What Will Happen in 2012?
A Look At The Mayan Prophecy

What will happen in 2012, when the Mayan calendar ends? Will December 21, 2012 mark the end of the world as we know it? Is there any credence to the Mayan Prophecy, or have we just misinterpreted everything?

To me, the whole Mayan 2012 debate seems like a hodge podge of misinformation - so let's take this bag of snakes and lay 'em out straight!

Who Were The Mayans?

The Mayan civilization thrived in Central and South America from around 3000 BC. Their dynamic and intelligent culture survived for thousands of years but finally collapsed during an intense 200-year drought, not long before Christopher Columbus landed on America's shores in the 15th century.

What Will Happen in 2012 The Mayans are known for their advanced written language, as well as their art, architecture, maths and astronomy. They used a base 20 and base 5 numbering system and independently created the concept of zero by 36 BC.

This capacity for numbers produced highly accurate astronomical observations, charting the movements of the moon and other planets. Based on their own astrology, the resulting Mayan calendar was one of prophecies, and supporters of the Mayan 2012 theory point to several seemingly accurate predictions to date.

What Is The Mayan Prophecy?

Contrary to popular belief (we can blame the doomsday media for that), the Mayan Prophecy does not predict "the end of the world" on December 21, 2012. It predicts the end of an era as our modern civilization enters a new kind of spiritual and collective conscious.

The Mayans believed that starting from the year 1999 (a notable date also picked out by Nostradamus for its numerical significance - at least, significant in our eyes), mankind would have 13 years to recognize our own patterns of self destruction. So it's now our responsibility to get our act together and understand the importance of living a more spiritual (and less destructive) existence.

Why December 21, 2012? What will happen in 2012 that is so major to the collective conscious of mankind? According to the Mayan calendar, our entire solar system will come into alignment while cycling through our galaxy every 5,125 years. Since the dawn of the Mayan civilization in 3113 BC, a whopping 5,125 years will have passed, making the Winter Solstice of 2012 so special. It marks the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar. It does not mark the end of time.

Exactly What Will Happen in 2012?

My dad jokes to me that December 21, 2012 will be the day that the financial world finally crumbles. Since the stock market and the economy is largely driven by human sentiment - Mayan 2012 may even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I believe we are more likely to affect our own destiny with this obsession, than a prophetic calendar created by an ancient civilization is able to predict the exact timing of an asteroid impact, or volcanic eruption, or nuclear war.

Take a look at what some Mayan Prophecy supporters think might occur in 2012. Even if these were valid concerns - they are just as likely to happen tomorrow or in a thousand years, as they are on December 21, 2012. Funny how the entertainment industry has hooked onto this... does that tell you anything?

Massive Solar Storms

In the last few years, the sun has been getting a bit hot and bothered. Despite being in the stable part of it's natural cycle, the sun has been going through large solar storms which have been destroying satellites and knocking out power grids with its radiation. Notably, these solar flares may also be responsible for the current bout of climate change. Check out the hit movie Knowing starring Nicholas Cage for a depiction of the damage a massive solar storm would cause.

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is famous for its hot springs and geysers. It's also a major focal point of the special effects bonanza, 2012, starring John Cusak. This is because it's sitting atop the worlds biggest volcano, which has a habit of erupting every 650,000 years or so. And we are long overdue for the next eruption. Such a catastrophe would fill the entire atmosphere with ash, blotting out the sun around the world and plunging Earth into a 15,000-year winter. On the plus side, geologists at the park are monitoring the geysers closely, and would be able to give a considerable advanced warning of such an eruption.

Magnetic Field Reversal

The Core Our planet is surrounded by a magnetic field that protects us from a lot of the sun's radiation. It undergoes a massive reversal - north switching poles with south - on average every 250,000 years. Right now we're about 30,000 years over that average. The poles are drifting apart by 30kms each year, pointing to an imminent reversal. But fear not: "imminent" on this scale means sometime between the years 3000 and 4000 AD.

Of course, the doomsday Mayan enthusiasts reckon it may be sooner than we think. And the magnetic field would disappear entirely for up to a hundred years during the transition. This would directly expose all life on Earth to the sun's UV light, turning us to crisp in a matter of seconds. Not to mention the effects it would have on artificial pacemakers and satellite navigation, as depicted in the sci-fi movie, The Core, starring Aaron Eckhart. I guess if you're already a pile of ash, you don't care much for SatNav.

Meteor Impact

The object, 433 Eros, named after the Greek God of Love, is one of the few Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) over 10km wide. In fact, it is thought to be larger than the impactor that created the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico, which has been linked (at least in part) to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Eros is calculated to pass by Earth at 70 lunar distances in 2012, which is a heck of a long way. Of course, some Mayan proponents would say it's not far enough. Can't imagine what an asteroid strike would look like? Hollywood presents: Deep Impact, starring Tea Leoni.

The Large Hadron Collider

What Will Happen In 2012? Excuse me while I nerd-out for a moment.

While physicists are gearing up to collide hadrons in Switzerland in the hope of finding the Higgs Boson (aka The God Particle), doomsday fearmongers are convinced they are going to destroy the Earth with their "scientific meddling".

In truth, scientists in America have been smashing atoms and creating mini black holes long before the LHC was switched on. The collisions cause black holes to pop in and out of existence in a fraction of a second. And nothing more. Seems we are getting ourselves very worked up about... nothing. What's more, the Large Hadron Collider can tell us more about the components of the very building blocks of the universe, as well as creating major advances in technology and medicine. That's a very good thing.

On my trip home to Europe in 2009, I had the amazing opportunity to take a guided tour around CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The take-home lesson as far as 2012 is concerned is that when atoms collide, tiny bits of energy fly off in all directions and are measured by precise detectors. Even the whizziest ones run out of steam before they reach the surface some 100 meters up. What's more, we are constantly bombarded by cosmic rays like this from outer space every few seconds, so if the collisions really were harmful to us, we'd know about it.

What of black holes? What indeed. "So when are you going to destroy the Earth with a black hole?" we asked our physicist tour guide. He just laughed incredulously.

Nonetheless, fear mongers have twisted the Mayan prophecy to predict that in 2012, the LHC will crush Earth into the size of a marble. Of course, they would know, wouldn't they? Or maybe they've been watching too many movies. (Incidentally, I've featured Angels and Demons as our 2010 Hollywood representative. It's not really about black hole fearmongering, but does feature a cool anti-matter plot straight out of CERN.)

What Will Happen in 2012?

If you want to believe in the Mayan Prophecy, go nuts. Just make sure you distinguish the difference between conscious living versus the end of days, God sending us blasphemers to burn in hell, the end of humanity, and all that racket.

The Mayan prediction is supposed to be about a change in global consciousness; a maturing of minds. Some believe this will be sparked by a catastrophic event, like a global economic collapse. Others suggest it may be a cultural change, as we become more spiritually aware and less materialistic.

Others yet believe that the Mayan calendar is fundamentally flawed, because it's an arbitrary date system that uses base 10 (as quantum physicist Brian Cox points out, what if then Mayans had 12 fingers?)

Final Thoughts

Either way, speculating over what catastrophic events will happen in 2012 won't do us any good. It's really a distraction, a way to create drama in our lives, because we want to escape the day-to-day trivialities of the here and now. Doomsday prophecies will always occupy our minds as long as we remains lost, without purpose, without understanding what we're doing here. Whether you're religious or not - it's all driven by fear. And what is the point of that?

There will always be natural and man-made threats and we should be reasonably prepared for these. But acting like the world is going to end won't help you enjoy life today. Several years ago I think the few people that had heard of the Mayan Prophecy may actually have been influenced to live a more enlightened lifestyle. But today the sensationalist media are turning it into an end-of-the-world scenario and filling gullible people with even more fear. I just hope that by the time December 21, 2012 arrives we will be fed up with all the hype.

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