That's simple. You just set the old Way Back Machine to
2012 and see what's there.

	Actually, the latest end-time craziness has something to
do with the calendar which was used by the Mayan civilization
or maybe another ancient civilization. The calendar reportedly stops
in 2012. There is an alignment with the Sun and several other
planets but nobody with any sense expects this to do anything
but create an interesting astronomical sight.

	I have always loved science and technology and it is
really sad, these days, to see how many people reject valid
science in favor of the sort of hocum you hear on far too many
talk radio shows. This anti knowledge way of thinking is even
politically popular in some circles.

	No matter what your faith is, it is generally accepted
that the world will end some day, but nobody knows how it will
happen or when. The evidence is that the Sun is a middle-aged
average star and probably has at least several-hundred-million
more years of hydrogen to convert in to helium before it starts
to burn out. It is quite possible that life will end on Earth
before the Sun is expected to expand to many times its present
size and burn the Solar System to a crisp. The Earth's climate
may become unliveable at some point, either because we screwed
it up or the Sun changed its output just enough to upset life
cycles on Earth. It probably won't be some horrifying flash, one
day, but might be a slow slide in to chaos and death if
agriculture and commerce stop working. It is believed that this
is what happened to the Mayans. The climate changed and they
could no longer grow crops nor adapt to the new normal so their
civilization dissolved in to anarchy and just faded out.

	We could always get hit by an asteroid which would be a
sudden catastrophe, but we will most likely have some notice.
Whether we can do anything about it, is anybody's guess.

	This list is about amateur radio, though, so I don't
want to get too far off the topic. It's radio that partly lets
us know what might happen. When a star falls in to a black hole,
it releases lots of energy in the form of radio waves, visible
light and X-rays. One such event, about 20 years ago released
enough X-rays to cause day-time radio conditions to suddenly
spring up in the middle of the night in this part of the world.

	It is radio and long-range astronomy that will probably
let us know if something terrible is headed our way. Observation
of stars like our Sun in various stages of their lives, gives us
an educated guess as to what will happen to Earth, one day.
Brandon Hennis writes:
> and now that whole thing too that comes to mind is the prediction of o
> the world is going to end in 2012, again, ,not likely to happen.  you
> know sometimew I wonder, where in blazes do they get these predictions
> from, because logicly, you would have to have a source that would
> cause you to make a prediction of sourts I'd think, given the way that
> it's being predicted, the volosity, ,and the fear as one can easily
> document that it is putting others in.  I wonder how many of you have
> had the question of, are the predictions worth reading, or is there
> some tactic to get us to fear.