Tag Archives: science
DOOMSDAY 2012 – The End of the Maya Calendar
The year 2012 is only seven months away.
According to many people, this will mark the beginning of the end of the world as we know it. But what exactly does that mean? What exactly is predicted to happen in 2012?
Does it mean the planet is on the threshold of some galactic catastrophe? Or does it mean that the human race is on the threshold of a positive transformation that will touch our minds, bodies, and even our souls?
Or does it mean something else entirely?
The Controversy Over 2012
At present, there are tons of sites across the web that focus on the 2012 prophecy. These sites can all trace their roots back to the Mayan Long Count Calendar.
This calendar is a non-repeating, base-20 calendar that identifies a day by counting the number of days that have passed since the date of creation. For the Mayan, the date of creation equates to August 11, 3114 BCE on the Gregorian calendar.
August 11, 3114 BCE is the date. This date also was the start of the present 5,125-year cycle which is set to end on December 21, 2012.
This cycle is based on the Mayan study of astronomy. The Mayans realized the earth wobbles as it spins on its axis. This wobbling rotation causes the stars’ patterns of movement to drift gradually in the sky in a 5,125-year cycle.
With this information in hand, along with their knack for mathematics, the Mayan came up with their Long Count Calendar around 355 B.C.
The Translation of the Mayan Long Count Calendar
The Long Count Calendar was rediscovered and translated in the 1950s. However, it was a 1966 interpretation of the Mayan Long Count Calendar that seems to have taken the world by storm.
In 1966, Michael D. Coe wrote in his book, The Maya, that “there is a suggestion … that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the 13th b’ak’tun.”
According to the Mayan Long Count Calendar, we are currently in the 13th b’ak’tun.
So, the big question is: What happens on the final day of the 13th b’ak’tun?
Theories About Armageddon
It seems everyone has their own idea about what is predicted to happen in 2012.
Since the Mayan were such astute astronomers, many people believe that the earth is doomed to end in a cosmic catastrophe. In particular, an interplanetary crash between Earth and Nirbiru, a planet supposedly discovered by the Sumerians.
However, there is no real science behind this idea or most of the other astronomical predictions related to Mayan prophecy. So much so, that NASA has even created a websitedebunking most of these “predictions.”
However, there are others who believe that December 21, 2012 will not mark the destruction of the planet, but rather some sort of spiritual change.
This idea comes with a lot of criticism. Most Christians seem to believe that there is absolutely no biblical evidence that the 2012 Mayan prophecy represents an accurate prediction of doomsday or spiritual enlightenment.
Many people try to relate 2012 with Hinduism. However, traditional Hindu scriptures do not agree to this linkage either. The 2012 prophecies do not coincide with the Hindu belief of Satya Yuga and Kali Yuga, the beginning and ending of the universe.
Will the World End in 2012?
So, what can we expect to happen on December 21, 2012?
For once, it seems that science and religion is on the same page. Even modern-day Mayans do not apply any real significance to the Long Count Calendar. There are no precautions or preparations being made in the scientific or religious realms.
However, mainstream science and religion has been known to be wrong before. The only thing that is certain is that on December 21, 2012 the winter solstice will occur. Beyond that, we will just have to wait and see.
SuperVolcanoes – This Is the Way the World Ends? Volcanoes Could Darken World
Super-volcanoes have probably caused more extinctions than asteroids. But until now it has been thought that these giant volcanoes took thousands of years to form — and would remain trapped beneath the earth’s crust for thousands more years — before having much effect on the planet.
But new research indicates these catastrophic eruptions, possibly thousands of times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, may happen only a few hundred years after the volcanoes form. In other words, they may have a very “short fuse,” according to researchers at Vanderbilt University.
Such an event could make thermonuclear war or global warming seem trivial, spewing untold tons of ash into the atmosphere to block sunlight. The result would be many years of frigid temperatures, wiping out millions of species. A super-volcano that erupted 250 million years ago is now believed to have created the greatest mass extinction the world has ever seen, wiping out up to 95 percent of all plant and animal species. Some renegade scientists believe it was a volcano, not an asteroid, that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
But is global suicide lurking right below our feet? Is a super-volcano about to blow its top? Not as far as scientists can tell. Such a volcano results from the accumulation of a giant pool of lava just a few miles below the ground, and there is no known formation anywhere on the planet that is expected to erupt in the immediate future.
Scientists, who could be wrong about that, have thought for decades that once that pool forms, it stays there for thousands of years before erupting. But the new study by geophysicists from Vanderbilt, along with colleagues at the University of Chicago and elsewhere, documents several lines of research showing that the trigger could be pulled quickly, possibly within a few hundred years.
“Our study suggests that when these exceptionally large magma pools form they are ephemeral and cannot exist very long without erupting,” Vanderbilt’s Guilherme Gualda said in releasing the study, published in the journal Public Library of Science ONE.
That research, as well as earlier research that led to a very different conclusion, was based on the formation of crystals in the molten magma that decay at known rates and thus provide a geological clock, dating various events in the history of the volcano.
According to Gualda, previous researchers looked at the decay of zircons, which are common in volcanic rocks, and concluded that the giant magma pools could exist for 100,000 years. But his team looked at the crystallization of quartz, the most abundant mineral in volcanic deposits, and concluded that such a pool would have to erupt in one-tenth of that time, and possibly in only about 500 years.
That makes the threat of super-volcanoes a bit more serious, but there’s no reason to panic.
Gualda’s team studied deposits in the Long Valley Caldera in northeastern California, where a violent eruption blew 150 cubic miles of molten rock into the atmosphere, blanketing much of North America with hot ash and dropping the earth’s surface more than a mile as it sank into the area once occupied by the magma. That was about 760,000 years ago, but all these years later the region still keeps a lot of scientists on the edge of their seats.
The Long Valley geology began misbehaving again in 1978 when a 5.4 earthquake struck six miles southeast of the caldera, suggesting that the volcano might be reasserting itself. In subsequent years that was followed by swarms of small quakes, which are closely associated with pending volcanic eruptions.
A couple of decades ago, trees began dying on nearby Mammoth Mountain from large amounts of carbon dioxide seeping from the magma, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Today, the caldera seems to be quieting down, despite several recent bursts of seismic events, but it is probably the most closely watched volcano on the planet. Scientists with the USGS are keeping a close eye on it, monitoring every little belch, and they insist there is no reason for the folks who live in California to be concerned. At least not yet.
Meanwhile, scientists at Oregon State University have been focusing their attention on Yellowstone National Park, where an eruption a couple of million years ago is believed to have been 2,000 times larger than Mount St. Helens. That region also shows constant signs of seismic unrest, and there have been eruptions there several times in the past, according to the Oregon researchers.
Incidentally, researchers at Washington State University in Pullman, who have also been studying Yellowstone, concluded earlier this year that the big eruption 2 million years ago wasn’t one blast, but two, separated by about 6,000 years.
But just because it was split into two parts doesn’t mean it was benign. The Washington researchers believe the first blast was the biggest, and it darkened the sky with ash from California to the Mississippi River.
So super-volcanoes cannot be ignored, and now it seems they can pull the trigger much more quickly than anyone had thought.
ZOMBIES IN THE BIBLE – THE DEAD COMETH
Zechariah 14:12
And the LORD will send a plague on all the nations that fought against Jerusalem. Their people will become like walking corpses, their flesh rotting away. Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.
Zechariah 14:13
On that day they will be terrified, stricken by the LORD with great panic. They will fight their neighbors hand to hand.
There are several other biblical passages that allude to a plague that will decimate mankind in the end times.
Many people take the bible as the truth, and also see it as a book of prophecy. Could we have received warning of the impending rising of the undead from antiquity? We don’t have to go far to rationalize this. Prophets in ancient times may have seen exactly what happened, but didn’t understand the science behind it to describe it accurately. They may have seen the biological cause engineered in a lab and unleashed upon the world, but could only use simple words to describe it.
There are currently so many end times prophecies that it can make your head spin. Almost all of them don’t point to an exact cause of the apocalypse, but the bible seems to point to the undead several times
Revelation 11:6
These men have power to shut up the sky so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying; and they have power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want.
Revelation 11:8
Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.
Revelation 11:11
But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them.
Ezekiel 37:10
So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet–a vast army.
The bible is rife with resurrection, the dead coming to life, and stories and illiterations to the end of times. Perhaps, the plague God uses to wipe the earth clean is a plague of Zombies. You can also point to end times prophecy references of Locusts and say that zombies could also be considered as a locust, devouring all life. At this point, all we can do is speculate and prepare. We don’t know how or when the world will end, but we can be ready if it is survivable.
***Notes***
The end of the world can be described several ways:
1. A literal end, where the entire world is destroyed.
2. An end to the way the whole world sees itself.
3. A massive culling of the world’s population so that it is more in balance.
4. A massive culling of the world’s population so that it can be enslaved by those in power.
How a Zombie Outbreak Could Happen in Real Life
Could zombies actually exist? What would it take for human corpses to rise up and hunt the living? We often think zombies are scientifically impossible — but actually, they’re just very implausible. Here’s one wayThe Walking Dead could happen in real life.
To start our zombie thought experiment, we need to make some basic assumptions. First, we’re ignoring all supernatural zombie origins. We’re also going to set aside space radiation, mysterious comets, or Russian satellites. Our focus will be narrowed to biological origins –- a zombie contagion. Of course, there are many different zombie scenarios in books and film, and no one theory is going to cover all of them perfectly.
The first aspect of human zombification we need to tackle is basic zombie physiology. In virtually every zombie scenario, zombies are able to function despite increasing levels of physical deterioration due to injury or decomposition. There has to be some mechanism for transmitting neural impulses from the brain to various body parts, and for providing energy to muscles so they can keep operating.
The most common science fictional explanation for zombie outbreaks is a virus — but viruses and bacterial infections are not known for building large new physical structures within the body. So let’s count viruses out. Instead, the need for a mechanism to activate deteriorating body parts actually provides the cornerstone of what is, in my opinion, the strongest theory: fungal infection.
We know that fungi can infect humans. We also know that fungal networks exist in most of the world’s forests. These mycorrhizal networks have a symbiotic relationship with trees and other plants in the forest, exchanging nutrients for mutual benefit. These networks can be quite large, and there are studies that demonstrate the potential for chemical signals to be transmitted from one plant to another via the mycorrhizal network. That, in turn, means that fungal filaments could perform both vascular and neural functions within a corpse.
This leads us to the following scenario: microscopic spores are inhaled, ingested, or transmitted via zombie bite. The spores are eventually dispersed throughout the body via the bloodstream. Then they lie dormant. When the host dies, chemical signals (or, more accurately, the absence of chemical signals) within the body that occur upon death trigger the spores to activate, and begin growing. The ensuing fungal network carries nutrients to muscles in the absence of respiration or normal metabolism.
Part of the fungal network grows within the brain, where it interfaces with the medulla and cerebellum, as well as parts of the brain involving vision, hearing and possibly scent. Chemicals released by the fungi activate basic responses within these brain areas. The fungi/brain interface is able to convert the electrochemical signals of neurons into chemical signals that can be transmitted along the fungal network that extends through much of the body. This signal method is slow and imperfect, which results in the uncoordinated movements of zombies. And this reliance on the host’s brain accounts for the “headshot” phenomenon, in which grievous wounds to the brain or spine seem to render zombies fully inert.
This leaves the problem of zombie metabolism. Where do the zombies get the nutrients needed to perform physical activity, plus the necessary nutrients to fuel the life-cycle of the fungi? This is most easily explained by the zombies’ constant, endless drive to devour meat. The fungal network would still need some way to metabolize meat, and zombies seem to be able to function even in the absence of a human digestive system.
It is possible that this particular fungi has evolved a means to extract energy and nutrients from meat in a similar manner to carnivorous plants. The ingestion of meat may actually be vestigial, an unintended result of the drive to bite. In this case, the fungi may draw energy from the decomposition of the host’s own organic material, which effectively puts a shelf-life on zombies (in addition to the deterioration of body structures beyond the point where the fungal network can compensate).
Accounts of dismembered parts moving purposefully may be apocryphal.
Now we have established a working theory for fungal zombies. How could such a disease arise? The goal of any biological organism is to live long enough to reproduce, but many pathogens are self-limited by their own lethality. The host dies before it has a chance to spread the pathogen inadvertently. This gives us two pathways for development of the zombie fungus. First, a fungal species existed that used the digestive tracts of mammals to travel. In other words, animals ingested the fungus, including spores. The spores were later defecated out in a new location. Some mutations occurred that caused the spores to gestate while still within the host. However, in most cases, the host’s immune system would destroy the fungus. Further mutations could lead to spores that only trigger once the host has died, avoiding this problem.
Another possibility is a fungal infection that was highly aggressive and caused rapid death within the host. That strain was not able to successfully reproduce as often as a mutated strain that delayed activation until post-mortem.
Of course, it’s one thing for a fungus to activate after the host dies, and quite another for the dead host to stand up and start attacking things. There are many evolutionary steps in between, which is why a zoonotic origin seems likely.
The precursor fungus could have been ingested by pigs, which are omnivorous. Captive pig populations, subject to overcrowding, would have been perfect places for the fungus to spread and mutate. In some poorly managed pig farms, dead pigs may have gone unnoticed, allowing post-mortem development of the fungus. Dead pigs were likely partially eaten by their living counterparts, allowing the fungal strains with post-mortem mutations to spread back into the population. The method of transfer from the pig population to the human population seems fairly obvious.
The evolution of fully mobile dead pigs probably started with a simple bite reflex that could transmit spores to nearby pigs. A bite combined with a muscular spasm, a sort of lunge, would work even better. After many generations, this developed into full post-mortem mobility. Thus, a dead host went from a drawback to an advantage, becoming a mobile platform for spore distribution. In fact, the zombie hunger drive may have originated as a spore distribution method –- only later was the ability to metabolize meat acquired. We can extrapolate this development to assume the further refinement of the fungal neural system, allowing for zombies which are far more coordinated and can run at nearly full speed.
While this type of behavior modification may seem unlikely, there is precedent for it within the animal world. Several species of parasitic wasps are able to reprogram the behavioral patterns of their hosts (bees, ants and even caterpillars), creating complex new behaviors beneficial to the wasp and detrimental to the host. While the hosts in these cases aren’t dead, this does demonstrate that complex chemical overrides can evolve in nature.
Hopefully scientists can develop an effective zombie fungicide in time.