We were warned.
Well, not exactly.
The infamous tagline from the Roland Emmerich's 2012 leaves much to question. And after reading several blogs dedicated to the flick and seeing a grizzly old man holding a sign reading, The end is near
I had to go see the movie for myself.
After the screening, I left entertained by the special effects and ridiculousness of everyone piling into the so-called arks. I was, however, disappointed at the movie's inability to back up any of its claims. It left me pining for scientific proof for any of the Earth-ending disasters.
The Armageddon described in the movie did not hold steady, as its reasoning was lofty and mediocre. Like any conspiracy theory, there is never sufficient enough scientific data to support the claims.
While myths and legends are the basis for a conspiracy theorist, my preferred tool is science.
The movie begins, quite obviously, in the year 2012. Of course, this movie could have been called 2016 or 1997. The natural disasters that spew from planet Earth at the most inconvenient time have no relevance to what year it is.
Supposedly, the eruption of the Earth was the product of solar flares.
Crap.
If Earth were bombarded with solar flares strong enough to move the planet's crust, it would create about 6 X 1025 joules in heat, or the equivalent of setting off 715,000,000 atomic bombs at once. Essentially, the amount of ultraviolet radiation from the flares would fry us instantly.
But wait soon the alignment of the sun and the Earth and the galactic center of the universe will occur. This surely will produce the end of everything we hold dear!
The alignment of these celestial bodies will produce diddlysquat.
If anyone out there has studied gravitation, you know everything in space is measured in light years. This means that if anything, say a solar flare or a big, mean asteroid traveled from the alignment of these components it would need 25,000 years to arrive.
By then, I'm pretty sure all of us will succumb to other Earth-ending events.
Finally, there is some belief about a planet called Nibiru. This one is probably the most ridiculous of all of the Earth-imploding theories. Supposedly little gray men contacted a woman in Wisconsin and told her a giant planet would hit us all - causing the end of mankind.
Considering this theory's scientific background is purely hypothetical, it should be dismissed as poppycock. I know if something the size of a planet came even close to messing with earth, NASA would send Bruce Willis and his quirky friends to save the day.
I can proudly say my ancestry streams from a region near the Mayans. Heck, the Mayan calendar is one of my mom's knickknacks hanging in our house, dang if I know how to read it.
Anthropologists and other historians correlated the dates of the calendar. It specifically ends Dec. 20, 2012. Yet, the end of this calendar is no different than the end of my day-to-day calendar of The Office quotes.
The Mayans were not warning us of anything. Their dating system just happened to end that day. The correlation between the end of the world and the Mayan's calendar is as believable as Bigfoot marrying Bat Boy.
Doomsday stories and legends have been around for as long as anyone can remember, but the Mayan theory remains interesting for many reasons. These ancient phenomena are intriguing to modern men because science cannot fully explain any of it. Because of this, the mystery and interest remains.
However, the Mayan doomsday will fade. The movie will become a good five-dollar flick at Wal-Mart, and all the books on Earth-ending conspiracies will end up in the 80 percent shelf at Borders on December 21, 2012.
Luis Delgadillo is a sophomore studying chemical engineering and columnist for The Post. He doesn't want to close his eyes or miss a thing, so send him an e-mail at ld199907@ohiou.edu
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Opinion
Luis Delgadillo
