December 21, 2012 What Is It About?

What is all of this excitement about December 21 of this year, 2012? 

Part of it is because of the Mayan Calendar. It ends on December 21, this year. Since the Mayan Calendar puts our own modern calendar in the shade in many ways, people who noticed that it ends this year took that as scary. 

The general idea goes something like, "If they could make such accurate calendars that included predicting things like planetary alignments and solar eclipses from thousands of years ago, what do they know that made them end the calendar now"?

I was reassured when I learned that the Mayan calendar was a perpetual calendar. You get to the end of it and then you start again at the beginning of it. They observed and predicted cycles, including the one where their calendar ends in a few days. It is just another cycle, and we don't need to get that excited about it.

That doesn't mean that nothing will happen. Even when you know what a cycle is, it can predict things that will cause changes. The seasons of our year are a cycle that repeats, but even when we know that it will repeat it has things we need to pay attention to. The same is true for the Mayan Calendar cycle that ends in a few days.

The Mayan Calendar tells us that we get a rare planetary alignment on December 21 of this year. That does not mean the end of the world, but it is worth paying attention to.

Every planet has a gravitational effect on other things around it including other planets. It can make a difference when you stack up all those gravitational pulls in the same direction. 

The moon is small. It is also far away compared to distances on Earth. As small and distant as the moon is, it exerts enough gravitational pull to cause tides in the ocean.

Saturn and Jupiter are much more massive than the moon and they will be lined up with all the other planets at once. 

The people who have studied the Mayan Calendar say that not only will our solar system line up, but so will the core of our galaxy. Some of the people with a spiritual bent who talk about this alignment with the core of our galaxy, say that this will  also affect us.

This post is about as long as my normal post length now. I need to post, so I will publish this as it is for now. I may add more tonight.