2012 Doomsday?

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I’m sure you all missed me terribly. I was looking through my student drive again at school and I was looking for something interesting, and I found it. It was an assignment for journalism class about if the world will end in 2012. My teacher was going to pick the best one to be published in the Salt Lake Tribune, and I got second out of everyone. I was pretty proud of myself, and so I thought I might share it with y’all. What do you think? Will the world end in 2012? What is your opinion on it? Let me know!

2012 Doomsday?
By: Seth Batz

We’ve all heard the prophecies and tales of the “impending doomsday” that lies on the date of December 21st, 2012, but what do you really know about it? Some say it’s the return of the lost planet Nibiru to usher in a New Age of enlightenment, or to collide with the Earth. Some say there will be a massive solar storm that will wipe out all living organisms. If you look at it scientifically, there is no proof anything will happen, but no proof that nothing will happen.
It’s really hard to understand this mysterious date if you don’t know what it all is about. I’ll start at the ancient Mayan calendar legend. Many people use the Mayan calendar in their arguments saying that their calendar ends on December 21st, 2012. Well, do you want to know something? The calendar hanging in my room ends on December 31st, 2011, so is the world going to end then? The ancient Mayans believed in "world ages" in their texts, but many of their texts have been lost or destroyed over the years, so the exact significance of this is unknown. According to the text, Popal Vuh, the book of creation to the Mayan people, we are living in the fourth world. The Popal Vuh says the first three worlds that the gods made failed, but the fourth was successful because man was created. The Mayan calendar was very accurate and sophisticated. It was divided up into three main cycles, the longest cycle being the Long Count, or B'ak'tun. In the Long Count, the previous world ended after 13 b'ak'tuns or roughly 5,125 years. The Long Count starts where they believed the third world ended, and the current one began, around August 11th or 13th 3,114 BC. This means that the fourth, and current world will also have reached the end of its thirteenth b'ak'tun on either December 21 or December 23, 2012.
The Mayans didn’t believe that the world was going to end; they probably would have partied because they made it a whole cycle. "There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012." says Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone.
The Mayans thought there was another world before this, so that could mean they were comfortable with the idea of another after this. They even predicted future events past the end of the fourth world, such as the returning of one of their great leaders, Palenque ruler K'inich Janaab Pakal in AD 4772.
Some say that the doomsday will be a collision with the planet NIbiru. The first civilization on Earth was the Sumerians. Ancient Sumerian mythology says that they learned everything they knew from their gods, Anunnaki(translated ‘Those who from heaven to Earth came). They seemed to have an advanced knowledge of our solar system. They knew all nine planets of the solar system, their colors, and their moons. They even said that Mars once had water, which is now being proven. The Anunnaki are said to have come from a planet called Nibiru (‘The planet of the crossing’), and came to teach us. The Sumerians say that Nibiru comes into our solar system every 3,600 years, because of its long, complicated orbit. Many people believe that Nibiru will return again and bring enlightenment or will collide with us. Zecharia Sitchin, one of the very few people who can read and translate ancient languages of the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Hebrew, stated that then next time Nibiru will come back to our solar system is December 21st, 2012. This theory has been disproved because if Nibiru were to come back, it would be in 2087. Also, a body of mass that large near our solar system would have been detected long ago.
Finally, I’ll show you the science and astronomy of 2012. To fully explain and understand the whole of what is going to happen on December 21st, 2012 would be nearly impossible. You would need a PhD in astrophysics just to be able to understand it, but I will do my best to paraphrase it.
In our solar system, everything is balanced. Like a ruler you place on your finger, you need to hold it in the center. With something that’s heavier on one side, you slide that closer to the center. Our sun does that with all the planets, so it can “slingshot” them around itself. But there’s several objects around the sun, so it has more than one barycenter(the balancing point). This causes distress on the suns insides and outsides, the product of which is solar flares. Solar flares go through a cycle where the most intense flares happen at the end, solar maximum, and the less intense, solar minimum, at the beginning. The solar maximum happens about every 11 years. The next solar maximum is set to happen on December 21st, 2012. But that’s not all.
Our solar system is part of a huge disc shaped collection of stars and planets called the Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system is somewhere on the edge of the disc, slightly on top of the disc. But very soon we'll be moving to the bottom of the disc. This change, from top to bottom, begins on December 21, 2012. On the same day when our Sun is at its solar maximum, something will happen that's never happened for millions of billions of years, our solar system will intersect with the Galactic plane(the middle between the top and bottom of the disk), called the "Galactic Equator" of the Milky Way. But there’s more… We will be doing this precisely aligned with the center of the Galaxy where it’s at maximum mass! More mass means more gravity, more gravity means more disruption on the barycenters of our Sun. That means there will be more of a pull on the debris from the solar flares, which could cause it to hit earth!
So, there is your evidence. Even though many cosmic things will happen on December 21st, 2012, there is nothing to suggest anything will happen, but many things could happen. Now it’s your turn, do you think December 21st, 2012 is doomsday, or just another day of trying to get your last minute Christmas shopping done?

To Good to be True

“Have you heard the four seasons of Utah? Almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction.”
On Friday, it was a beautiful, cloudless day, and I spent some time outside and I even got a sunburn. It gave me hope that spring was right around the corner, and I was so grateful and happy in the 68-degree weather. I started planning my spring and thinking about how life was gonna get better, and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
But that all changed on Saturday.
It was a lot like Friday, except there were a few more clouds and a bit cooler. It was a beautiful morning, and I was in a good mood when I woke up. Around noon clouds started to roll in and the temperature dropped, but that didn’t stop my mood(much).
My mom was meeting an old friend down in Salt Lake City, and I went along to help with the public transportation. It started to get chilly and more clouds were rolling in, and that did bring down my mood.
It was around 6 when it started to drizzle. That didn’t make me loose hope, it just made me loose hope for clear sunny skies, and I was unprepared for what was waiting for me back in Clearfield.
We boarded the FrontRunner at 10:30, and by the time it got to Clearfield it was about 11:40. It was like the beginning of a blizzard, the wind was very fast and the snowflakes were huge. We couldn’t see anything, and it took us several minutes to find the car. When we turned the heat on in the car, it melted the snowflakes on me, and I was soaked.
On Sunday the weather was a bit warmer, but it was snowing off and on all day, and this morning was very cold, 25 degrees(that may seem warm, but when the days have been in the 50s lately, that’s cold)
So all in all, I have lost hope that spring will ever come, especially after last year. Last year, the last snowstorm was May 24, and I left Utah before I could bask in the warmth of the 90 degree weather (it was like a cold spring storm all June long)
Mother Nature, why do you hate Utah?