New Delhi: Doom
theorists have had a free run in 2011, repeatedly predicting catastrophe
and rapture. Yet the world has stubbornly refused to end with a
brilliant 3D show of planets smashing into each other and tsunami tides
rising to engulf the United States of America as shown in Hollywood’s
popular disaster films.
As
the dawn of a new year draws the curtains on 2011, it also rekindles
the old fears of an apocalypse in December that could mean the end of
the world. Fear, the emotion that fuels the irrationality in men, leads
them on to either great heights of courage or the abyss of cowardice as
world leaders have known to their downfall in the year gone by.
Doomsday as an economic and socio-political concept
The greater part of 2011 was marked by the personal Doomsday for many even without the tidal waves and hellfire.
It
was a year that brought down dictators and autocratic regimes. The
mighty Muammar Gaddafi who ruled Libya with an iron fist was captured
and shot to death by members of the Libyan National Army ending his
three-decade regime. Terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden was killed by the
American forces at his hideout in Pakistan’s Abbottabad.
The
summer of discontent polarized nations giving rise to Arab Springs in
Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan and Bahrain. Egyptians bearing candles thronged
the Tahrir town Square to fight for democracy as the state police
refused to shoot at them – tacitly indicating the direction in which the
winds blew.
Edward
Krudy of Reuters writes: The familiar themes of a shaky Europe, a
political gridlock and volatile markets will be revisited by investors
in 2012.
With
a spiralling debt crisis in Europe, political upheaval around the
world, and crumbling creditworthiness in major industrial nations, 2011
was a tough year to know where to invest. 2012 is unlikely to offer much
respite. The S&P 500, a measure of the biggest US companies' market
value, spent much of the year getting pushed up and down, flummoxing
shorts and longs.
There
are several reasons why next year may be nothing to look forward to.
Many of the world's biggest developed economies are heading into
recession, global stock markets look set to recoup only a fraction of
their heavy losses in 2011, oil prices will head lower, and asset
managers are unsure where best to invest. And these could be the
best-case scenarios.
In
India, people’s anger against unbridled corruption and malpractice in
public offices found a vent in social activism as the political
situation turned volatile. For the first time in many years the sense of
immunity that politicians enjoyed received a severe jolt. People hit
the streets in a united show of disdain for their elected
representatives – triggering a sense of impending doom for the political
class.
Doomsday myths
But
nothing compares to the worldwide hysteria that December 21, 2012 has
generated, encouraged by doomsayers as the day the world will end.
It
prompted the NASA to officially debunk the theory. NASA scientists
answered several questions on their website regarding 2012.
Here are the popular beliefs, origin and evolution of the Doomsday theory as explained by the NASA team.
*The
story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by
the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially
predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was
moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the
end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter
solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21,
2012.
*The
Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date
is the end of the Mayan long-count period and another long-count period
begins for the Mayan calendar.
*There
are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not
cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to
occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. Each December the
Earth and sun align with the approximate centre of the Milky Way Galaxy
but that is an annual event of no consequence.
*Nibiru
and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is
no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and
headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have
been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible
by now to the naked eye.
*A
reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow
movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator
hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of
reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster
websites pull a bait-and-shift to fool people. They claim a relationship
between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does
change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000
years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t
cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to
happen in the next few millennia, anyway.
While each day dawns magnificently crimson and violet, there is hope. Have a good year.
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