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Interesting shows on the History channel today about people in the past predicting the end of the world in 2012. I know we've all heard this kind of stuff before but still these shows are on the history channel today and it was interesting.
Like the Mayans who had precise measurements of Solar and Lunar eclipses thousands of years into the future and extreme accuracy in their calender shows the end of the world in dec 21, 2012. According to their calendar it predicts a world pole shift from north to south and vice versa which will cause the world wide destruction.
One of the ancient Pythian Priestess of the Oracle in Rome who predicted Christ and also predicted Hannibal's invasion of Rome etc...predicts the world to end in 2012 with fire coming from the sky in a world destruction.
And Merlin the ancient Druid Seer he predicted the first American Colonies and also Napolean in Europe and also cell phone technology and he predicts the earths poles to shift in 2012.
It also mentions an ancient text ''I Ching'' in China that also made predictions about events that came true and predicts the end of the world is in....dec, 21, 2012
Even the Internet gets into this as a system was created in june 2001 called the ''Webbot Spider'' which scans everything ever printed in the internet to make Stock Market predictions and interesting it has spit out that the world will end in .....you guessed it 2012.
Anyway it was interesting to watch whether you believe these or not. Kinda makes you go Hmm........
The History Channel has some worthwhile programming and some out and out junk. The show you mention - like shows about Nostradamus - have little educational value, are suffed with inaccurate BS from crackpot authors and are merely gimmick shows designed to boost ratings. I would guess perhaps 20% of the info presented in such shows is accurate. Works such as those of Nostradamus (for example) are usually so vaguely worded that you can read pretty much anything you want into them - I know, I've read Nostradamus (what a crock!!!). Likewise the Priestesses of Oracle were extremely vague in their prophecies so that no matter what happened it could be claimed that they predicted the future.
And don't even get me started on "Merlin" - who did not even exist. There are no reliable records of Britain during that time - so again, people can take tiny bits of pieces of information and put it together however they wish and come up with all kinds of BS theories to sell books to all kinds of fools.
I intended to teach history and my first degree (a BA) was in that very subject. Show such as the one you describe are NOT history.
Don't believe everything on the History channel they are often wrong. The Mayan 2012 end of the world scenario is all make believe. December 21, 2012 is just the day that their calendar cycle is over. People are just cashing in on the idea of an end day. May 5th 2000 the world was suppose to end to. Its all a bunch of garbage. History channel is crazy about airing shows about disasters, end time scenario's, Hitler and making a mockery out of religion. Very few shows have anything to do with real history and shows like Gangland serve no purpose other than to give more inspiration to young kids to join gangs. Sorry folks but the History channel has sold out just like TLC and Discovery channel. EW
One thing i thought is interesting is forget about the doomsday prophecies etc...but how did the Mayan know about the ''Precession of the Equinoxes'' about the 26,000 year cycle in which the Sun is at the exact center of the Milky Way and the earth wobbles on it's axis which is also on ....Dec, 21, 2012.
One thing i thought is interesting is forget about the doomsday prophecies etc...but how did the Mayan know about the ''Precession of the Equinoxes'' about the 26,000 year cycle in which the Sun is at the exact center of the Milky Way and the earth wobbles on it's axis which is also on ....Dec, 21, 2012.
Anyway heavy stuff to ponder.......
One very important point to keep in mind is that to the ancients (everywhere) the nighttime sky was a much more significant factor in their lives than it is for people today. For one thing there was no TV to entertain folks after dark (which is after all, half of an entire day (when averaged out over a year) so they spent much more time observing the heavens than we do today. Nor were there the bright city lights to wash out their full effect. So, stars took on enormous signficance, and pretty everyone was fully aware of the progression of the stars and their relationship to the seasons (which almost no one knows nowaday (at least not from personal observation)). So it is no surprise that most religions of the era placed massive significance on these motions and countless hours were spent on their study and analysis. The stars and the moon in those days dictated pretty much everything - when to plant, when to harvest, when the rains normally come, when the dry season arrives, when fish run, etc, etc, etc. Knowledge of the moon and stars therefor helped actually insure their survival and in fact was absolutely critical for early civilizations. Whereas we credit technology with being the lynchpin of our way of life, to them it was knowledge of the heavens.
Furthermore mathematics is not a new discovery - and geniuses were born then just as they are born today. Consequently the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chinese, the Mayans etc all had fairly advanced mathematics and means of extrapolating the future movement of stars from their oral histories of where the stars used to be. In fact, I suspect that it was this desire to understand the heaven and predict the future motion of the moon and stars that was a major fact in the development of advanced math.
The Precession of the Equinoxes also refers to the time it takes for the Spring equinox to make a total circle of the zodiac- called the 'Great Year' or the 'Platonic year'.
The current March equinox lies in the constellation of Pisces- this will shift westward into Aquarius around the year 2650- into Capricornus around 4000, and onward. The current Summer solstice shifted from Gemini to Taurus about 1992. The two equinoxes (Autumn and spring) & Solstices, winter and summer-shift westward about one constellation on the zodiac on average every 2200 years.
The so called age of Aquarius will begin 2650. During the time of Christ the Spring equinox shifted from Aries to Pisces- the 'age of Pisces' is supposedly the time of the rise of great religions. The' age of Aries' from 2000bc to 0 was the era of great empires, and the 'Age of Taurus'- 4000bc -2000bc the birth of agriculture. The 'Age of Aquarius' is supposedly the age of Communication beyond the earth.
Astronomically The north star 'Polaris' is a temporary 'pole star'; by the year 4000 Gamma Cepheus will be the ''pole star', in 8000, the first magnitude star in Cygnus, Deneb will be the pole star, and in 14000 it will be the brilliant blue white sun Vega of Lyra. In that distant time the southern cross will again be visible from New York, as well as Alpha Centauri.
The precession of Earth's axis of rotation with respect to inertial space is also called the precession of the equinoxes. Like a wobbling top, the direction of the Earth's axis is changing; while today, the North Pole points roughly to Polaris, over time it will change. Because of this wobble, the position of the earth in its orbit around the sun at the moment of the equinoxes and solstices will also change.
The term precession typically refers only to the largest periodic motion. Other changes of Earth's axis are nutation and polar motion; their magnitude is very much smaller.
Currently, this annual motion is about 50.3 seconds of arc per year or 1 degree every 71.6 years. The process is slow, but cumulative. A complete precession cycle covers a period of approximately 25,765 years, the so called Platonic year, during which time the equinox regresses a full 360° through all twelve constellations of the zodiac. Precessional movement is also the determining factor in the length of an astrological age.
A consequence of the precession is a changing pole star. Currently Polaris is extremely well-suited to mark the position of the north celestial pole, as Polaris is a moderately bright star with a visual magnitude of 2.1 (variable), and it is located within a half degree of the pole.
On the other hand, Thuban in the constellation Draco, which was the pole star in 3000 BC, is much less conspicuous at magnitude 3.67 (one-fifth as bright as Polaris); today it is invisible in light-polluted urban skies.
The brilliant Vega in the constellation Lyra is often touted as the best north star (it fulfilled that role around 12000 BC and will do so again around the year AD 14000), however it never comes closer than 5° to the pole.
When Polaris becomes the north star again around 27800 AD, due to its proper motion it then will be farther away from the pole than it is now, while in 23600 BC it came closer to the pole.
It is more difficult to find the south celestial pole in the sky at this moment, as that area is a particularly bland portion of the sky, and the nominal south pole star is Sigma Octantis, which with magnitude 5.5 is barely visible to the naked eye even under ideal conditions. That will change from the eightieth to the ninetieth centuries, however, when the south celestial pole travels through the False Cross.
This situation also is seen on a star map. The orientation of the south pole is moving toward the Southern Cross constellation. For the last 2,000 years or so, the Southern Cross has nicely pointed to the south pole. By consequence, the constellation is no longer visible from subtropical northern latitudes, as it was in the time of the ancient Greeks.
he figures to the right attempt to explain the relation between the precession of the Earth's axis and the shift in the equinoxes. These figures show the position of the Earth's axis on the celestial sphere, a fictitious sphere which places the stars according to their position as seen from Earth, regardless of their actual distance. The first image shows the celestial sphere from the outside, with the constellations in mirror image. The second figure shows the perspective of a near-Earth position as seen through a very wide angle lens (from which the apparent distortion).
The rotation axis of the Earth describes, over a period of 25,700 years, a small circle (blue) among the stars, centered around the ecliptic north pole (the blue E) and with an angular radius of about 23.4°, an angle known as the obliquity of the ecliptic. The direction of precession is opposite to the daily rotation of the Earth on its axis. The orange axis was the Earth's rotation axis 5,000 years ago, when it pointed to the star Thuban. The yellow axis, pointing to Polaris, marks the axis now.
The equinoxes occur where the celestial equator intersects the ecliptic (red line), that is, where the Earth's axis is perpendicular to the line connecting the centers of the Sun and Earth. When the axis precesses from one orientation to another, the equatorial plane of the Earth (indicated by the circular grid around the equator) moves. The celestial equator is just the Earth's equator projected onto the celestial sphere, so it moves as the Earth's equatorial plane moves, and the intersection with the ecliptic moves with it. The positions of the poles and equator on Earth do not change, only the orientation of the Earth against the fixed stars.
As seen from the orange grid, 5,000 years ago, the vernal equinox was close to the star Aldebaran of Taurus. Now, as seen from the yellow grid, it has shifted (indicated by the red arrow) to somewhere in the constellation of Pisces.
Still pictures like these are only first approximations as they do not take into account the variable speed of the precession, the variable obliquity of the ecliptic, the planetary precession (whose center lies on a circle about 6° away from the poles) and the proper motions of the stars.
Last edited by skytrekker; 01-29-2008 at 05:33 AM..
I like a lot of the stuff that the History channel has been playing, but I know quite a bit of it is probably hype. I'll wager any amount of money that December 21, 2012 will come and go. Any takers??? If I win I make money. If I lose, it won't matter!
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