I must be missing something

[fbhjr]

I have a nice application on my iPad that lets me check the position of the
planets for any day I set.
So, having heard a lot about December 21, 2012, I decided to take a look.
One of the things I had been told by the ever reliable History channel is
the planets would be in rough alignment then and that could be what caused
this world ending disaster they’re so willing to talk about now.
I’ll admit, Mercury, Venus and Saturn are pretty close to aligned.
Earth and Jupiter are also pretty close to aligned, even if 1/3 of an orbit
off from the first three.
Mars is off doing its own thing away from all the others.
(Yes, it’s true. I didn’t check Neptune and Uranus. The app I’m using
only gives visible planet locations. But, those are the ones close enough
to cause trouble anyhow. Go back and look at my gravity graph if you don’t
believe me.)
Now, if Jupiter and Earth were opposite from the other three in a line, I’d
say that would still count. But, that isn’t the case.
So, either the Mayans were wrong about an alignment, and they were pretty
good at the astronomy stuff, or someone is trying to shoehorn their data to
fit something good for television shows and movies….

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Comments

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

i'd go with that second thing. then again, maybe everything is supposed to suddenly freak out and begin to rotate differently in the next two years. *snort* and again, maybe the History Channel was *gasp* wrong? ;)

what app is this/what data is it based on?

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

Copy & paste from the info:

Check our website at http://emeraldSequoia.com/eo/ for more details.
Emerald Observatory is copyright 2010 Emerald Sequoia LLC, all rights reserved.

The astronomical algorithms and data tables used in Emerald Observatory are derived from "Lunar Tables and Programs from 4000 B.C. to A.D. 8000", by Michelle Chapront-Touzé & Jean Chapront, copyright 1991, and "Planetary Programs and Tables from -4000 to +2800", by Pierre Bretagnon & Jean-Louis Simon, copyright 1986, both published by Willmann-Bell, Inc.  Used with permission of the copyright holder.

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

that's very cool. :D

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

For $0.99 it's great!

I agree

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

that it is modern day misinterpretation (and likely intentional) of the Mayans historical records. I also tend to think that the Mayans had calculated things out that far, and hit what seemed like a perfectly "round number", or date, at which to stop (remember that they were doing this by hand). Heck, even recently we all learned of the human inclination to stop counting dates far into the future with the whole "Y2K" thing, and that was only over a matter of a few decades of computer programming, not millenia!