I’ve been trying to get my head around cable TV’s attempt to brainwash me into believing the world’s going to end on December 21st, 2012, for some time now. It’s like an Indiana Jones movie that’s not been written yet!
So I set off to get a little clarification on the matter through a very trusted source known as the Internet! But seriously, I did find out some interesting things about the date known as “the day the world ends.”
Here is what I found:
The equator of the Milky Way galaxy (Galactic Equator) and the path of the Sun (the Ecliptic) will cross each other at exactly 11:11 am GMT on December 21, 2012. What does this mean exactly? Or, even better, what is the probability of this occurring?
Every year on the winter solstice, our Sun has a Declination of -23.5 degrees, and a Right Ascension of 18 hours. But what makes the alignment of 2012 special is how this alignment occurs relative to very distant stars. On December 21, 2012, the alignment will be right along the plane of the entire galaxy. This precession of the equinoxes goes in a complete circle and happens only once every 26,000 years. In other words, the winter solstice moves 360 degrees every 26,000 years, or 0.01 degrees each year.
A significant detail that promoters of the 2012 doomsday fail to point out, however, is that the plane of the galaxy is not the width of a needle. The plane of the galaxy is quite wide – in fact, it takes the winter solstice between 700 hundred and 1,400 years to cross the plane of the galaxy! So 2012 is just one year amidst a span of 700 years.
-Matt
CREDITS: Exploring Life’s Mysteries
