'Doomsayers Retain Doubt, Ignore Science'
by Richard Brill, Professor of Science, Honolulu Community College;
for Star Bulletin, Hawaii, Feb 15, 2009.
[extracts]
"With a widespread distrust of authority and ignorance of science, you have a recipe for conspiracy theories. Born of fear and fed by misinformation, they can spread like wildfire in the vast forest of the information age.
"More than 1 million Web pages cite a panoply of [claims] that the apocalypse is coming in 2012.
"The basis for this [incorrect] growing phenomenon originates from the ancient Mayan [Long Count] calendar that [they say] ends in December of that year. [In fact it doesn't 'end'. It continues for thousands of our years!]
"Some [doomsayers] contend that the Mayan calendar ends on the solstice that occurs on Dec. 21, 2012, at 11:11 a.m. [GMT], which will supposedly coincide with an alignment of the sun with the center of the Milky Way galaxy, causing any number of imagined effects that defy reason.
"Actually, the sun will not come closer than 5 degrees to the center of the Milky Way, and on Dec. 18 rather than on the solstice. This happens every year with only slight variations."
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Emphasis and [italics] by Que.
As at June 2012, this article no longer exists on the Star Bulletin website.
See also :- Scientist Responds to 2012 End-Of-World Hype
and :- The 2012 Winter Solstice Non-event
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Open Thread
1 hour ago
1 comment:
Excellent and to the point. Like every other failed "prophecy", turn of the century or millennium or the "end" of the Mayan Calendar, it will be another "oh well."
Humans seem to need something to get their minds out of the present, which is all we really have, and into the future which is unknowable. It also fuels cynicism and skepticism in time.
Thinking the earth, which is NOTHING, in the Universe is the center of some signficant move across the plane of the galaxy is laughable. Science now feels that there are billions of evolving life planets in our galaxy alone.
I wonder if they suffer from "prohecy?"
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