the light from Venus from where you're standing. And just about as significant.

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were they the ones that ripped the still beating hearts out of people on top of pyramids to please the gods and killed the losing team of that game where they threw the rubber ball thru the hoops?

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OK, but I think "cool" has a different meaning in this sense. We sometimes call lions and spiders and sharks "cool" but they also do a variety of not-so-nice things to their meals.

Mayans certainly didn't have a monopoly on cruelty among ancient cultures. I think you have to sort of accept it as part of the territory. There's a difference between saying an ancient culture is "cool" and saying you actually would have wanted to live there.

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Those would be the Aztecs.
They had a real death-cult thing going on.
They sacrificed prisoners of war, so they started a lot of wars.

Gods don't want second best, the winning team was sacrificed.

The Mayans are still around, some 6 million of them.
And some of them still practice a form of that old time religion.
(Sans human sacrifice that is.)

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If there were a "galactic plane" and if there were a "plane of the ecliptic" and if they intersected, their intersection would be a line.

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Aztecs called them "flower wars", and even had a specialized warrior class called the Jaguar Warriors (or Jaguar Knights), trained to use special weapons to incapacitate and capture foes rather than kill them. Which is hard.

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There is, there is, they do, and it is. We are in the middle of that line, and we can look along it in either direction to where the line meets the celestial sphere. It meets it in two places- one of which is fairly near the location of the galactic centre as seen from earth; this point is also near where the winter solstice occurs in 2012.

But not really near enough to be significant.

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I think you have the right idea here DEUCE N CHICA. Don't take for granted what you read or hear to be true but search for yourself and look for independent sources that can corroborate what your reading. Keep an open mind and rather then rejecting/accepting any idea try and understand it. When your goal is understanding of all this knowledge it makes it possible to discern between truth and fallacy otherwise it all can lead you astray. "Be mindful of your thoughts", as Obi-Wan once told young Anakin.

To answer your original question you can use a virtual universe program to help you get a better perspective like Celestia: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Or a not as dramatic but also useful site, esky: http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/default...alequinox.html

Spending time researching ancient cultures to establish a believable doomsday theory is completely missing the point in my opinion. Reality is far more interesting then anything these simple minded people can conjure up. The current academic understanding of ancient cultures is ambiguous at best if not almost completely misunderstood. To accept the thought that we are collectively more knowledgeable now then anytime in our history is drastically limiting our ability to understand, how can we then learn for past knowledge if we believe they are intellectually inferior to us. For instance, to think of astrology as just reading horoscopes and not real science could cause you to miss an opportunity to understand what the zodiac wheel means and possibly it's origin or why there are 12 constellations in the wheel, 12 months in a year and 12 hours on our clock? Does this have specific meaning or is it just random? Astrology and astronomy are quite different now then they were thousands of years ago and I have a tough time believing astrology originated out of ignorance, superstition and a desire for fortune telling.

Correct. The Maya also sacrificed people, but not as prolifically as the Aztecs, and they perfered throwing their victims into sinkholes.
But that's not what I thought was cool.
Their eclipse predictions are cool.
Discovering the concept of zero was cool.
Their glyph writing is cool and I can even read a little of it and write the numbers up to 19!

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Don't you need 3 objects for an alignment that is non-trivial? ? Aren't 2 objects always aligned?

If the sun were to appear superimposed on the galactic centre in the sky (which I think many people might be happy to call an "alignment" of the two objects), then the third object in the line is the observer on Earth.
Now, as you say, the line between galactic centre and sun is still (trivially) there whether we drop into the line as an observer or not. But in the sort of magical thinking that goes into these "events", the occasions when we can sight along such lines are seen as being special in some way.

Grant Hutchison

An astrological alignment is the alignment between the earth, sun and one of the constellations in the zodiac observed on the first day of spring, vernal equinox, just before sunrise. An observer on earth will see the sun align with one of the twelve constellations in the zodiac and that determines what age we are in. With the slow precession of the earth the alignment changes and so does our astrological age. Out of 360 deg. each sign is equal to 30 deg. which is about 2160 years or for every 72 years we precess 1 deg.. One of the big worries seems to be an alignment with the galactic center that happens to be between the signs of Sagittarius and Scorpio. Don't worry though, we still have time to pack a lunch for we are now at the end of Pisces and depending on which date you follow for the change into Aquarius we have about 4450 years, give or take 50 years.

Ancient cultures around the world have went to enormous lengths to measure this movement and the question remains why. To look at all the monoliths, temples and pyramids and imagine all the effort it must have taken is astounding. Some of the Egyptian temples were even rebuilt every few centuries to account for the precession in order to keep an accurate alignment and this happened several times. I can't imagine that all this effort was just for a good horoscope reading. Nevertheless what remains of astrology now is not even close to what it used to be.

I actually think the Galaxy is out of alignment. Everything I drive it, it pulls to the right.

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Perhaps I was being too subtle. The Earth does not orbit the sun in a true plane, nor does the sun orbit the galaxy in a true plane. The intersection of whatever non-planar surfaces are described by these events will be a complex curve the nature of which is in a state of constant change. "The plane of the ecliptic" and "the plane of the center of the galactic disk" are just conversation conveniences.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

But those of us who are already proud hippies have no intention of changing that no matter what happens or doesn't happen in 2012.