Winda March 26, 2012, 01:05:24

Nothing. The Earth, Sun and the centre of the Galaxy canont line up. This is because the orbit of the Earth round the Sun is tilted in comparison to a line from the centre of the Galaxy to the Sun. It does get to within several degrees of a straight line, but that happens twice every year, about 21 December and 22 June. Even if the the Sun, Earth and the centre of the Galaxy did line up, the extra pull of gravity on the Earth would be so small that nobody would notice. This is mostly because the centre of the Galaxy is about 27,000 light years away and gravity depends on the product of the masses of two objects divided by the square of the distance between them. Since the Moon and Sun are far closer to the Earth, by factors of billions, their gravitational effect on us is far, far greater than the rest of the Galaxy. The other story going the rounds is that the Earth is about to cross the central plane of the Galaxy. This is false. The central plane of the galaxy was arbitrarily defined by astronomers in the late 1950s for convenience, but it is not certain exactly where the real one is. This does not matter if you are only using the definition for measurement. It is similar to having 0 degrees of longitude passing through Greenwich near London. It could have been defined as passing through Paris or Berlin or New York. While we do not know exactly where the real central plane is, it is known that we are not very near it and we are heading away from it. The estimate is that we will again be near it in maybe 30 million years time. It is also estimated that the earth passed through it about 3 million years ago. Again, the centre of the Galaxy is so far away that the it’s gravitational pull compared to the Moon and Sun is like a belch in a hurricane. Not worth worrying about. There are only two facts about 2012. The Mayan long count of days from 3114BC runs out of what the Mayans called baktun which are units of 144,000 days. Their counting system was complex and rather awkward when it came to big numbers so they basically stopped the count because they ran out of room for the inscriptions. They attached no prophecy to this, the prophecies were invented recently by various woo-woos and frauds to give then something to write faked up books and make fraudulent videos for the Hysteria Channel and YouTube about. The other fact is that our Sun will go through an active phase beginning in about 2010. This happens every 11 years in any case, and the coming one is not expected to be much different from the last, though there is some evidence it may be a bit bigger than before. It may peak in 2012, but more likely in 2011. This may disrupt communications or power supplies for minutes or hours, not much more. All the rest is lies, superstition and delusion.