Weirdness in 2012?

Now if you're smart, you take everything that Fox News says with a grain of salt. But this is interesting just for it's tie-in. Unless you live in a cave you have heard about the Mayan prediction that 2012A.D. spells some bad times for us and mother Earth.

According to the Wikipedia:

• (2012) Mesoamerican Long Count calendar ... completes its thirteenth b'ak'tun cycle since the calendar's mythical starting point. The Long Count b'ak'tun date of this starting point (13.0.0.0.0) is repeated, for the first time in a span of approximately 5,125 solar years. The significance of this period-ending to the pre-Columbian Maya themselves is unclear, and there is an incomplete that records this date.

Though unclear, many have taken the path of least resistance and gone straight to doom-saying.
That being said, the Fox News report note one very real occurrence about to take place in 2012 that really could raise havoc around the world.

Shaun points out that this article notes that the next peak in solar activity is expected to come around 2012. What could that possible mean to us. Well past solar burst have caused telegraph wires to short out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires. This happened during a major solar storm in 1859, In 1989, the a peak knocked out power to all of Quebec, Canada. 2003 had several peaks included 10 major solar flares over a two-week period, knocking out two Earth-orbiting satellites and crippling an instrument aboard a Mars orbiter.

As Shaun points out, much like his story "Last Light" (which I read on an earlier program) a major electro-magnetic blast will devastate modern society, disabling if not destroying communications and computational centers. Interesting times huh?

<- more from Fox Story + 2012 in the Wikipedia ->

Mayan Underworld Found.

Archeologists in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula have discovered an impressive labyrinth of fourteen caves, filled with pyramids and stone temples. This discovery has led archeologists to wonder if a Mayan myth may have inspired this labyrinth or if it may have inspired the myth. Though, William Saturno, a Boston University expert on the Mayais fairly certain that the maze of temples was built after the story.

What is clear is that the Maya used them for elaborate rituals including, unfortunately, human sacrifice. All linked to a myth that the souls of the dead must follow a dog through darkness "on a horrific and watery path and endure myriad challenges before they could rest in the afterlife."

While archeology doesn't seem the most natural science to link to SF, countless great SF stories have dealt with archeology and myth. Delany's classic Ballad of Beta 2 comes to mind.

<National Geographic article on the discovery>