2012: The End of the World? Research Paper

Recently there has been a lot of commotion over whether December 21, 2012 is the day the world will end or not. From earthquakes to tsunamis to the sun burning up the planet, the list goes on and on, but how valid are these claims? Who can predict how and when the world will end and who on this planet has the power to know when such a drastic event will occur?
Many people started to believe that December 21, 2012 is the day that the world will end, but where are these people coming up with these ideas? The people’s answer: “The Ancient Mayan calendar ends on this date.” Many people see this as a “prophecy” of the end of the world. According to Argüelles, December 21, 2012 is merely “the day the Maya Long Count Cycle of 5125.26 years ends and restarts” (Solare 1).
Originally, the Mayan calendars were short. The Mayans had one calendar lasting only 260 days, and they had another calendar lasting 365 days. The Mayans combined these two calendars to form what they called the “Calendar Round”, “a cycle lasting around 52 years” (O’Neill 1). This calendar was no good for recording events in history, so the Mayans came up with the “Long Count”, the calendar lasting 5125.26 years. The calendar “depends on a base unit of 20” (O’Neill 1). The Long Count “starts at “0.0.0.0.0”, so the first day…is denoted as 0.0.0.0.1” (O’Neill 1). This continues all the way to the 19th day. “On the 20th day, it goes up one level...[to] 0.0.0.1.0” (O’Neill 1). “13.0.0.0.0 represents 5125.26 years,” which just so happens to be December 21. 2012 (O’Neill 1).
Just because the Long Count calendar date ends on 13.0.0.0.0, or December 21, 2012, does not mean the world is going to end. O’Neill writes:
When something ends (even something as innocent as an ancient calendar), people seem to thing up the most extreme possibilities for the end of civilization as we know it. A brief scan of the internet will pull up the most popular to some very weird ways that we will, with little logical thought, be wiped off the face of the planet. Archaeologists and mythologists on the other hang believe that the Mayans predicted an age of enlightenment when 13.0.0.0.0 comes around; there isn’t actually much evidence to suggest doomsday will strike. (O’Neill 1)
According to Solare, “the Maya left not a single inscription anywhere indicating any…conditions that could accompany 2012” (Solare 1). Myths of 2012 have been proven wrong. Maloof says that “evidence in rocks confirm that continents have undergone…rearrangement but the process took [a long time],” so the idea of “breakaway continents [destroying] civilization” in a matter of a single day would be extremely unrealistic (Handwerk 1). A lot of people believe that there will be some kind of galactic alignment will cause unknown forces to be revealed and that these forces will somehow leave no hope for the planet. According to NASA’s Morrison, there will be no significant galactic alignment. University of Texas Maya expert David Stuart says “no ancient Maya text or artwork makes reference to anything of the kind” (Handwerk 1). It is also believed that there is some object floated around in space that is going to collide with earth. Morrison, NASA astrobiologist, reports that “there is no object out there…If there were a planet or a brown dwarf or whatever that was going to be in the inner solar system…, astronomers would have been studying it for the past decade, and it would be visible to the naked eye by now” so there is no way that there could be some strange object floating around out there.
The truth of the matter is that there is simply no evidence that the world is going to end on December 21, 2012. The Mayan calendar starts over at the end of it’s cycle just as ours does. O’Neill quotes Dr Karl’s “Great Moments in Science”:
…when a calendar comes to the end of a cycle, it just rolls over into the next cycle. In our Western society, every year 31 December is followed, not by the End of the World, but by 1 January. So 13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan calendar will be followed by 0.0.0.0.1 – or good ol’ 22 December 2012. (O’Neill)



Works Cited
Handwerk, Brian. "2012: Six End-of-the-World Myths Debunked." Daily Nature and Science News and Headlines National Geographic News. 6 Nov. 2009. Web. 24 Apr. 2010. .
O'Neill, Ian. "No Doomsday in 2012." Universe Today. 19 May 2008. Web. 24 Apr. 2010. .
Solare, Rohaan. "– On the Trail of the Super Organism, The Question of 2012 and the Marvel of Maya Calendrics." Emergent Culture. Tuesday Dec. 2009. Web. 24 Apr. 2010. .
Stone, Mark V. "FAMSI - 2012: The End of the World?" FAMSI - Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. Web. 24 Apr. 2010. .
Yeomans, Donald. "» Blog Archive » 2012 - A Scientific Reality Check." NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Blog. 10 Nov. 2009. Web. 24 Apr. 2010. .