Create on : Nov 4th, 2009
Published on : Nov 4th 2009
Interesting ...a great eye catcher caught my eye balls few weeks back and then it took a lot of reading to understand what is going on. Most of you have by now read or seen some videos about the theory of end of the world on Dec 21, 2012. If not watch the new movie "2012" (releasing on Nov 13th 2009). Let me first write about what exactly the theory says:
1. According the Mayan Calendar, which is 100% accurate so far for each and every event, it has predicted earthquakes, Tsunamis, Hurricanes accurately. This calendar predicts the world will end on 21st Dec 2012.
2. Nostradamus has a prophecy for end of world on Dec 21, 2012
3. Scientific community claims there would be big celestial event on this day. Earth, Sun and center of Milky Way galaxy will be aligned in a single line. Which might result in a magnetic shift and the North Pole would move by 1 degree. This might destabilize earth's magnetic field and would result in catastrophes like earth quakes and, Tsunami.
4. Another scientific theory claim that a comet or Asteroid will hit the earth on that day or there might be a solar storm that would hit the earth.
Most of the documents/website will speak about one or all of these theories to prove Dec 21, 2012 is correct date for the end of the world.
This write-up is not to prove if these theories are correct or are just a Hoax, am under qualified to talk about that. All I want to say is why would someone think about this and why would someone believe it. I will list some points to which would help us to understand human thinking better.
1. Fear of unknown: We have a very limited knowledge about the universe, living things, Expansion/Growth and we have tried to bind these topics under the rules of Physics. We believe everything in universe would work based on the rule of physics that we have derived, due to which we can never think out of box and consider ourselves lucky to be the only planet with life. We have defined what is life and we are trying to search for similar thing on other planets/stars so chances are we wont ever get it. When we have 99% of unknown in universe, we always have a fear of unknown like something might come from other part of universe and destroy us. We want someone to be held responsible for this unknown stuff and so we discovered God, who can be held responsible for the unknown which is a result of our lack/limitation of knowledge.
2. Desire to know the future: Its almost similar to point 1, if we don’t know about universe we also don’t know what will happen with us on earth tomorrow. That is how our brain is made, but we refuse to accept it and try to make so many unsuccessful attempts to find what is going to happen in future. And I really don't know what makes us believe that someone in this world knows about future. So we try to search for that someone and believe them, few of those are Mayans, Nostradamus etc.
3. World will surely end: In our lifespan we have seen nothing is immortal, everything that has a start will surely have an end, our life, plants, animals, non living things, stars etc all get created and destroyed. So we are forced to believe, even the universe or earth will get destroyed one day and so will the human race. The best example we have is dinosaurs, we know that race came to an end thousands of years back, the most accepted theory behind destruction of dinosaurs was earth was hit by an asteroid during that time which caused the extinction; hence we would always be afraid of asteroid hitting earth because we know that can destroy the complete race. Most interesting point is all the theories for 2012 are predicting destruction of earth by known reasons like Tsunami, Earthquake, and Asteroid there could be unknown reasons as well like virus outbreak.
Again if we think out of box, being immortal is a very relative term, for a parasite living in human body having a life span of 3 mins, human body is immortal. Similarly for human beings or other animals all celestial bodies are immortal. I would rather support a theory that says nothing is constant, human race will transform to some X race in future as they did from Apes or Neanderthals earlier, or few of dinosaurs were transformed to Birds and Amphibians or a star is transformed to a black hole and similarly earth, sun, or universe will transform into something different where X race would be able to survive.
These are the reasons why most of people around us might believe the theories, few of us might not care, another few will oppose these theories based on their scientific knowledge, and another few will be surprised/scared and will try to find ways to avoid it somehow.
But am sure each one of us on Dec 22nd 2012 will say we were already aware that all this was Hoax.
