I never got an answer on my question recently. It was about a galactic event that will happen on December 21st, 2012. The Earth will wobble and the Sun will be in the center of the Galaxy at the same time, which happens every 26,000 years. The ancient Mayan people knew about this somehow.

My question was, what will actually happen on that day? Will the wobble be detectable to humans somehow? Does the two events mean anything really? I know we won't explode and there won't be the doomsday crap that some believe, but I'm curious if the Earth will lose or gain a couple of milliseconds on the day like the Indian Ocean Eartquake of 2004 caused.

Also how could the Mayan people have found out about this event??

Moved from Astronomy section to Q&A ...

The entire event is entirely make believe, there's not a shred of truth to the whole idea. How's that for an answer? By the way, the only meaningful number in the whole shebang is the 26,000 years, which is the time it takes the direction of the Earth's rotational axis to precess around in a circle. But this is a very gradual process and does not produce any effects like earthquakes, etc. Maybe there is a serious question here the Mayans might have known about the 26,000 year cycle, like the ancient Greeks did, but that's the only sensible question that might be residing there and I don't know the answer.

I have NO idea where you got this, but:
- The Sun will NOT be at the center of the galaxy on that date, or any time in the next trillion years.
- The Earth wobbles a little bit all the time, but not in some obvious or easily measureable way. Some of the wobbles are predictable and some are not. The ones cause by Earthquakes are not.
- It is unfair to the Mayans to attribute these wrong ideas to them.

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Rudeyd,

The Earth and sun will not be anywhere near the center of the galaxy at anytime in the future, they are actually far out from the center. There is the idea that the solar system oscillates above and below the plane of the galaxy, but this is very slowly and would certainly not happen on a single day.

The Mayan calendar may turn over in 2012 (how exactly it matches up with our calander is not absolutely certain). But there is no more significance to that than there is to the turnover from Dec. 31, 1999, to January 1, 2000.

The Mayan knew a lot about astronomy - they had a very good calendar, they knew the length of the year and could predict the Venus cycle and eclipses, but there is no evidence that they knew anything about the galaxy.

If you search around BAUT, look for things like 2012 and Mayans and you will find a lot more information.

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Hi, rudeyd

What are John Mendenhall and I, tasty liver pâtés?

Was this your question: Question about Earth's Wobble???

Did you read John Mendenhall's reply and the topics I suggested?

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Let me shed some light on where the OP is getting this. This is sort of a botched "pass it on" rendering of one of the myriad of 2012 doomsday theories.

It's not the center of the galaxy, but the galactic plane. I have no idea if the sun is anywhere near about to cross the galactic plane, but the idea is this cycle of "destruction" happens when the sun crosses the plane due to the "up and down" (z axis, if we like) component of it's motion around the galactic center.

And this cycle is supposedly correlate with the precessional cycle someway somehow.

Anyway, that's what's behind what the OP heard, I'm sure. Like I said, I have no idea about the sun's z-axis motion, nor where it is in that cycle right now. Are we anywhere near a plane crossing?

This particular doomsday theory got a nice Ed Dames twist on it a while back. For those of you who don't keep up with the Art Bell universe, ol Ed is one of the top tier of guests, up there with Hoagie in the yarns they can spin. Ol' Ed has been pushing this "solar kill shot" doomsday theory for about 10 years or more. Mr. Sun is going to belch out a huge solar flare that will scortch the surface of the earth. He keeps saying it's gonna happen real soon, now...........

And he was on with Art one past weekend, just like in the good ol' days before George whats-his-name took it over most of the time, and put a new twist on this.

The solar kill shot is going to be caused by gravitational waves caused by "something to do with" the sun's crossing of the galactic plane around
2012. These large amplitude waves will shake everything in the solar system like a bowl full of jelly, causing the sun to hiccup out those big solar flares, and then shake the earth itself a good bit, causing earthquakes and tsunamis, etc, etc. Basically, Biblical destruction events.

Anyway, that's where this one is coming from.

-Richard

No. We're 70 light years from the galactic midplane, and that distance will increase for the next 14 million years.

Grant Hutchison

Grant,

So we're nowhere near a plane crossing....

I googled a bit on this. There was some speculation trying to correlate plane crossing events with those mass extinction events, and that's probably where this doomsday idea got started. But how they turned that into a Mayan calender 2012 thing, I don't know.

-Richard

Apparently, we are now passing through an area of interstellar space that has a low density of gas hydrogen. If and when we go back into normal density, the effect on the heliopause may be to force it back in towards the Sun, and increase the flux of cosmic waves, with unkown effects.
This is the subject of the Innovative Interstellar Explorer project, written about in this week's New Scientist: http://space.newscientist.com/articl...tep-on-it.html
See also: http://interstellarexplorer.jhuapl.edu/

John

Yes, John. We are still 100,000 years from Loop 1 though, so the effects won't be seen for a while. The increases from unpredictable components of the local fluff are going to be minor.

Well, I finally figured out this "galactic plane crossing" thing. I figured, that since as Grant said, we're just barely on the rising side of this 30ish million year cycle and aren't due to cross again, then where did this "plane crossing" come from?

As near as I can figure, it's an *alignment*. According to this, the sun's position at the winter solstice in 2012 is supposed to exactly align with the galactic plane on the celestial sphere. Or something like that. I've always MEGLO'd at astronomical aligments -- when does something moving in this plane at an angle to this plane exactly line up with this other plane.....

But as near as I can tell, that is what is meant by "the sun crossing the galactic plane", and that would indeed go with the precessional cycle.

So this alignment is supposed to be a portent of doom and what the Mayan long count calendar was based upon. A "new age" starts at that marker.

Now, those of you who do know how all that stuff moving in those various planes aligns with this and that, is this true? Will the 2012 winter solstice "line up" with the galactic plane?

-Richard

If so, note the alignment of which you speak would happen every 13,000 years, not every 26,000. I guess the Mayans can't count.

I think it is a 13,000 year cycle, but I'm not sure.

-Richard

So, we've had a bunch of hysterical nonsense about 1984, 1999 and 2000, all of which came and went without the world ending. Now it's 2012, based on some old Mayan twaddle. When 2012 passes without incident, what will be the next date for the apocalypse, do you think? I'm putting 50 bucks down on March 23rd, 2019

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IIRC (It's been awhile since I've been to GLP), the "alignment" is that in 2012, the galactic longitude of the winter swolstice will be zero. In other words, the Sun will line up with the center of the galaxy. How that will cause widespread destruction, only the woo woos know!

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T. Anderson

Look at the Wiki article. The cycle of that crazy thing involves 13. If I understood it right, the cycle that ends is 2012 is a 13*400 = 5,200 years. The last "end of the world" was around 3100BC.

So there's a 13 in that mess of cycles, but it's 13*400, not 13 *1000. Two of those would 10,400 years ago, not 13,000, so the last "galatic alignment" would not have lined up with this cycle at all.

So, if this business about the winter solstice aligning with the galactic plane is true, it's just a coincidence that it lies at the end of one of the Mayan cycles. There's nothing in their cycles that matches the actual precessional cycle that I can see. But because of that coincidence, we have this belief the "Mayans knew something"..........

-Richard

You missed 2003 (Planet X)!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

How could you forget May 15, 2003, when Earth's crust rotated
by about 90 degrees in the grip of the magnetic field of the giant
Planet X, killing 90 percent of the world's population?

Sheesh. Some people just don't know any history!

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

It so happens that the galactic plane cuts the ecliptic very close to 90 degrees and 270 degrees ecliptic longitude at the present epoch, which means that the position of the sun passes through the galactic plane at the solstices.
The relevant galactic node on the ecliptic is at λ = 270.0232 degrees for the J2000.0 equinox, and precession should be making that bigger, rather than smaller. So it seems like the boat has already harmlessly sailed, if we're using the standard astronomical definition of the galactic equator.
Somehow, I suspect we're not ...

Grant Hutchison

This chart from an archaeology book about Mayans shows the big cycle rolling over every 394 years. The last roll-over was in 1618. The one before that was in 1224. The next one will be in 2012.

http://i12.tinypic.com/29uyp78.jpg

As far as I can see, the zero point of galactic latitude/longitude sits several degrees south of the ecliptic. Sgr A* isn't at the coordinate origin, but it isn't near the ecliptic, either.
It certainly looks like the whole galaxy thing is being shoehorned into the Mayan calendar for dramatic effect.
Surprise.

Grant Hutchison

And yet another woo-woo data point: The winter solistice of 2012 will occur at exactly Dec. 21st, 11:11PM UTC. That's the infamous
eleven-eleven, that looms large in some of these circles, where people claim they see 11:11 on clocks all the time, and it has some supernatural significance.

Think about 11:11. The first time I heard this stuff, I started noticing it when I saw 11:11, and 1:11 on the clock. When it's in your mind you notice it. You see all the ones (or any other "special" combination you might like) out of the corner of your eye, and it clicks and your conscious attention is directed to it. So one gets it in his head he's magically seeing 11:11 all the time.

So this 2012 thing has it all. Mayan calendars, solar galactic alignments, and 11:11 all wrapped up in one.

Now, as someone else asked, will all this doomsday stuff die down after 11:11PM, Dec 21st, 2012 passes without incident? It got started with 2000, with various end of the world prophecies, and the Mayan thing extends it to 2012. Will it die down until the next millenium , or is their some other significant date that can be pulled out of some hat somewhere.

-Richard

Well, let's see, while 400 is an integral factor of 1000, it is of 2000, so 5 of these 13*400 = 5200 year cycles is indeed 26,000 years. 400 years is just ballpark, and if Sam5's 394 years is correct, this would be 5*13*394 = 25,610 years.

Wiki gives the precessional cycle as 25,765 years, but the precessional speed is actually a variable, and I think is slightly increasing.

So is this evidence that the precession was indeed encoded in the Mayan calendar?

-Richard

I wonder if anyone has done a more complete analysis than that one!

For the love of Pete, the destruction of civilsation isn't front page news enough, now it's a galactic event.

Hey rudeyd, I want to get my dead grandfather's $10,000,000 out of Romania. Can you give me your account number to deposit it in and I'll give you $100,000 free and clear.

No thanks, I'm already independently wealthy for helping the others who emailed me.

Weird. I just noticed when my computer clock said 11:11
an hour and ten minutes ago. I didn't notice the time again
until several minutes after midnight, and I have no idea how
long before 11:11 was the previous occasion that I noticed.
Could easily be two hours.

I had no idea anybody else noticed 11:11. That's the one time
that I see the most, whether morning or evening.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Jeff,

Yes, there a legions of people who notice this, and put all sorts of meaning into it.

With me, I hadn't noticed it until I heard of it. Then, I started seeing it, along with 1:11 just about all the time. I'd look down at the corner of the computer screen and see it. Or I'd be in the car and see it, or looking at a clock radio. You'll notice it's alway digital clocks. You don't notice it on analog clocks because it's as remarkable an event as all four (or 3) digits displaying 1's. You can train yourself to notice other combinations like this, 2:22, 3:33... up to 5:55 etc, even 10:10, 12:12.

What it is is you're seeing the clock digits subconsciously all the time, or a good fraction of the time -- you're just not aware of it -- that information doesn't make it all the way up to the high command center because it's not deemed important. However, when the seed is planted in your mind, your subconscious sees that as a "flag" and brings it to your conscious attention.

And it's a self-feeding cycle. Once you notice it, and think it's an improbable, strange thing, it becomes an even stronger flag for your subconscious.

With me, I noticed it day in day out for a long time, but it subsided, and I haven't paid it much attention. Now that I've brought it back in the forefront of my mind, it might happen again, but I don't know. Maybe I'm immune to it now after one go 'round.

I guarantee you that many of the people who read this will start noticing it too.

-Richard

I notice 11:11 and 12:34, that's pretty much all so far.