Article Index
2012 Doomsday and Solar System Alignment
2012 Survival Guide
All Pages

Includes 2012 Survival Guide

Perhaps you have heard the suggestion that an alignment of earth and the sun is contributing to a doomsday scenario in 2012.  When the page turns for the  Mayan calendar and the solar system is aligned somehow, the world is supposed to end.  In fact, there is a significant alignment of planets in 2012 that much of the world will be watching.  

Without question, Earth, Venus, and the sun will line up in a row as the nodes of their planetary orbits intersect on June 5-6, 2012.  This is not a mere "close conjunction."  Rather, it is a near-perfect alignment, a rare transit of Venus, and it has a track record of influencing humans since the first recorded observation in 1639. How will people of the world react?  Will our existence end in some cataclysmic global event?

First to the latter question. "Umm, no." 

No, the world will not end, any more than it ended for the Y2K turn of the calendar, when earth completed another orbit around the sun to end 1999.  The Venus transit is simply the happenstance of three solar system bodies being in a line.  It occurs naturally, periodically, and predictably as the planets dash around the sun, like two people running at different paces around an un-level field.

Don't be scammed.  While hucksters will gladly try to separate you from your common sense (and more urgently, from your wallet), predictions of catastrophic disasters in 2012 have no basis in science.  Ignore the ignorance.  Surely some innocent people will be anxious about seemingly well-founded assertions of doom.  Advocates of demise will bandy around scholarly-sounding credentials  in an attempt to gain credibility, but they are only creating public anxiety where none ought be. 

Be more concerned about climate change, for example.  That's something for which there is a preponderance of scientific evidence--a human path toward global harm about which you can do something. 

Returning to the question about how people will react to the transit of Venus...Hopefully they will come out in droves to witness this syzygy (a very cool word unlikely to make it on a Scrabble board).  In centuries past, nations mounted global expeditions in cooperative scientific endeavors to tackle a common mystery.  They wanted to figure out where we fit in the cosmos--specifically, how big is the solar system?  A transit of Venus can reveal the answer.

Yes, the 2012 transit of Venus is a cosmic alignment, and you can witness it directly if you protect your eyes.  Here are some recommended steps to survive the event without peril.  Details are at www.transitofvenus.org.

Prev - Next &gt&gt