The world will end, but not now...

We passed January 2nd 2012, February 1st 212. We just survived the apocalypse of December 12th as well! I lost count... and you may already understand that I am fed up with these terrible stories of the end of our world. But where does the story come from that December 21st the world will end?

This stone calendar is often shown if articles mention the Maya calendar.
In fact it is an Aztek object. The Azteks base their calendars on the older
Maya culture. The stone has indeed calendrical and astronomical figures
and symbols  But scientists think that it wasn't used for watching the
clock. It was the decoration on an altar for human sacrifice. Mexican
anthropologists call it often the Sun Stone — for the sun god Tonatuih.
His face is visible at the center.

The news about December 21st says the Mayas are the bad guys. These dear people were innovative and well organised. All when we were still living in swamps in the Netherlands. In Maya society it was very important to keep a calendar. They developed a very ingenious calendar. They used more or less the following units: kin (1 day), uinal (20 days), tun (~1 year), katun (~20 years), baktun (~394 years) en pictun (~7.885 year). These units were used in the same manner as we use decade, century, millennium. For example: 1 katun is 20 tun in duration; and 1 pictun is 20 baktun; etcetera.

Four long numbers on the north wall of a ruined Mayan house
relating to the Maya calendar and computations about the moon,
sun and possibly Venus and Mars. Photo: REUTERS/William
Saturno and David Stuart/National Geographic

The Maya religion mentions that the world will end and be recreated after every pictun (let's call it the Maya millennium). It will become probably tough when this happens, but it will take a lot more time. Calculations with my own calculator on the actual pictun we are living in, tells me that the Maya world was created about 3.114 year before Christ. And the end of the world would be 12 October of the year 4.772. I'm not going to wait for that...

But what happens on December 21st 2012? This is exactly the date that the actual baktun finishes (let's call it the Maya century). This date is mentioned in some Maya writings, but what witches, fortune tellers, hippies, prophets or who-ever says about this date, has nothing to do with the Mayas. The apocalypse is an invention of the Christians to be exact... The Mayas don't even know a last judgment myth.

I think of the millennium bug all the time while reading about the fear for the end of the world. And we all know nothing happened at January 1st 2000. Humanity has some fear of finishing clocks, I guess. We also count away the last seconds at New Years Eve. Probably it's very human to fear the idea that there will not be a new year. Well, than next year will become very interesting! I wish you all the best for 2013...

More information
- Some good explanation on the Maya calendar: Maya calendar on Wikipedia
- For those who want to read it all: the 2012 phenomenon on Wikipedia
- A article on a relatively young finding which disproves the apocalypse ideas for 2012 even further: Newly discovered Mayan calendar further disproves doomsday myth

De Nederlandse versie van deze bijdrage: de wereld vergaat een andere keer

Bringing mammoths back to life

The last mammoths walked around about 5.765 years ago. On some small islands in the Bering sea  that was. Now, they're really extinct. It's a pity because since the Ice Age movies mammoths became so popular... Who wouldn't like to see one in real? Well, that is actually possible. Not alive, but frozen since death, 10.000 or more years ago.

Yuka is about 10.000 years old and found in the Siberian permafrost.

Since the last ice age parts of the Siberian soil are still permanently frozen. This is called permafrost. Sometimes the body of a mammoth is found in this frozen soil. Because of the cold, the body is dried and mummified. But skin and fur are still in very good condition.

But what about cloning mammoths back to life. Russians and South Koreans are planing to actually do this. But how does it work? What can't be done with dinosaurs, can work with mammoths. Their frozen bodies might still contain some complete DNA molecules, which contains their genetic information. Nevertheless, Jurassic-Park-lovers, I have to disappoint you. It is very unlikely to find complete DNA molecules. You need in fact living tissue for this, or perfect freezing conditions like laboratory environments. As you can see on the movie above, the body looks really good. But at the molecular level it's very different. And I must say, this Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk is not famous for cloning animals, he's actually famous for faking cloning results some years ago...

Illustration by Mauricio Anton.

It will take some years or decades before we will see some real live mammoths. But, hey, where would we bring those huge animals? Their original habitat and climate conditions don't exist anymore... Maybe it's more useful to clone back some animals which are extinct because of us like the Yangtze-dolphin or the famous Dodo.

More information:
- Everything abour mammoths: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mammoth
- The last news on cloning mammoths is not very positive: BBC.co.uk/news/world-europe-19580558
- Brazilian plans to clone eight animals which are not yet completely extinct: NewScientist.com/...clone-endangered-animals.html Maybe it is a lot more realistic...

De Nederlandse versie van deze blogbijdrage: Mammoeten tot leven wekken

The link between ocean currents and the Dutch, so called, skating fever

Water in the oceans is not only connected, but it actually flows around like an enormous rubber band. These flows have a huge impact on weather. New York and Madrid are situated at the same distance from the equator, but in New York it can be terribly cold in winter. The typically boring wet winters in the Netherlands (when actually everybody wants to skate desperately  are the result of the Gulf Stream, a warm flow of water originating from the Caribbean which flows as north as North Norway.

Rough figure of the ocean currents, the thermo-haline

circulation. Above is an animation of the ocean currents.

Only the last decade scientists could get a good grip on the surface currents in te oceans. Since a ship lost a container with rubber duckies in 1992, the research speeded up a lot. In the years since the container got lost, these friendly floatees washed ashore in Asia, North- and South America and Europe. Lately, scientists use floating measurement tools with satellite connection to map the ocean currents in much greater detail.

The rubber duckies which fell in the water in January 1992 floated around
the oceans. The duckies wash ashore on all continents since.

Deeper in the oceans are more currents in different directions. It was impossible until now to map all the currents and to find out where all ocean water flows to. Small variations in temperature and salinity are the engine of the ocean circulation. Also prevailing winds like trade winds play a role in driving the ocean currents.

A increasing amount of melt water from the arctic regions could disturb these currents. The level of salinity changes and possibly the water from the Gulf Stream will experience difficulty to sink down in the North Atlantic ocean. Al Gore showed the phenomenon pretty nicely in his 'An Inconvenient Truth'.  If the Gulf Stream would come to a stop, or would cease to flow as North as today, winters in the Netherlands might get a lot colder. This is something skate fanatics are already counting on! But climate experts think that the slow and continuous melt of icecap of Greenland in the next centuries will not have this effect. The Gulf Stream will not stop as can be seen in the animation of Al Gore. It will probably become slightly weaker, not much, but measurable...

More information:
- Oceanographic science done by beachcombers: beachcombersalert.org/RubberDuckies.html
- The book by Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano about the obsession for rubber ducks which wash ashore and how this obsession changed oceanography for ever: Flotsametrics.com

A part of this text is written in preparation for the upcoming exhibition Climate Stories in Museon, The Hague. This exhibition will open in spring 2013. More information can be found at: klimaatverhalen.nl

De Nederlandse versie van deze blogbijdrage: Oceaanstroming en Elfstedentochten