Exit Mundi

Sunday 6 November 2005 @ 23:34 // Filed under Linkage, Ramble

My travels through The Free Dictionary continue, most recently terminating at civilization-ending scenarios. Really interesting stuff. A few examples:

  • Gliese 710. Star moving on a collision course with the Solar System – eventually this star may destroy the Earth.
  • Ice Age. An Ice Age recurs every 40,000-100,000 years.
  • Insanity. Mass insanity.
  • Quantum energy. In the search for new quantum particles, scientists accidentally destroy the universe.
  • Strange matter. Our entire planet including everything on it becomes a strange matter planet in a chain reaction theoretical physicists call “Ice-9 Type Transition.”
  • The Maya civilization’s long count calendar ends abruptly on 21 December (or 23 December) 2012. Many people have taken this as a sign that the world will end though it is not known if the Mayans believed this.

Normally I would dismiss this as a primitive belief (unless, of course, it was termed something like “Intelligent Apocalypse,” which would be completely different) but in fact 21 December 2012 is four days after my 30th birthday, and they do say life ends at 30.

One that I had never encountered before is a Verneshot. Turns out it “is a hypothetical volcanic eruption event which launches an extremely large rock into a sub-orbital trajectory.” The last phrase had me a little flummoxed, so let me give you an idea of the result:

Manicouagan Impact Crater on Earth.
Seventy kilometres wide, motherfucker.

Actually speaking of strange matter, I was watching the All Blacks vs. Wales today and surely, there is no way Dan Carter can be human. It is like he is living on a space-time continuum of his own, where the world beyond either side of the goalposts doesn’t exist. And it is a wonderful thing to behold.

Anyway, here’s hoping the end of the world can hold off for a few months. Apart from the rest of the Grand Slam, we have the following to look forward too:

Finally, one of the world’s smaller citizens fears the end may be near:

Cat hiding under bed.
Attempts to coax her out with BASICS cat biscuits have so far failed.

In general I have a real distaste for anything that infringes upon reasonable freedoms, but the right to let off fireworks is becoming increasingly hard to justify.

4 Comments — RSS

  1. But does the long count end in 2012? From the wikipedia article:

    “The last creation ended on a long count of 13.0.0.0.0. Another 13.0.0.0.0 will occur on December 21, 2012, and it has been discussed in many New Age articles and books that this will be the end of this creation or something else entirely. However, the Maya abbreviated their long counts to just the last five vigesimal places. There were an infinitely larger number of units that were usually not shown. When the larger units were shown (notably on a monument from Coba), it is expressed as 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0, where the larger units are evidently supposed to be 13s in all larger places. In this age we are only approaching 0.0.0.0.0.0.13.0.0.0.0, and the larger places are nowhere near the 13s that would match the end of the last creation.

    This is confirmed by a date from Palenque, which projects forward in time to 1.0.0.0.0.0, which will occur on October 13, 4772. The Classic Period Maya obviously did not believe that the end of this age would occur in 2012. There will be a Baktun ending in 2012, a significant event being the end of a 400 year period, but not the end of the age.”

    And I was so looking forward to it!

    Comment by Santadog — November 9, 2005 @ 8:22 pm

  2. Yeah, I read that too, and was heavily deflated, so I decided to pretend I hadn’t because it would have ruined that paragraph of my post. I fear that, in particular, our old LJ friend afteridied will be more depressed than usual to hear the end is not nigh. Does he still post? It got deathly boring after a while, I tell you what.

    Comment by db — November 10, 2005 @ 12:39 am

  3. afteridied! I forgot about him. I still occasionally check up on our favorite white bread, durman. He’s so cheerfully bland, he could’ve been in The Breakfast Club.

    Comment by Santadog — November 11, 2005 @ 8:46 pm

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