Well there is also 2060 the prediction of the end times by Sir Isaac Newton to consider. There are some older sites that thought it meant 2006 but they are strangely quiet now.

As for numbers I successfully wrote out some numbers on a lotto ticket some days ago for the $19 million lotto draw, pretty good eh.

You might notice I do not invent my own numbers though because it would be against my beliefs. It is in the book, trust me. Having failed to find stars with any certainty with telescopes I rely on the clever individuals who can and post such inspiring images.

Essentially I take what is written and try to interpret the results. There are more things, many more that I have thought about but predicting an event is to deny the existence of probability. There is a wealth of stuff I have written so far, enough to fill a book ... none of it has been tested of course.

The business of knowing events and predicting their timings and then describing the histories surrounding them is the work of scientists. My hobby is speculation on structure and so far no results on that front.

Oh and the lotto ticket, I wrote the numbers down very nicely and not one of them came in

I think I have some idea of what the "galactic alignment" is all about. I did a quick google and found this quote:

OK. A bit more research. The big date is December 21, which is the winter solstice. The winter solstice is in Sagittarius, which is where the galactic centre is. Since the winter solstice has been in Sagittarius for centuries, we'd have to be pretty precise, so the question is, how close will procession take the Sun to Sgr A* on the winter solstice in 2012?

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There is a growing tendancy to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.- Marvin the Martian.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Your question was answered back in April 2007 here. To wit, the ecliptic ain't gonna shift five degrees in the next four years.

In fact the ecliptic will be in the same place 12000 years from now, since the precession of the Earth's axis of rotation has no effect on the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, which is what defines the imaginary line called the ecliptic in the first place. Therefore the ecliptic will always be about five degrees from the center of the galaxy as seen from Earth, which means at its closest apparent approach, the Sun will also be about five degrees from the center of the galaxy as seen from Earth. This will hold true for for at least the next few 100,000s of years, if not more.

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I wonder how the 2 groups (those that give us 4 more years versus those that give us 21 more years) feel about each other.

Reminds me of the scene in Life Of Brian with all the various People's Populist Parties pointing out each others presence in the colliseum.

I wonder if the 2012 people would take a bet with a 2029 person. I mean, if I sidled up to them, and got all chummy with them as a person who is into their schtick, but just has a different interpretation of the timeline, would they be willing to put their house deed, or even maybe just the car title on the line. You know, just a friendly wager between us wackos.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Save your money farmerjumperdon,

I have been at odds with this all day.

In all probability humanity doesn't have all that long to enjoy it anyway. The notion of explaining structural physics to the human biped is in all fairness the intellectual equivalent of teaching dentistry to monkeys. One becomes convinced at some point the simple creatures have neither the interest but most importantly not the capacity to understand it.

I gave in and took the rather extra-ordinary step of reading Sitchin. Interesting chap, got it wrong but keep an eye on Venus. In the Physorg magazine an earthlike system with similar planets has been found. However if this is mirror symmetry in a time charged system the simple co-ordinate matching of surrounding stars should confirm it. Article here.
From a slightly earlier work of mine the mirror symmetry of stars in the local bubble explained in the speculation on ATM post by Bogie. I wont mention it here as it isn't part of this section. All my life I have honoured my Father's words if you can't speak nicely of someone best you say nothing at all. Life goes on but you wont like it.

And if you think you have enough Jesus types now ... and they do exist then wait until they start performing real miracles. Most likely we will be long gone before that.

Okay... (she says, resorting to the Argument From Authority)... in real life I'm an honest-to-gosh anthropologist with honest-to-gosh publications. I've studied the Maya briefly along with many other civilizations and with the help of a dictionary of symbols I can piece out some of the texts.

The "2012" bit is rubbish. There are a number of stela that refer to even larger dates and cycles, including a period of 20 baktun (7885 years) and even longer periods:
http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-mayan.html

And they were running 5 calendars at once.

One of them zeroes out in 2012.

As to the "galactic alignment", the Earth is NEVER out of alignment with the galaxy. Think of yourself standing in a park. There's a baseball field in the park. You are always in alignment with that field. If you travel to the north, you're still in alignment with it. If you climb up in a tower you're still in alignment with it.

What happens is that the angle at which the Earth rotates wobbles slightly. In 2012, the wobble will have gone far enough in its circle so that on the Vernal equinox, the center part of the dust cloud of the Milky Way appears to point exactly at the place where the sun rises.

Right now, in 2008, the sun is just nearly at that spot.

The Maya were very good at keeping records of the inner planets and could predict when Venus would appear (not much of a trick.) They timed their religious sacrifices and festivals to this planet's aspects and would declare war during "auspucious" times.

The fact that their civilization is gone and they couldn't predict the drought that destroyed them speaks to how poor their calendar was as a prediction tool. The Aztecs also used it and failed to predict the collapse of their own civilizations.

So it's just a calendar, like my Cute Kittens calendar in the kitchen. When I reach December, Cute Kittens everywhere will not die and the Earth will not undergo a great mental and physical transformation. I'll just have to get a new calendar.

One of the Codexes that talks about their cycles of creation does speak of a 5th world that would be coming. However, this was a religious concept or philosophical concept... there's no archaeological evidence that any of the other Worlds existed as a physical entity and no geologic changes indicating that they existed.

We can start betting on 2036 which, if memory serves, is the date that the calendar runs out on the 8 bit Linux operating system.

Stock up on your MREs now!

ROFL

Actually, on December 31 my cute kitty did undergo an amazing mental transformation. But as it involved a transformation from the ability to sleep 22.9 hours a day to the ability to sleep 23.1 hours a day, it was hard for us non-felines to notice.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

According to one old and non-Y2K compliant software I had, today would be February 15, 19108. So we've made it well past 2012!

I'll be 64 that year. Really must look up the words to that old Beatles song, there's probably an amazing prediction there.

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

You'll be 64 in 19108? And they said time travel was impossible!

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I thought about that before I posted but went ahead anyhow!

The song lyrics even say something about Valentines! Obviously proof of the Beatles' psychic powers since I just read it on the day after.

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

This is pretty funny. At the beginning of this thread, the OP was warned about Binary Man, who would point out the bazillion prior threads dealing with 2012, surely beating the topic to death many times over.

But here we are at 40 posts!

You guys just like to babble. And I mean that in the nicest way, of course.

No, it will not. As I pointed out in my previous post the precession ("wobble") of the Earth's axis over its approximate 24,000 year cycle has no effect on where the ecliptic appears to be in the sky. The Sun will appear to be about 5 degrees from the galactic center at its closest approach this year, and it will appear to be about 5 degrees from the galactic center at its closest approach in 2012.

No, if by "right now" you mean today, the Sun is about 70 degrees away from the galactic center. If you mean its closest apparent approach in 2008, then, once again, it will be no closer than 5 degrees.

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Well, this is Off-Topic Babbling. We're just doing what we're told.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

I wonder how many still remember where "BABBling" came from?

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

Why, from me, of course. I suggested "BABBling" as an alternative to "BlABBing."

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

Well, BAUTing just didn't make much sense.



Especially since BAUT didn't exist at the time.

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board?

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*

Give that boy 100 Mars Bars!

Delivery of this contestant's prize is scheduled for no later than the next "galactic alignment".

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Ah...wonder how many "J.G. Wentworth" would offer me now?

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*

"Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038", the second before the 32 bit unixtime¹ turns negative and turns to "Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901"

1) number of seconds since "Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970"

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

That's not such a big worry. After all, by then we'll all be using 64- or 128-bit Unix. And none of the programs written for 32-bit Unix will still be in production.




:-)

Heh. The only alignment that'll happen on May in 2012 will be the opening of a beer can with my mouth. And the beer won't taste any different.

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Tour of duty in Iraq completed. At home, fattening up, growing a beard.

Are you American, Mr Earl? If so, your beer might well taste different in 2012 - It's always possible that someone will start importing actual beer to the States, in which case your taste-buds will dance for joy!

Of course, if you live somewhere else, just hope that the Yanks don't export their beer to your shores!

Sorry, but about the only thing my little country does better than the US is brew beer, so I like to rub it in at the slightest opportunity. Oh, and maybe our national soccer team can whip yours, but the way they're playing lately, I'm less than certain.

Isn't that hard on your teeth?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Too late, the Germans already did it! People like Best, Blatz, Gettelman, Pabst, and Schlitz, oh, and even people like Anheuser, Busch, Coors, Hamm and Stroh. Better yet, they taught us how to brew it so we would never have to drink the vile stuff they had in colonial America.

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

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

Exactly 2012 separate threads, I just counted. Spooky huh?

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Beer, the cause of and solution to, all lifes problems

the yanks do export bud to my shores. not much of a fan though. im more of a boddingtons man. or a Carlsberg Export man.

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"Attack the idea, not the person" Posted by a Moderator.
Useful words around here indeed!!

Ironically, I'm not a beer drinker myself. But a friend of mine did try an American beer while over there, and declared it to be "not bad, for a 'lite' beer."

Then his host told him that what he'd tasted was actually a "full strength" beer.

See, that is when the host is supposed to lie and say, "Ultra-lite you mean. I didn't want to hit you with the lite beer yet. You may not be ready for it..."