<div>By Kathleen O'Brien/The Star-Ledger
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/inde...orld_2012.html
It's official: NASA has already reassured a grateful nation that civilization will not come to a screeching halt tomorrow, courtesy of the Mayans.
The pre-Columbian calendar that had folks in a tizzy merely cycles back to the beginning, the space geeks say. Even the Vatican's head astronomer has jumped into the fray, asserting that life will go on.
Assuming we wake up intact tomorrow, however, doesn't mean we've escaped the clutches of doomsday. Instead, we'll be facing a whole new list of apocalyptic predictions.
Turns out there's always a new kid on the End Times block.
With the Mayans out of the way, what takes their place at the top of the worry list?
Please give a warm welcome to ... solar flares.
The website 2013solarflare.com touts a prediction of an uptick of flares the likes of which hasn't been seen since 1859. That magnetic storm disrupted telegraphs and put on an evening light show so bright, people could read the newspaper by it.
Were a similar storm to hit today, the website says, cell phones would be rendered useless, the electrical grid trashed and the landscape would soon be littered with roving bands of the hungry unwashed.
In short, marginally worse than Hurricane Sandy.
By contrast, NASA says that while there will be more solar flares in 2013-14, the result will be similar to the last time the sun was at its maximum 11-year cycle of flares in 2002. (Did your cell phone die? Didn't think so.)
Stuart Charme, a professor of religion at Rutgers University-Camden, has an entire bookcase filled with obsolete writings that predicted the end of the world.
A NASA-predicted uptick in solar flares the next two years might make life interesting.
ALAMY
"You don't have to be really smart to figure out everyone's been wrong up till now," he said.
It was always preposterous to think the Mayans had predicted the stone-cold end of the world, Charme said. Pre-modern civilizations have always had an awareness of nature's cycle of birth, growth, decay and decline.
By contrast, Western civilization has never been without doomsday speculation.
The current crop of predictions is different for being non-religious. Unlike the classic Biblical predictions -- remember all those May 21st billboards? -- these warnings have secular origins. They warn of:
More...
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/inde...orld_2012.html
It's official: NASA has already reassured a grateful nation that civilization will not come to a screeching halt tomorrow, courtesy of the Mayans.
The pre-Columbian calendar that had folks in a tizzy merely cycles back to the beginning, the space geeks say. Even the Vatican's head astronomer has jumped into the fray, asserting that life will go on.
Assuming we wake up intact tomorrow, however, doesn't mean we've escaped the clutches of doomsday. Instead, we'll be facing a whole new list of apocalyptic predictions.
Turns out there's always a new kid on the End Times block.
With the Mayans out of the way, what takes their place at the top of the worry list?
Please give a warm welcome to ... solar flares.
The website 2013solarflare.com touts a prediction of an uptick of flares the likes of which hasn't been seen since 1859. That magnetic storm disrupted telegraphs and put on an evening light show so bright, people could read the newspaper by it.
Were a similar storm to hit today, the website says, cell phones would be rendered useless, the electrical grid trashed and the landscape would soon be littered with roving bands of the hungry unwashed.
In short, marginally worse than Hurricane Sandy.
By contrast, NASA says that while there will be more solar flares in 2013-14, the result will be similar to the last time the sun was at its maximum 11-year cycle of flares in 2002. (Did your cell phone die? Didn't think so.)
Stuart Charme, a professor of religion at Rutgers University-Camden, has an entire bookcase filled with obsolete writings that predicted the end of the world.
A NASA-predicted uptick in solar flares the next two years might make life interesting.
ALAMY
"You don't have to be really smart to figure out everyone's been wrong up till now," he said.
It was always preposterous to think the Mayans had predicted the stone-cold end of the world, Charme said. Pre-modern civilizations have always had an awareness of nature's cycle of birth, growth, decay and decline.
By contrast, Western civilization has never been without doomsday speculation.
The current crop of predictions is different for being non-religious. Unlike the classic Biblical predictions -- remember all those May 21st billboards? -- these warnings have secular origins. They warn of:
More...