Except you've totally misunderstood whatever you're talking about, lulz. Why is this possible at the equinox and not any other arbitrary time of year?Quote:
Originally Posted by Omnis Dei
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Except you've totally misunderstood whatever you're talking about, lulz. Why is this possible at the equinox and not any other arbitrary time of year?Quote:
Originally Posted by Omnis Dei
The Equinox and Solstice are the only times of the year that are not random, but stable. They change dates because dates do not accurately depict our position in the solar system. On the Equinox, light is refracted a certain way in the Mayan temples enabling them to understand that they were the exact same orientation in their solar system as the last Equinox. In this position, they have an uncompromised view of the greater galaxy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
The Mayans had no knowledge of the existence of galaxies, let alone their motions.
The position of the sun within the galaxy does not change on a timescale observable by the Mayan civilisation.
Times of year are in no way 'random' and such a claim is nonsensical.
As is the claim that dates don't accurately depict position in the solar system whereas equinoxes do, when there is a direct correspondence between equinoxes and dates.
The Mayans did not know that the Earth moved around the sun and thus had no conception of an 'orientation in the solar system'.
How can you be so obtuse?
They obviously did have a greater understanding of the galaxy or their calendar wouldn't be so accurate.
How does understanding the motion of the galaxy allow one to create a more accurate calander which simply describes the observed motion of the sun and moon through the sky?Quote:
Originally Posted by Omnis Dei
What does it mean for a calander to be accurate?
Assuming that understanding this 'galactic cycle' would allow one to construct an accurate calander, how does one know that there's not some other way to do it?
Open a goddamn book Omnis.
I mean seriously, what is the point in spending so much bloody time talking and arguing about astronomy or its history when you've apparently never spent five minutes actually learning about it. You don't know the basic facts about the utmost basic picture.
Long Count Mayan Calendar CycleQuote:
Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned
2012 AD - Mayan Calendar and Galactic Alignment
Quote:
Consequently, there emerged a serious hypothesis, that the noted configuration in question was deliberately targeted by the Long Count calendar of the ancient Maya. That is to say, that in establishing the Long Count circa 500 BC, the Maya of the time intentionally chose to synchronise the completion of 13 Baktun periods (NB: 1 Baktun = 144000 days. 13 x 144000 = 1872000 days – 1 complete world age cycle) with a singular astronomical event that would take place some 2500 years in the future, upon the precise date of 21 December 2012 AD: An alignment of three principle celestial characters: the earth at winter solstice, the sun, and the equatorial plane of the Milky Way galaxy.
This then, is the theory of the so called Mayan 2012 Galactic Alignment.
Hey Xei rather than insult people for not knowing as much as you, how about you try informing them. Why must you take such an antagonistic approach when all I've tried to do is teach you?Quote:
Of the basic configuration as detailed, with reference to the crossing point of the earth ecliptic line and the galactic equator, one may note then that visually, there will be an alignment of the earth, the sun, and the galactic equator twice every year. In one instance, the earth will be between the sun and the galactic equator, and in another (exactly 6 months later) the sun will be between the earth and the galactic equator. The 2012 AD alignment as is said to be associated with the Long Count calendar is of exactly this type, being of the latter stated order: Earth > Sun > Galactic Equator, but critically, with one very important additional factor, which indeed makes the entire arrangement far more complex and infrequent: The 2012 AD conjunction is one that involves the earth, sun, and the galactic equator, specifically at a time when the earth is at the winter solstice (northern hemisphere) point of its orbit, at a seasonal extreme. Now, an event of this sort certainly does not occur every year, but rather once only every 25800 years. And this is due to a very subtle celestial motion: precession.
Just because cultures used a geo-centric view of the heavens does not mean they didn't know any better. Most people in our world still do when they look up into the sky at night today. Constellations are geo-centric. They don't look the same from other points in space. But we still use them. Why do we use helio-centric viewpoints nowadays. Surely our culture most not be stupid enough to think that the Sun is the center of the Universe? OUR calendar is based on the sun and the moon. The Mayan calendar is not anything like our calendar.
Anyway, Mayans don't believe that that the equinox is the day some event in particular will happen. It is just the conjunction with the orb being 60 years past and future. Many theories and speculations have co-opted the 2012 prophecie and turned it into a phenomena. I believe it is important to be aware of things like Niburu, the I ching, Second coming of Christ, etc. have nothing to do with 2012. The only cultures that I know about who have any significance to the 2012 date are various New World cultures like the Mayans, Aztecs, Hopi among others, and then many Asian cultures such as the Tibetans (Check out the Kalachakra teachings!!! Kalachakra means Wheel of time is strangely almost identical in essence to the Mayan calendar), Hindu, and in Africa I know of that date being attributed to the Egyptians. Interestingly I heard about the Egyptian one thirty years ago before I ever heard about the Mayan prophecy.
Edit: It was Terence McKenna who made a link with the I Ching and the Mayan calendar. He had comeup with his I Ching based time-wave zero theory on his own and upon hearing of the Mayan 2012 date tweaked his theory a little to line up then.
The equinox does not happen at the same place every year, the place the equinox occurs drifts around the sun, each equinox completing a full circuit around the sun in about 26,000 years, more or less, since the precession is slowing down, along with earth's rotation.
So you have it backwards, it is not the galaxy moving at equinox, it is the equinox itself that has moved. An error of the same class as thinking that the sun moves around the earth. Here, you're thinking that the galaxy moves around the solar system, based on the flawed belief that the equinox always happens at the same location relative to the sun.
I can assure you that the galaxy does not orbit our sun.
Dannon's back! Have trouble finding food?
(The thing says "Hungry" under your name lol)
No shit sherlockQuote:
Originally Posted by Forsaken
Then what is this?You said "no shit" to a refutation of what you said earlier.Quote:
Originally Posted by omnis-dei
How did you get "Our galaxy orbits our sun" from that?
Just gonna throw my two cents in to this flame war, the 2012 conspiracies are very intriguing and I do believe the year 2012 holds certain significance, and by the end of the year things for humanity will be very different, and the change will be far greater than in past years. But I do believe that there will still be humans in human bodies, standing in an undestroyed Times Square, when the ball drops to ring in 2013. (I tend to hope they'll still be Americans, but you never know.)
Actually it doesn't. Study history please. There has been one and only one other global depression in the history of the planet and even that one didn't have nearly the same effect as the current one is already having since the first world did not have its hands as deeply into the 2nd/3rd world as it does now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
We have been trained over a long time to believe that 'things have always been this way', but the fact is that it really hasn't. Never before has high frequency stock trading existed that allows for 1000 point "flash crashes" in a matter of seconds. Never before has one company supplied such a large percentage of the world's seeds supplies that when they severely under produce, whole countries see surges of farmer suicides while other whole countries ban them from use entirely. Never before has the United States fought 2 consecutive invasive wars while posturing to begin a third.
A mere 20 years ago we couldn't have even had this conversation because as common individuals we didn't have the ability to easily communicate with random people located all over the planet. The world has changed in the last 100 years about as much as it had changed in the previous 1000 (or more). Its changed in the last 10 years as much as it changed in the last 100. That doesn't seem unprecedented to you?
Yes, just like a day has nothing to do with a year. A day is the rotation of the earth, and a year is the orbit of the Earth around the sun. But guess what, we can use days to count how many happen during a year and thus determine their relative lengths. Did you know that you can also count the procession of the equinox to determine their relative lengths to our orbit around the galaxy?Quote:
Originally Posted by Forsaken
Yes, it's called an exponential curve...Quote:
Originally Posted by Xaqaria
http://images.angelpub.com/2011/07/7...tial-curve.png
What you're doing is pointing at the line on the far right were we are at the moment and saying 'this is the special bit'.
You're also cherry picking 'never before' events... you can do that for any year. Never, before 1945, had the world seen hugely destructive weapons. Never before 1971 had the US not been on the gold standard. Never before 1905 had mankind understood the relativity of physics. Never before the Beatles had a band attained so many number ones.
Care to educate me as to what the qualitative difference is between the above 'never befores' and... farmer suicides?
No... it's called a waveQuote:
Originally Posted by Xei
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../e/e9/Wave.png
Woah dude you like, totally tripped me out there!
HUR. I'm kidding. Firstly, did you even read Xaq's post? His entire emphasis is on unprecedented events. The EXACT ANTITHESIS of a wave. What you actually meant to say was, 'yes, that matches his post, but here is something totally unrelated which I want to talk about'. Secondly, taking a look at actual history, please try to draw a wave on this:
13700000000 Big Bang
3700000000 Life
1300000000 Eukaryotic cells, multicellular organisms
550000000 Cambrian Explosion (body plans)
330000000 Reptiles
195000000 Class Mammalia
81500000 Primates
32500000 Superfamily Hominoidea
7000000 Family Hominidae
3900000 Human ancestors walk upright
1800000 Genus Homo, Homo Erectus, specialized stone tools
1000000 Spoken language
300000 Homo sapiens
100000 Homo sapiens sapiens
25000 Art, early cities
10000 Agriculture
5000 Writing, wheel
2500 City States
550 Printing, experimental method
225 Industrial Revolution
130 Electricity, telephone, radio, ...
27 Personal Computers, mobile phones, internet
TBH Xei, show me an exponential curve and I will tell you the the apex is the special bit. What other part could be?
The "never befores" were merely interesting milestones used as examples to try to illustrate that we are nearing the special bit. We are at a point in history in which extrapolating the past into the future breaks down into nonsense.
As far as what Omnis is saying about waves, yeah I can't say I can get on board with his reasoning exactly either but my guess is that he is trying to point out that the way we see things now leads to this exponential curve model but once we pass that apex, that model becomes useless. The manifestation of reality is not actually an exponential curve or a wave or a spiral or rippling oblate spheroid, or any model at all. Once we are past the apex which may or may not mathematically fall on december 21st of this year, we will have to use a completely different model to describe the evolution of reality-as-we-see-it.
edit; I'd also just like to point out that if you included major terrestrial/galactic/universal catastrophes in that also cherry picked list of milestones then one could easily draw a diminishing (or expanding depending on how you see things) wave on that list.
There isn't really an 'apex', there's just a cutoff at the present moment. At any moment in history, most certainly recent history, the same apex would have been there to point at. But in hindsight there is nothing intrinsically special about it.
Like a bacteria, our irresponsible use of technology appears to look like an exponential curve but it drops off and starts again. At least this is what the Hopi prophesied. We have the capacity to reach new levels of technology but also have the capacity to destroy ourselves and start again.
Xaq and Omnis, you both seem to be floating around a bunch of random unrelated theories and it's giving me a headache.
All I can say is that if you think that this year is the "end" or "apex" of human progress (technological, social, etc.), then you will be proven wrong in the decades to come.
I don't know anything for certain so it'll be hard to prove me wrong. But while we're on the subject, why don't you or Xei explain what direction humanity is headed.
Space in my opinion, that's where our future lies if we want to continue to survive and flourish as a species.
Onwards, and probably quickly. 2012 just isn't special. Large events have always happened and will continue to happen, before, through, and after it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Omnis Dei