The 2012 Craze Grows by the Day

The unusual alignment of celestial bodies that will take place in 2012 has gotten many people scared of an incoming apocalyptic event, and those who would like nothing more than to capitalize on that are not in short supply. As a result, a large number of websites foretelling the end of the world has emerged, urging people to prepare for a cataclysmic event/asteroid/impact/attacking llamas, and virtually anything you can think of on that note. And those who are willing to lay down reason and believe this nonsense are not in short supply either.

In the 4.5 billion years since our planet was first formed, there has been nothing that could completely wipe life off, and we know that cataclysmic events came in bundles – asteroids, gamma-ray bursts (GRB), shifting magnetic poles, or the occasional supernova, doubled by massive volcanic activity and earthquakes. Somehow, the planet managed to even endure an impact that ripped such a huge chunk of it that we see it in the sky every night as the Moon.

From a strictly scientific standpoint, there is nothing special about 2012 and its planetary-alignment event. Planets came together in a straight line in the past, Jupiter moved closer to the Earth, and just about every possible scenario proposed by doom sayers has already happened at least a handful of times. There is no plausible reason to believe that this time will be any different. Plus, if the Mayans were really able to predict the future, as well as their calendar days, then their civilization would arguably still be around today to tell the story, wouldn't it?

As Seth Shostak, a Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, reveals for Space, believing that external factors would lugubriously concoct to destroy life on the planet “is merely to assume that the cosmos revolves around us. And that idea was given the boot more than 500 years ago,” when Copernicus and Galileo proved that we were a flimsy, little planet in a vast Universe. Films such as the planned “2012” do nothing to quench the panic, but rather strive to fuel it for financial awards. The same goes for Dan Brown's “Angels and Demons,” which is nothing more than a publicity stunt.

Human extinction will, of course, take place, as a natural phenomenon. More than 99 percent of all species that have ever lived are estimated to have gone extinct between the time when life first appeared and today. But to say that the end will come in three years is founded on nothing. We may be halfway through our existence as a species, which means that we still have about two dozen million years to go, or may be near the end, which means we may still have a few thousands of years left. And, if the worst comes to pass, we will at least escape the pressure of paying our taxes.