Interesting Facts about 2012

2012 is claimed to be a great year of spiritual transformation (or apocalypse). Many esoteric sources interpret the completion of the twelfth B'ak'tun cycle in the Long Count of the Maya calendar (which occurs on December 21 by the most widely held correlation) to mean there will be a major change in world order.
Several experts have predicted a special astrological/astronomical alignment between the Galactic center in the constellation of Sagittarius, the Winter Solstice point, and the open cluster of the Pleiades. Factually, the coincidence of the Winter Solstice point (due to the precession of the Equinoxes) and the galactic center is basically true.
Jesus said that no man knows the hour or the day of the End of Days. Even Jesus didn't know. Only his father did.
But Jesus added that he hoped that those who will live in the Final Generation would look for the signs in the hope their suffering would not be so great.

There are exactly 2012 days between the June 20 2007 Summer solstice and the December 21 2012 Winter solstice.

Albert Einstein said if the honey bees were suddenly gone mankind would have about 4 years left to live. Well, the honey bees are going extinct now and at the present rate in another year or so there will be no more honey bees left on earth. One year from now plus another 4 years gives us the year 2012
NASA predicts that the Sun will also reverse its own magnetic poles during 2012 as result of reaching the end of current 11-year sunspot cycle. Some believe this will amplify the effects of retarding magnetic field on earth, as harmful charged particles blasted away from the sun would more easily penetrate the earth's atmosphere.

In this final episode of the X-Files, it is revealed that on December 22 2012, aliens will invade and take over the world, one day after December 21 2012. It was like Chris Carter was saying to us that the aliens don't need to invade and conquer us, all they need to do is move in to a vacant earth
The Vatican holds very closely to the Prophecy of St. Malachy. This Medieval Monk had detailed visions of 112 Popes until Doomsday, also known as The Biblical Apocalypse. The current Pope, Benedict XVI is the 111th named Pope, only one Pope remains.

The mayan calendar...what predictions have been right so far in the past years?
It is a calender, it doesn't predict anything it just records time. It just stops on Dec. 21, 2012.

At least we know when the end is coming
By: Donnie Johnston
Date published: 12/21/2007 OK, folks, we've got five years left.That's right! Five years from today--Dec. 21, 2012--the world is scheduled to come to an end.
One doomsayer's opinion? Oh, no. This is a consensus. OK, a consensus of two, but a consensus just the same. According to the writings of Michel de Nostredame (better known as Nostradamus), the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012 (no specific hour or minute is given).
Some think the end will be the climax of a world war that will begin in 2008. Others believe the beginning of the end occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or the day America invaded Iraq. But Nostradamus is not alone in his predictions. The ancient Mayan calendar, perfected long before the French physician and astrologer began writing his now famous quatrains, ends abruptly on the same date.
Scary!
OK, why Dec. 21, 2012? Why not Dec. 20 or Dec. 23? According to astronomers, Dec. 21, 2012, is the day when our sun moves to the exact center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. What is the significance of that scientific fact? Does the sun and Earth slingshot off into some black hole when it reaches the center of the galaxy? Even the most brilliant of scientists have no clue, but apparently the Mayans knew. And so did Nostradamus. Unfortunately, they are all dead.
If you believe Nostradamus and the Mayans, we are hell-bent for oblivion. The end is right around the corner so get your affairs in order.

This, of course, is not the first end-of-the-world prediction. Far from it. Since the birth of Christ, there have been at least 200 sure-fire dates on which the end would occur. We, of course, are still here. The two most celebrated end dates came roughly 150 years apart and both originated--where else?--in America.
In the early 1840s, a religious scholar named William Miller calculated, through biblical means, that the end of time would come in 1844.
According to historians, tens of thousands of people awaited the second coming of Christ on March 21 of that year.
When the end did not occur on that date, they set their sights on Oct. 22, 1844. Many actually did sell their worldly possession in anticipation of the end of the world. It did not occur.
Most of us recall the second end-of-the-world hysteria. In the two years leading up to the beginning of the 21st century there were millions of people who were absolutely sure it would be all over when the clock struck midnight on Dec. 31, 1999.
Some hoarded food and water and waited for the end that never came. It remains unclear whether these people were relieved or disappointed.
The 1844 movement, which became known as Millerism, was sure that Jesus would return on the predicted dates. The 1999 fanatics (this was the Y2K phenomenon) were far less religious in their outlooks.
They just believed that all computers would stop working at the stroke of midnight and that would lead to the failure of banks, power grids and other systems that were run by high technology.
Oh, yeah. There was one other thing. They also said that computers would launch nuclear warheads leading to world destruction. It was not God but computers gone awry that struck fear in them.
Like Y2K, God doesn't play into the Mayan's end-of-the-world prophesy. Apparently when the sun, which is the center of our solar system, hits the center of the Milky Way, Earth and everything on it is no more.
While Nostradamus perhaps saw a final apocalypse, the ancient Central America Indian culture, which some think was influenced by extraterrestrials, sees only an unexplainable void after Dec. 21, 2012.
Will the end occur then? Like the Miller prediction and Y2K, we can only wait and see.
I doubt that anyone will sell his worldly goods in anticipation of this event but a lot of folks may wait until Dec. 22 to buy their 2012 Christmas gifts.
And if they do buy them before the end date, they would be crazy not to charge their purchases instead of paying cash.
But then, what good would cash do you in a black hole?
Prepare yourself, for according to the Mayans and Nostradamus--two highly reliable sources--the clock is ticking.

Source:LiveIndia

2012 latest news from NASA

Sun will burn out in 2012 : NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) held a live media teleconference today on the state of our sun, and announced that the solar system’s only star will burn out in the year 2012.

Data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission has indicated that the sun’s solar wind is at a 50-year low, said NASA spokesman Dan Groverfield.
“A sun that is less windy is, of course, less gassy,” Groverfield explained. “And gas is what powers stars. So basically, our sun is running out of gas and it will burn out on December 21, 2012. So we’re all screwed. We’ll go over all the boring details during the rest of the teleconference, but it looks like the Mayan calendar is correct.”

Scientists had previously calculated that the sun would last another five billion years. But data obtained from the Ulysses mission indicates that the sun has lost much of its magnetic field strength, allowing most of its fuel source — hydrogen gas — to escape into space. As a result, the sun no longer generates enough energy to maintain strong solar winds, or to continue burning for more than a few years.

“Because of the loss of mass, the sun won’t expand into a red giant,” Groverfield said. “It’ll pretty much just peter out.”

But even though the new findings are grim, Groverfield insisted the news wasn’t all bad.

“The upside to losing the sun is that we no longer need to worry about global warming,” he pointed out. “In fact, it might be prudent now to start increasing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Former vice president and climate change kingpin Al Gore denounced NASA’s findings, and said that a solution for the global warming problem that doesn’t involve a carbon tax is irresponsible.

“Taking away the sun without cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions is not a panacea for global warming,” he said to reporters outside his Tennessee mansion. “We must be realistic; we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and invest more in the production of renewable resources such as solar energy.”

Source: LiveIndia

Mayan Civilization

The Mayan civilization arose in Mesoamerica around 250 AD, influenced by the culture and religion of the Olmecs. The Mayan urban culture especially flourished until about 900 AD, but continued to thrive in various places until the Spanish conquest.

During this first 650 years, which scholars call the Classic Period, the Mayan civilization consisted of more than 40 sizeable cities spread across modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize.

At its peak, the total population may have reached 2 million people, the majority of whom lived in modern-day Guatemala. The cities seem to have been mainly ceremonial centers, with the majority of the Maya living a rural, agricultural life around the cities.

Sometime after 900 AD, the Mayan culture declined dramatically and most of the cities were abandoned. Latest scholarship attributes this decline to the loss of trade routes due to war.

The great southern cities became depopulated, but the cities of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico (such as Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, and Mayapán) continued to thrive in the early part of the "Post-Classic Period" (900–1519). By the arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century, however, most of the Maya were village-dwelling farmers.

The remaining Maya were conquered by the Spanish and converted (at least nominally) to Roman Catholicism. The present-day Mayan peoples are spread mainly across southern Mexico, with small numbers in Guatemala and Belize. They practice a religion that combines Roman Catholicism with Mayan cosmology, deities, and domestic rituals.

The Maya had a highly sophisticated culture, and this included a written hieroglyphic language. Mayan hieroglyphics were carved into stone monuments or pieces of bone, painted on pottery, and written on books (codices) of bark paper.

Mayan texts describe religious rituals, astronomy, and divination, and are the most valuable source of information on the ancient civilization. Many of them were destroyed by the Spanish because of their pagan religious content, but three main codices have survived. Named for the cities in which they are now kept, these are the Dresden, Madrid, and Paris codices. The Dresden Codex contains very precise tables of Venus and the moon and describes a method of predicting solar eclipses
Other important texts are those written by learned Indians who transcribed or summarized Mayan hieroglyphic records into Latin script. One of these is the Books of Chilam Balam, written in Yucatec Maya and consisting of historical chronicles mixed with myth, divination, and prophecy. Another text, The Ritual of the Bacabs, covers religious symbolism, medical incantations, and similar matters.

Perhaps the most famous of these texts is the Popol Vuh (1554-1558), which was written in Quiché, a highland Maya language, and translated into Spanish by a priest. This tells of the mythology and cosmology of the Postclassic Guatemalan Maya, and shows central Mexican influences. It chronicles the creation of man, the actions of the gods, the origin and history of the Quiché people, and the chronology of their kings down to 1550.

These Mayan texts were not regarded as sacred or authoritative in themselves (they are not revelations from the divine like the Bible or Quran), but rather as important records of religious rituals and knowledge.

The Maya worshipped a pantheon of nature gods, each of which had both a benevolent side and a malevolent side. The most important deity was the supreme god Itzamná, the creator god, the god of the fire and god of the hearth.

Another important Mayan god was Kukulcán, the Feathered Serpent, who appears on many temples and was later adopted by the Toltecs and Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl. Also important was Chac, a hooked-nose god of rain and lightning.

A third god that frequently appears in Mayan art is Bolon Tzacab, who is depicted with a branching nose and is often held like a sceptre in rulers' hands. He is thought to have functioned as a god of royal descent.

Mayan rulers were seen as intermediaries between the gods and the people, and as semi-divine themselves. They were buried in elaborate tombs filled with valuable offerings.

The Mayan view of the afterlife consisted primarily of a dangerous voyage of the soul through the underworld, which was populated by sinister gods and represented by the jaguar, symbol of night. The majority of Maya, including the rulers, went to this underworld. Heaven was reserved for those who had been sacrificed or died in childbirth.

To the Maya, science and religion were one and the same. The Maya developed an impressive system of mathematics and astronomy, which was initimately related to religious rituals. Their mathematical achievements included positional notation and the use of zero; in astronomy, they accurately calculated a solar year, compiled precise tables of positions for the Moon and Venus, and were able to predict solar eclipses.

The Maya were obsessed with time; to understand and predict various cycles of time allowed them to adapt to and best make use of their natural world. Mayan cosmology had it that the world had been created five times and destroyed four times. On a more temporal scale, the various days of the year were considered appropriate to specific activities, while some were entirely unlucky.

Mayan Calendar - Full Details

The Maya calendar is a system of distinct calendars and almanacs used by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and by some modern Maya communities in highland Guatemala.

These calendars can be synchronized and interlocked in many ways, their combinations giving rise to further, more extensive cycles. The essentials of the Maya calendric system are based upon a system which had been in common use throughout the region, dating back to at least the 6th century BCE. It shares many aspects with calendars employed by other earlier Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Zapotec and Olmec, and contemporary or later ones such as the Mixtec and Aztec calendars. Although the Mesoamerican calendar did not originate with the Maya, their subsequent extensions and refinements of it were the most sophisticated. Along with those of the Aztecs, the Maya calendars are the best-documented and most completely understood.

By the Maya mythological tradition, as documented in Colonial Yucatec accounts and reconstructed from Late Classic and Postclassic inscriptions, the deity Itzamna is frequently credited with bringing the knowledge of the calendar system to the ancestral Maya, along with writing in general and other foundational aspects of Maya culture.

The Maya developed a sophisticated calendar. The ritual calendar that developed in Mesoamerica used a count of 260 days. This calendar gave each day a name, much like our days of the week. There were 20 day names, each represented by a unique symbol. The days were numbered from 1 to 13. Since there are 20 day names, after the count of thirteen was reached, the next day was numbered 1 again. The 260-day or sacred count calendar was in use throughout Mesoamerica for centuries, probably before the beginning of writing.

Maya Day Names & Approximate Meanings
Imix	Waterlily	Chuwen	Frog
Ik'	Wind	Eb	Skull
Ak'bal	Night	Ben	Corn stalk
K'an	Corn	Ix	Jaguar
Chikchan	Snake	Men	Eagle
Kimi	Death head	Kib	Shell
Manik'	Hand	Kaban	Earth
Lamat	Venus	Etz'nab	Flint
Muluk	Water	Kawak	Storm cloud
Ok	Dog	Ahaw	Lord

The Maya also tracked a vague solar year in which they counted 365 days per year. Because they could not use fractions, the "quarter" day left over every year caused their calendar to drift with regard to the actual solar year. The 365-day year contained months were also given names. numbers 0-19 before they changed, so that the count goes Zero Pohp to 19 Pohp, then continues with Zero Wo.

Month Names and Approximate Meanings
Pohp	Mat	Yax	Green ??
Wo	??	Zak	White ??
Sip	??	Keh	Red ??
Sotz'	Bat	Mak	??
Sek	??	K'ank'in	??
Xul	Dog	Muwan	Owl
Yaxk'in	New Sun	Pax	??
Mol	Water	K'ayab	Turtle
Ch'en	Black ??	Kumk'u	??

To the eighteen regular months the Maya appended a special five-day month called Wayeb composed of 5 days which were considered unnamed and unlucky. Thus the days were counted: One Imix, Zero Pohp, Two Ik, One Pohp. When the thirteenth day was reached the next day was Thirteen Ben, Twelve Pohp; then One Ix, Thirteen Pohp, Two Men, Fourteen Pohp. After Seven Ahaw, Nineteen Pohp, the next day was Eight Imix, Zero Wo.

The Maya practiced a form of divination that centered on their elaborate calendar system and extensive knowledge of astronomy. It was the job of the priests to discern lucky days from unlucky ones, and advising the rulers on the best days to plant, harvest, wage war, etc. They were especially interested in the movements of the planet Venus — the Maya rulers scheduled wars to coordinate with its rise in the heavens.

The Mayan calendar was very advanced, and consisted of a solar year of 365 days. It was divided into 18 months of 20 days each, followed by a five-day period that was highly unlucky. There was also a 260-day sacred year (tzolkin), divided into days named by the combination of 13 numbers and 20 names.

For longer periods, the Maya identified an elaborate system of periods and cycles of various lengths. In ascending order, these were: kin (day); uinal (20 days); tun (18 uinals/360 days); katun (20 tuns/7,200 days); baktunbaktun (20 katuns/144,000 days), and so on, with the highest cycle being the alautun (23,040,000,000 days).

These units were used in the Maya Long Count, which calculated the time elapsed from a zero date set at 3114 BC. In the Postclassical Period, the method of notation was somewhat simplified, and the Long Count katuns end with the name Ahau (Lord), combined with one of 13 numerals; and their names form a Katun Round of 13 katuns.

This change makes it difficult to correlate the Mayan count with the Christian calendar, but scholars are fairly confident that the katun 13 Ahau, which seems to have had great significance for the Mayan, ended on November 14, 1539. It has been calculated that the next katun, which the Popul Vuh describes as the catastrophic end of the world, will end on December 21, 2012. Naturally, this has inspired quite a bit of speculation as to what might happen on this date.

Until the mid-20th century, scholars believed the Maya to be a peaceful, stargazing people, fully absorbed in their religion and astronomy and not violent like their neighboring civilizations to the north. This was based on the Maya's impressive culture and scientific discoveries and a very limited translation of their written texts.

But since then, nearly all of the Mayan hieroglyphic writings have been deciphered, and a much different picture has emerged. The texts record that the Mayan rulers waged war on rival Mayan cities, took their rulers captive, then tortured them and ritually sacrificed them to the gods. In fact, human sacrifice seems to have been a central Mayan religious practice. It was believed to encourage fertility, demonstrate piety, and propitiate the gods. The Mayan gods were thought to be nourished by human blood, and ritual bloodletting was seen as the only means of making contact with them. The Maya believed that if they neglected these rituals, cosmic disorder and chaos would result. At important ceremonies, the sacrificial victim was held down at the top of a pyramid or raised platform while a priest made an incision below the rib cage and ripped out the heart with his hands. The heart was then burned in order to nourish the gods. It was not only the captives who suffered for the sake of the gods: the Mayan aristocracy themselves, as mediators between the gods and their people, underwent ritual bloodletting and self-torture. The higher one's position, the more blood was expected. Blood was drawn by jabbing spines through the ear or penis, or by drawing a thorn-studded cord through the tongue; it was then spattered on paper or otherwise collected as an offering to the gods.