(no subject)

[novapsyche]

Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse?

This led me to Coordinated Universal Time and Sidereal time.

(I keep having to remind myself how to pronounce sidereal. I don't know why.)

Comments

[timiathan.livejournal.com]

Astronomers generally agree that "it would be impossible the Maya themselves would have known that," says Susan Milbrath, a Maya archaeoastronomer and a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

One of the stupidest comments ever. What are the odds that the Mayans just happened to pick that day exactly, the only day in 26,000 years? Well...26,000 x 365, roughly, so 1 in 9.5 million.

2012 is most likely nothing, of course, but I think it's a bigger threat than Y2K ever was. We have almost zero ability to track large-orbit comets. If there were one that comes in every 5,126 years or whatever, we'd have no idea it's coming, and it could cause astronomical catastrophe...literally. If Quetzalcoatl is really a comet that they've recorded and not a God, we're playing Russian roulette on a global scale.

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

[looks up "sidereal"]

I've been mispronouncing it for twenty years now.