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grimrs
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so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 4
#14491085 - 05/21/11 07:34 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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since i was a kid i always thought all these doomsday prophecies were such a joke. but i couldnt exactly come to any opinion about this whole 2012 fiasco. i mean, not that i thought it would actually be the end of the world, but i did think it was an important date. for a while i thought it might be the date when the earth's geomagnetic fields might either finish or start reversing.
anyway so i took sometime today to learn how the mayan calendar works, and all i can say is wow. its truly an achievement. and i am convinced they had a much healthier perception of time than we currently do, in the sense of being aware of how small we are as individuals when compared to time (as an absolute i guess?)
so it turns out they have 4 calendars, a calendar based on tracking venus, one called tzolk'in referred to as the sacred calendar (the purpose of this one is unconfirmed but their astrology was based on it, i think it was also used for crops? dont quote me on this so ill stop there) one based on the earths solar year, which like ours had 365 days that was called haab'. the cool thing about the tzolk'in was that everyday was unique in that it was based on a concept of permutations of sorts. the tzolk'in and haab were used together and one cycle of the entire calendar took 52 years to complete.
but its the fourth that i found particularly interesting. when thinking about the vastness of time, they decided that even though the other two calendars took 52 years to complete a cycle, measuring time in cycles of 52 years was not practical when it at best measures the life of one generation of people. the closest thing i can reference for this type of idea is when i learned about deep time while studying geology. so they created what they called the long calendar.
the long calendar takes about 400 years to complete a cycle. you can see how this would be useful, if thinking about the bigger picture, instead of referring to something that happened 800 years ago, you could just say 2 b'ak'tuns. (they had other divisions as well but for purposes of brevity i wont get into it)
anyway, december 21st 2012 marks the end of the 13th b'ak'tun, something that would be celebrated much like we celebrate new years eve and december 22 marks the start of the 14th cycle. what i found was that in 2012, the winter solstice will take place on december 21st. what is interesting about this particular solstice is that it will be the first time in about 25,800 years that the sun will align exactly with the center of the milky way galaxy.
i thought that was pretty cool. as many know the mayans were phenomenal astronomers, so i dont think that the end of the 13th b'ak'tun and this particular winter solstice is a coincidence. i can't help but marvel at the beauty of this when you think about context of their mythology.
this was a little harder to find as most things to do with the end of the 13th baktun are flooded by bogus end of days websites.
basically, i began thinking that the end of the 13th b'aktun was chosen for some cultural reason. like they worked out when this particular solstice would take place and worked backwards and that is where they began their long count calendar.
in mayan myth, there were four previous ages of man, (i assume each lasted 13 b'ak'tuns but i couldnt find too much conclusive information on this) you could think of these ages as evolutionary stages of sorts; maybe not in the darwinian sense. the current (5th age began on august 13th, 3113 b.c.) and comes to a close next year. this does not mean that the world is ending, but rather this age of man is ending. you can think of it as reaching a limit imagine the graph of a tangent line.
in essence, this current incarnation, for lack of a better word, has gone as far as they can go. from what i read, they saw it as a passage into a new level of collective consciousness of man. someone else posted something similar about reaching some breakthrough point. i think this is what the mayans were envisioning when they imagined the end of the 5th age of man. not necessarily that the world was going to cease to exist. i am enthralled about the possibility of such exponential growth, i mean this could manifest in so many ways.
for example you cannot deny how much we have advanced technologically the past 20 years. i dont know how many people are familiar with moore's law, which is a formula describing technological growth trend. coincidentally, the formula is supposed to reach its limit right about now. many recent articles are describing that we are hitting a limit in terms of technological expansion. a perfect example would be intel's finfet chips, you can look this up on google, and see the problem they are supposed to fix.
anyway, my point is, if this is a new age with entirely new limits, imagine the possibilities. socially, technologically, whatever, it could just be a phenomenal age of human expansion. maybe it really is the start of a new level of consciousness. idk, im kinda just making stuff up now, but im excited.
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Fungal-one
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: grimrs]
#14491117 - 05/21/11 07:41 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Definatly the start of a new conscientiousness. It makes sense to me the way they plot time. Time is actually just something we use to quantify something we can't possibly understand. Us and our stupid minutes n shit, pfft.
2012 ftw.
-------------------- Never judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. But, by that time you're a mile away and you got his shoes, so fuck em.
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Legend
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: grimrs]
#14491127 - 05/21/11 07:43 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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+5 for this post man
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No sympathy for the devil, keep that in mind. [url=]Buy the ticket, take the ride. [/url]Are you lost?
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blewmeanie




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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: grimrs]
#14491138 - 05/21/11 07:45 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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To me, the most amazing thing about the Mayan calendar is the lack of any other kind of technological innovation. I mean, they didn't even have the wheel figured out yet, wtf where they doing with such an elaborate calendar?
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Fungal-one
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: blewmeanie]
#14491169 - 05/21/11 07:53 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
blewmeanie said: To me, the most amazing thing about the Mayan calendar is the lack of any other kind of technological innovation. I mean, they didn't even have the wheel figured out yet, wtf where they doing with such an elaborate calendar?
Maybe they glimpsed a pattern that was so natural and undeniable it just came as natural as eating fruit from a tree. I'm telling you guys, this vortex based mathematics shit aint just shit.
-------------------- Never judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. But, by that time you're a mile away and you got his shoes, so fuck em.
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learningtofly
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: blewmeanie]
#14491173 - 05/21/11 07:54 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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moores law predicts that we will go into nanotechnology intel is already into that and we will have nanoprocessors instead of just microprocessors
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2Cents



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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: Fungal-one]
#14491178 - 05/21/11 07:56 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Very awesome thread
-------------------- Long live the Shroomery!!!
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Doc_T
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: 2Cents]
#14491186 - 05/21/11 07:59 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Awesome post!
But how is the sun going to align with the center of the galaxy? I mean, any moreso than usual, since two points are always on a line?
But that's a minor quibble in an otherwise awesome post.
-------------------- You make it all possible. Doesn't it feel good?
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Fungal-one
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: Doc_T]
#14491192 - 05/21/11 08:00 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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The third point is our vantage point.
-------------------- Never judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. But, by that time you're a mile away and you got his shoes, so fuck em.
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mrckb
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: blewmeanie]
#14491200 - 05/21/11 08:02 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Ancient civilizations are crazy with their astronomy.
Like the ancient Egyptians accurate mapping of the solar system. How did they know? Here's the western world thinking we are so smart, claiming that the earth is flat and that the galaxy revolves around us and only now figuring out what the ancient Egyptians knew thousands of years ago.
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blewmeanie




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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: Fungal-one]
#14491209 - 05/21/11 08:03 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm packing a bowl now so feel free to enlighten me.
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Fungal-one
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: mrckb]
#14491217 - 05/21/11 08:06 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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The fact that they did not have television to dumb down entire generations prolly had nothing to with it
-------------------- Never judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. But, by that time you're a mile away and you got his shoes, so fuck em.
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blewmeanie




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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: mrckb]
#14491231 - 05/21/11 08:10 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
mrckb said: Ancient civilizations are crazy with their astronomy.
Like the ancient Egyptians accurate mapping of the solar system. How did they know? Here's the western world thinking we are so smart, claiming that the earth is flat and that the galaxy revolves around us and only now figuring out what the ancient Egyptians knew thousands of years ago. 
In the west, the earth was known to be a sphere from at least the 6th century BC onwards. The idea that people really thought they were going to sail off the edge of the world is just a silly myth.
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grimrs
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: learningtofly]
#14491235 - 05/21/11 08:10 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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yeah i know they are already making nanotechnology. but i meant in the sense that we are hitting the limit of how small we can make transistors, thats why i mentioned the intel finfet.
they realized that they reached the limit of how small they could make things, so the problem there would be how to keep expanding processing power without making things smaller; the finfet adds a third dimension in terms of chip building, where they can build upwards.
but even then, i think this is only a band-aid remedy if we are going to keep growing technologically. to keep growing we are going to have to abandon transistor technology. enter quantum computing.
you could think of quantum computing as being the new limit in terms of what im describing.
we all know how massive the first computers were, compared to how small they are now. so imagine that current quantum computers are the equivalents of those old massive room sized computers. imagine how far we will be able to go once quantum computing becomes the norm.
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Fungal-one
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: grimrs]
#14491246 - 05/21/11 08:13 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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You realize this new technology is based on the things discovered by Marco Rodin, right?
-------------------- Never judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. But, by that time you're a mile away and you got his shoes, so fuck em.
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mrckb
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: grimrs]
#14491257 - 05/21/11 08:17 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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[Quote:
grimrs said: yeah i know they are already making nanotechnology. but i meant in the sense that we are hitting the limit of how small we can make transistors, thats why i mentioned the intel finfet.
they realized that they reached the limit of how small they could make things, so the problem there would be how to keep expanding processing power without making things smaller; the finfet adds a third dimension in terms of chip building, where they can build upwards.
but even then, i think this is only a band-aid remedy if we are going to keep growing technologically. to keep growing we are going to have to abandon transistor technology. enter quantum computing.
you could think of quantum computing as being the new limit in terms of what im describing.
we all know how massive the first computers were, compared to how small they are now. so imagine that current quantum computers are the equivalents of those old massive room sized computers. imagine how far we will be able to go once quantum computing becomes the norm.
We will just end up using dark matter and moving the galaxy around us instead of moving through the galaxy. DUH
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grimrs
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: Doc_T]
#14491281 - 05/21/11 08:24 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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well i looked into it, apparently each solstice the sun moves by like .1 or .5 of a degree or something.
like the position the sun itself is in in relation to the rest of the galaxy is different by that amount. so that this year the direction of the sun will be exactly aligned with the center of the milky way.
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Doc_T
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: grimrs]
#14491300 - 05/21/11 08:28 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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So, the Earth, the Sun, and the center of the galaxy align?
Again, it's more of a quibble than a nitpick.
-------------------- You make it all possible. Doesn't it feel good?
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grimrs
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: Fungal-one]
#14491314 - 05/21/11 08:31 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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no actually i didnt know quantum computing was based on Rodin's work.
i just looked him up quickly. im awed. this is great thanks for the information.
given this information i am more convinced that we cant even begin to imagine the future advances. i mean if the implications of the rodin solution are already so vast, what will be possible when it is applied into every possible thing you can imagine.
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grimrs
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Re: so i took the time to actually learn about 2012 [Re: Doc_T]
#14491322 - 05/21/11 08:34 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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lol no problem. to be honest, im not entirely sure my understanding of astronomical motion is pretty limited. sorry i cant explain that part better
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