"NARRATOR:" "Ancient calendars forecasting a deadly countdown." "ED BARNHART The Maya have this opinion that what's happened in the past will happen again." "NARRATOR:" "A galactic alignment, triggering a wave of natural disasters." "MICHAEL DENNIN:" "It's like having a whole bunch of massive earthquakes at the same time." "NARRATOR:" "Could our planet really be headed for extinction?" "LOGAN HAWKES:" "These changes could be life-changing or they could be life-ending." "NARRATOR:" "Or is there another agenda, one even more profound?" "PHILIP COPPENS:" "Each age for the Mayans was clearly defined." "And it was defined by the gods returning." "NARRATOR:" "Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings." "What if it were true?" "Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history?" "And if so, might evidence of alien contact help to unlock the mystery behind the Mayan prophecies of doom?" "NARRATOR:" "Mexico, the Yucatan" "Peninsula." "For over 2,000 years, rain-drenched jungles and fertile plains served as the home of one of the ancient world's greatest civilizations." "The Maya." "Scholars estimate that between 250 and 900 A.D. the Mayan population consisted of between" "15 to 20 million people and extended as far south as" "Costa Rica and Guatemala." "Archeological evidence suggests the Maya were one of the first ancient people to develop a written language, use modern mathematical methods, and build" "Massive, multi-story celestial observatories." "All at a time when Europeans were struggling through the so-called Dark Ages." "SEAN-DAVID MORTON:" "The Maya are considered one of the great advanced civilizations with hyper-advanced astronomy, astrology, trigonometry, architecture, all of these things while the Europeans were at the time rolling around in the mud." "NARRATOR:" "But perhaps the most amazing Mayan achievement was their system of charting the stars and planets in the form of a calendar." "HAWKES:" "The Mayans were timekeepers above and beyond all other things." "Keeping up with Mme was magic, n was power lo (he Mayans." "MARK VAN STONE:" "They were tracking, in particular, Venus, the phases of the moon, eclipses, but they also tracked precession, which is an extraordinarily long cycle." "What M means is that every year on, say, March 15, the Pleiades rise for the first time in the sky." "If you wait 72 years, the day of the rising of the Pleiades will be one day earlier." "If you wait another 72 years, it'll be a day earlier still." "And if you wait 26,000 years, the Pleiades will move back to that same day." "NARRATOR:" "According to scholars, the Maya believed that time, like the stars, moved in repeating patterns called calendar cycles and that these cycles could be used to predict future events." "One of these calendar cycles, the Mayan Long Count, lasts for" "5,125 years and will end on" "December 21, 2012." "But why?" "Why did the Maya choose this date?" "And what mu they believe would happen to our world?" "Perhaps a due can be found in an astronomical phenomenon moated at the center of the" "Milky Way Galaxy, an area where there are no stars." "MORTON:" "The Mayans knew." "Not only did they know where the" "Center of the galaxy was, but they understood that it was a light-year-across black hole that they called the Great Rift." "HAWKES:" "The Maya believed this was the birth canal of the universe, and that all things came from the birth canal of the universe." "And on December 21, 2012, the" "Earth, the sun, and this birth canal, the Dark Rift, are all in perfect alignment." "And this only happens every 26,000 years." "NARRATOR:" "Could the fact that the Maya Long Count calendar ends on the same day as this rare alignment in the Milky Way" "Galaxy be a mere coincidence?" "And did this advanced understanding of celestial cycles really come from ancient" "Mayan astronomers observing the stars with only their naked eyes?" "HAWKES:" "The Mayans believed that this knowledge came to them from their gods, and their gods then existed in the stars." "So, is it possible that these gods could have been extraterrestrials?" "The answer to that question is yes, it's possible." "GIORGIO TSOUKALOS:" "According to the Maya themselves, this knowledge was not something that they came up with, but it was given to them as a gift from the gods." "The gift back then was not material stuff." "It was knowledge." "Knowledge is the currency of the" "Universe." "NARRATOR:" "But even if the information pertaining to the" "Long Count calendar comes from an otherworldly or extraterrestrial source, why" "2012?" "What ts it about this date that has a special significance?" "Researchers believe a clue may recently have been found among the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Tortuguero." "One that was pieced together from broken fragments of a panel of hieroglyphs known as Monument" "Number Six." "BARNHART:" "In my opinion, the one and only clear reference to the dale in the" "Long Count that arrives in 2012 is on Tortuguero Monument Six." "COPPENS:" "Basically, the inscription in Tortuguero was half destroyed, and everybody assumed that what it was saying was that the nine gods would return on December" "21, 2012, but because there was some destruction on that inscription, certain things were implied." "NARRATOR:" "For years, scholars dismissed the evidence found at the Tortuguero monument as a solitary anomaly without any special significance." "But on November 24, 2011 , the" "Mexican National Institute of" "Archeology and History revealed to the world the existence of a second artifact." "A sun-dried mud brick that was" "Discovered at the ancient Mayan city of Comalcalco with an inscription many believe refers to an exact date, December 21," "2012." "BARNHART:" "It's one of thousands of mud bricks that we've found at Comalcalco." "Avery few of them have hieroglyphs on them." "One of them has a date inscribed on it, which is very rare, and it says Four Ahau, Three Konkin, which is the calendar round date that's gonna occur in 2012." "COPPENS:" "Well, the Comalcalco brick is important because it is verification of an inscription in Tortuguero." "The brick has shown that the people who thought that it meant the nine gods were going to return were right." "NARRATOR:" "An extraterrestrial visitation?" "One which signals the and of the world?" "For most archeologists and researchers, the concept is not just a lime far-fetched, they consider it to be more a curiosity than a prophecy." "But one feature of the brick hieroglyph is not so easy to dismiss." "The inscriptions on the brick" "Were apparently carved on the inner-facing side, hidden from view." "HAWKES:" "Why would they write a date on a brick and then turn it around so no one could see it and put it into the wall?" "We can only speculate as to why, but we believe it's because the ruling king or the priest or whoever commissioned the building site at Comalcalco didn't want that to be public knowledge." "NARRATOR:" "Why would the Maya conspire to keep this date secret?" "Was it to avoid global panic?" "DAVID CHILDRESS:" "If there is some kind of... (loud boom) ...doomsday at the end of the" "Mayan calendar, it could be a combination of... of pole shifts... (rumbling) ...of volcanoes and earthquakes... and super tidal waves all over the Earth." "It would be a catastrophic event for the planet." "NARRATOR:" "Is it really possible, as ancient astronaut theorists believe, that the Maya actually received detailed astronomical knowledge from ancient alien visitors'?" "And could this help explain why their calendar, which accurately predicts an extraordinary galactic alignment, apparently ends on December 21, 2012?" "Perhaps the answer can be found by examining the doomsday prophecies of other ancient cultures." "For if the Maya were attempting to warn us of a future cataclysm, could there be other evidence that they were not alone?" "NARRATOR:" "December 21 , 2012." "According to some researchers and scholars, this is the day when the Mayan calendar suggests the world will come to an end." "(loud boom)" "But there is another equally curious aspect to the Mayan calendar-- not when it ends, but when it begins:" "more than 3,000 years before the" "Mayan civilization even existed." "BARNHART The origin of the" "Long Count Calendar-- why they created day one to be August 13," "3114 BC, is still a mystery." "It's obviously back-dated." "There were no Maya back then, so why did they backward project" "3,000 years into the past?" "Based on the things we have warned about the Maya, it should be something astronomical." "HUGH NEWMAN:" "One of the ideas about why they back-dated it to 3114 BC is because some kind of cataclysm happened then." "Recent research has discovered an asteroid or multiple asteroids did hit an area around" "Austria in Europe." "(loud booming)" "And that could have caused a blackout of the sky for several years, and this is, then, when the calendar began." "MORTON:" "Scientists at Harvard and Princeton have said that this massive global worldwide catastrophe... a mass glaciation of the planet, occurred when this age of the Mayan calendar begins." "This happened not within tens of thousands of years or hundreds of years, but within weeks, within days, literally." "This took everyone by surprise." "CHILDRESS:" "According to the" "Mayans, we are coming to the end of the fifth age." "There have been four catastrophes before us." "Each one ended up with a destruction of the Earth." "And now we are just coming to" "The end of the fifth age of the" "Mayans, which will end now in" "December of 2012." "According to (he Mayan predictions, this will also end in a giant catastrophe." "(loud booming)" "BARNHART:" "The Western view of time is very linear." "When we think about..." "life..." "We see it as this linear projection heading out into the" "Future." "For the Maya, they viewed life very cyclically." "NARRATOR:" "Is it possible the" "Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012 because they expected that the fifth age of man will end much in the same way as it began?" "Were they privy to some ancient knowledge that has been lost in time?" "And if so, can proof be found by examining similar doomsday predictions from other ancient cultures?" "MORTON:" "Egyptian time-coding in the Great Pyramid of Giza is telling us that there will be a series of water-based catastrophes between late 2004 through about 2006, and look what happened." "We have the Asian tsunami, which kills about 250,000 people." "We have Hurricane Katrina." "(thunder crashes)" "And then there's actually this trough called the "River of" "Fire" which is warning us of some massive cosmic event, maybe a solar ﬂare or what have you, that then washes humanity back mic this pit." "NARRATOR:" "In addition to the eerie similarity between the" "Mayan and Egyptian prophecies," "Researchers have also noticed a connection in the doomsday predictions of the Hopi Indians of the American Southwest." "YOUNG:" "The Hopi people of the" "Native American nations believe that we are in the fifth age of man and that this is an age of purification and that it is near the end time." "MORTON:" "The Hopi believe that unless all the people of the" "Earth can come down and live more in harmony with themselves and with the planet, that there's going to be a great destruction coming." "(rumbling)" "NARRATOR:" "In India, the ancient Buddhist and Hindu astronomical manuscript, Surya" "Siddhanta, predicts that mankind will soon reach the end of the Kali Yuga, the final age of man." "YOUNG:" "The male divinity," "Kali, that is referred to in the" "End of Days of the Mahabharata, refers to a time of great chaos and discord, and, depending on how you read the dating in the script, we are well into it." "NARRATOR:" "Even the Christian" "Bible predicts, in great detail, a horrific, fiery apocalypse." "YOUNG:" "The Christian writers on the end of time focus on certain things: that the Jewish" "People return to the Holy Land and reclaim it, which happened some years ago; that the nation thereby established would finally claim Jerusalem, which has happened some years ago;" "that there would be a great expansion of the territory until it was a very large nation." "Finally, it is the claiming of the temple, which is on Temple" "Mount, which is holy in Islam." "But I!" "mus!" "be taken and restored to its original condition." "It is that place that the" "Messiah will actually come to rule the Earth before the End of" "Days." "COPPENS:" "The idea that we are living in end times, not necessarily the end of the world but the end of a world, is quite global." "NARRATOR:" "While most ancient doomsday prophecies only broadly suggest the timing of the so-called End of Days... the Maya prediction boldly points to an exact date." "Their Long Count Calendar comes to a decisive end on Friday," "December 21 , 2012, a date that many scientists and astronomers agree will coincide with an extremely rare alignment of celestial bodies in the" "Milky Way Galaxy." "But how could the Mayan calendar be so accurate?" "BARNHART:" "It is a true thing" "To say about the Maya that they created the most elaborate calendar system of any culture in the world." "They had a solar calendar, but before that, they had the sacred calendar." "When you look at the ratio between those Mo, you get" "365.2422 days for an actual" "Year." "The atomic clock says that it's 365.2420, but hey admit that at the fourth decimal point, they could be plus or minus five wrong." "So we're not sure who's more accurate." "Is it the Maya, or is it the atomic clock?" "NEWMAN:" "The sophisticated way the Maya track time is... is incredible, even by today's standards." "It's almost like they had sophisticated computer technologies or programs that could somehow run it." "And even today, we're just catching up and trying to understand how they managed to do such an amazing job way back in prehistory." "NARRATOR:" "The third Maya calendar, known as the Long" "Count, measured time in cycles of 394 years or 144,000 days." "GERARDO ALDANA:" "The Long" "Count is really just like an odometer m your car." "It just ticks off days." "It counts one, two, three, all the way up to 144,000, which we call bak'tuns." "NARRATOR:" "The Maya Long Count calendar also measured time in a series of 13 bak'tun cycles, totaling 5,125 years." "According to scholars, the dates stretch from August 11, 3114 BC to December 21, 2012." "And there, inexplicably, it stops." "Why were the Maya tracking celestial events in cycles of aver thousands of years?" "Was it simply' as some scholars suggest, because they could?" "Or did they, as ancient astronaut theorists believe, create the calendar as a way of marking time until the return of" "Otherworldly visitors, beings that were believed by them to be gods?" "COPPENS:" "Some calendar systems from the Mayans, today, science has no idea about what they are based on, but we just know that they exist for a specific reason." "So it is clear that they were given to them by an intelligence who knew what these calendar rounds represented." "And so, what we are seeing is that the Mayans are working with tools, technology. calendar systems, which were specifically engineered because they had been told that when certain things in the skies looked a certain way, then the gods" "would return." "GEORGE NOORY:" "The Mayans were incredible at what they did." "The big question is: how did they knew this?" "You have to say to yourself, perhaps civilizations might be much older than we think and they passed down knowledge for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years, or somebody came down and taught them." "NARRATOR:" "Did the Maya create the Long Count Calendar to warn us of a deadly cataclysm?" "Or were they simply intending to inform us of the day which will signal the return of their gods?" "But who-- or what- were these gods?" "And what is their agenda?" "According to ancient astronaut theorists, the answer can be found in the stars." "NARRATOR:" "Tikal." "Northern Guatemala." "Located within the dense tropical jungles of Central" "America, this archaeological site was once one of the great urban centers of the Mayan civilization." "Here, along the Grand Plaza, the" "Maya built seven pyramid-shaped temples aligned to mimic the constellation Pleiades." "HAWKES:" "They called it the" "Seven Sisters because it consisted of seven bright stars." "They also believed that the" "Pleiades was at the center of all fixed stars, so when they looked at the Pleiades, they believed that that may have been the center of all creation. and they believed that they came from the center of that" "creation, or, simply put, they came from Pleiades." "CHILDRESS:" "Why would the" "Mayans go through such a tremendous effort to recreate a mirror image of the stars on the ground?" "Why would they do that unless they wanted lo Contact the extraterrestrial gods who had originally given them the information?" "HAWKES:" "Pleiades was not only important to the Maya;" "it was also important to" "Native Americans." "The Cherokee, for example, the" "Hopi, believe that they descended from star beings that came from the Pleiades star cluster." "NARRATOR:" "According to scholars, the Maya believed that powerful gods descended to" "Earth from the stars, including" "A feathered serpent known as Kukulkan." "CHILDRESS:" "According to Mayan legend, Kukulkan was the winged serpent, some serpent god who could fly." "COPPENS:" "Kukulkan, by the" "Maya, is depicted in a number of ways." "Sometimes he is human." "Sometimes he is a serpent." "Sometimes we see him emanating from a serpents head." "We know that there is no way that a human being can emerge from a physical serpent, so the serpent must stand for something else-- either a construction or a device." "Now, because we know Kukulkan is a deity, we also definitely need to consider that this device is somehow a ship and Kukulkan emerges from within the confines" "Of the ship to the outside world and reveals himself as a deity to the people." "HAWKES:" "Kukulkan was the creator of all life who led the" "Maya into an age of scientific advancement, and advancement of art and architecture." "According to ancient Maya mythology, Kukulkan left the people and said he would return one day, and many scholars believe that the ending of the" "Maya calendar, on December 21 this year, will mark the return of Kukulkan." "NARRATOR: 400 miles north of" "Tikal, in the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza, stands a uniquely designed pyramid, built by the Maya to honor Kukulkan." "TSOUKALOS:" "Unlike most of the pyramids all around the world, the platform pyramid we can find at Chichen Itza is not directed in a north-south or east-west direction, but it's a little bit off." "There is a specific reason for that, and that is, during the spring and fall equinox, a shadow play is cast upon the side of the pyramid signifying the descent of Kukulkan, the" "Extraterrestrial descending from the sky, staying a while on" "Earth, and then ascending towards the heavens." "What we have here is an example of living mythology." "So my question is: what did they mean when they talked about this deity that descended from the sky?" "NARRATOR:" "Why was it so important to the Maya to build" "Such an elaborate temple to honor Kukulkan?" "Did they really expect this serpent god to ascend to the heavens and then descend to" "Earth?" "Or could Kukulkan be something even more incredible?" "Something not of this world?" "TSOUKALOS:" "If you look up in the aw today, and you watch a plane, it leaves behind this plume of smoke as it travels across the sky and you've got the snake's tail wiggling at its backside." "So if you look at it from that perspective, that can be described as a ﬂying snake." "And in my opinion, that was nothing else but a description of some type of an extraterrestrial craft that descended from the sky out of which the gods, lower case "g,"" "emerged and taught them in various disciplines." "VON DANIKEN:" "The message is dear." "God Kukulkan descended to the humans." "He was a vermin time among the humans." "He was the teacher of the humans and then he disappeared again, but with the promise to return one day to the humans." "NARRATOR:" "Is it really possible, as some ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that Kukulkan was, in fact, a ﬂying spacecraft, engineered and piloted by otherworldly visitors?" "And, if so, could this explain the frequent depictions of this ancient Mayan god as having a" "Face appearing out of a serpent's head, similar to that of a pilot operating a vehicle?" "According to researchers, clues to the connection between the" "Maya and otherworldly beings can also be found in the Mayan manuscript known as the Popul" "Vuh, meaning "The Book of the" "People."" "It is a collection of the only known Maya oral histories still surviving." "Translated and written in the mid-16th century, this book encompasses a range of subjects, including Mayan creation myths." "ED BARNHART:" "The Popul Vuh begins with nothing." "There's nothing there." "There's a watery surface, but there's no sky." "There's no land." "The gods emerge out of this water." "They begin with nothing." "And the gods decide to make people." "Coming right out of one of the most seemingly inhospitable places for civilization to sprout, comes this culture, the Maya, who create this collection of independent city states and build pyramids." "They develop a written language and a mathematical system." "They grow up into this forest there, reaching populations into the multimillions." "TSOUKALOS:" "In the Popol Vuh, it clearly states that life was brought here by the gods and that those gods came from outer space." "It doesn't say that they came from inner Earth." "It also doesn't say that they came from another continent or another land." "But it states specifically that they descended from the sky and essentially brought knowledge to planet Earth." "PHILIP COPPENS:" "What you have" "In the Popol Vuh is very much like a manual." "It is something that you want to give to the people and say, this is what we, our ancestors, have decided together with the gods, and this is really what you should keep in mind for the next" "few centuries up until the moment in Mme when the gods return." "NARRATOR:" "Is it really possible-- as ancient astronaut theorists believe- that the" "Maya god Kukulkan was an extraterrestrial entity?" "One that is destined to return one day from the stars?" "And, if so, does it suggest that there may be truth in another" "Mayan legend, one that predicts that our time on Earth may be" "Running out?" "NARRATOR:" "Monument Number" "Six." "It is on this stone tablet, on which are carved a series of ancient Mayan hieroglyphs, which according lo scholars ominously predict a cataclysmic event on December 21, 2012." "BARNHART:" "This is a long monument that talks about the" "Lifetime of a particular king." "But at the end of it, it goes forward into the future, takes this big leap from the 600s AD up to 2012." "It definitely says Four Ahau," "Eight Konkin arriving the 13th bak'tun or400-year period." "But then there are only three more glyphs and they are eroded and broken partially." "NARRATOR:" "Some scholars believe that the eroded glyphs an Monument Six suggest that" "Bolon Yokte- a god similar to" "Kukulkan- will return at the end of the Mayan calendar." "VON DANIKEN:" "The Mayan specialists can read it "will descend from heaven god Bolon" "Yokte."" "Bolon Yokte was one of the Maya gods who was present with the creation of man." "So they say, "Will descend, god" "Bolon Yokte."" "So some gods, some extraterrestrials, were expected to return." "And definitely, some of the gods will return." "There is absolutely no doubt." "TSOUKALOS:" "Who was this" "Bolon Yokte?" "According to the documents that have survived, and they're only fragmentary, he was always described as someone with great powers, who had the capacity of ﬂight and who had incredible knowledge about the universe." "BARNHART:" "The God Bolon Yokte is not a very well understood god." "Sometimes he's associated with texts that talk about the beginning of creation back in" "3114 BC." "And we see him in some context that seemed to be connected with war." "TSOUKALOS:" "Bolon Yokte was also described as being very tall and very shiny, glowing." "Is it possible that what we have here is a description of an ancient alien?" "And the answer is yes." "NARRATOR:" "But while there is much mystery surrounding the" "Legend of Bolon Yokte, researchers say the ancient" "Maya believed this entity had visited thew ancestors before- thousands of years in the past." "TSOUKALOS:" "There is another" "Reference to Bolon Yokte at Palenque in Temple 14, where it is clearly stated that" "Bolon Yokte appeared on Earth over 900,000 years ago." "Why would anyone in their right mind record a date that goes back over 900,000 years ago?" "Well, something happened." "Something very significant." "And according to the ancient texts, that is when Bolon Yokte descended to Earth from the sky." "NARRATOR:" "Similar stories suggesting that the Maya were, in some way, connected to otherworldly beings can be found in an ancient Maya text known as the Chilarn Balam... a collection of oral histories passed down through the ages." "VON DANIKEN:" "The Chilam Balam books were written between the 16th and the 18th centuries, when the Spanish conquerors were already there." "First, the Spanish arrived." "They found hundreds of Maya writings." "They destroyed them all." "But then some of the priests escaped and they start to write up their old knowledge." "That's the reason how the Chilam" "Balam books came to existence." "BARNHART:" "The name Chilam" "Balam is actually the name for a priesthood who were kind of the historians of communities in the Yucatan." "But we have this collection of books that we call" "The Chilam Balams." "These are the books in which we find this information about how the Maya believe that what's happened before will happen again." "In the opinion of the people" "That write the Chilam Balams." "They behave them lo be very accurate." "The Chilam Balam talks about these 20-year periods." ""In this 20-year period, you could see it was a bad time for us." "We can expect negative things to befall us."" "And of course, one of the most negative and bad-luck times they have is the arrival of the Spanish." "And they point to that as, "See?" "Clearly in the cycles of time, we could almost predict that this calamity was bound to happen to us at this time."" "NARRATOR:" "In the Chilam Bilam it states that the god Bolon" "Yokte will someday return and battle the deities of heaven in an epic war of good versus evil." "COPPENS:" "Each age for the" "Mayans was dearly defined, and it was defined by the gods returning." "And so what we have today, or in the near future, is the imminent arrival according to the Mayan tradition of these deities." "NARRATOR:" "This prediction of a final apocalyptic battle between good and evil as described in the Chilam Bilam, can also be found in the" "Christian Bible's book of Revelation." "MORTON:" "It is interesting that if you look at the last" "Book of the Bible, it talks about some great war in heaven between the Archangel Michael and the great dragon." "Is there some last great war in heaven that occurs at this final age?" "NARRATOR:" "If the Maya prophecy about the return of" "Bolon Yokte is true, might there really be a so-called battle between good and evil?" "One that will result in the annihilation of all mankind?" "If so, how'?" "NARRATOR:" "Manet Earth." "Although there are many theories about its age and origin, one fact is certain: our planet is billions of years old." "And mankind's existence on its surface is relatively recent... and fragile." "Throughout history, the biggest threat to mankind has" "Come in the form of natural disasters." "But does that mean the world will end on December 21, 2012?" "Recent evidence has shown that the ancient Mayans possessed knowledge about the universe and its fate that we are only just beginning to understand." "CHILDRESS:" "According to the" "Mayans, the world has already ended four times before this coming cataclysm." "It ended before in, in fire and in ice and in water." "This next cataclysm could be a combination of all that or even something completely different." "MORTON:" "Not only did the" "Mayans know our place in the universe, but they also knew how old the universe was." "The Mayans put the date of the universe at 16.4 billion years." "Modern science today puts it at about 14 and a half, maybe 15." "And yet the better our technology gets the more we begin to realize that the Mayans" "Were correct." "NARRATOR:" "Is it possible then, as the Mayans predicted, that the Earth and sun will align with a black hole on" "December 21. 2012?" "And if so, will such a cosmic event have dire consequences for our world?" "MORTON:" "The Tibetans believe that the sun is a lens... that it activates and amplifies things behind it or things coming in from of it." "If that's the case' on December 21, you have an energy that's coming from the center of the galaxy that comes from the dark rift... that comes comes from the womb of the galaxy, if you will, that is now" "gonna be amplified by the sun, that is going to have some kind of effect on humanity." "NOORY:" "I think the Mayans had" "An understanding of celestial mechanics." "They understood that the sun was going through change." "And so my belief is that something will happen with the sun." "HAWKES:" "Well, we know from past experience that solar ﬂares can interfere with electronic equipment." "We could see the power grid go down, for example." "We could see major things change in modern society that pretty much would cripple us." "But if we're talking about losing that ability for an extended period of time, I daresay we'd be talking about a scenario that would result in major changes, and quite possibly some very ill effects." "NARRATOR:" "Some researchers" "Speculate that the galactic alignment might change or even reverse how the Earth spins on its axis by altering its magnetic field." "MICHAEL DENNIN:" "A sign of the magnetic field changing quickly would mean something has to happen dramatically to the angular momentum of the stuff inside the Earth, which might also mean something happens drastically to the spin of the" "Earth itself." "And once you change the rotation of the Earth, you do have a chance of causing huge effects." "It's like having a whole bunch of massive earthquakes at the same time." "HAWKES:" "We talk about a magnitude seven or a magnitude eight or a magnitude nine earthquake as being destructive beyond imagination." "But what would a magnitude 12 or a magnitude 20 earthquake do?" "Could it replace the land with the sea and the sea with the land?" "We're talking about events that we've never experienced before." "So some of these changes that people are talking about that could occur could be life- changing or they could be life-ending." "NARRATOR:" "Will the Earth really be affected by some strange, powerful astronomical alignment?" "One that will have profound consequences for all of us'?" "And if so, might those consequences came in the form of death and destruction?" "Or might there be another," "Perhaps more positive outcome?" "CHILDRESS:" "The end of the" "Mayan Long Count could mean some doomsday for planet Earth." "Or on the other hand, perhaps it is the return of the extraterrestrial gods as the Mayans believed." "It's hard to know the future." "What's gonna happen at the end of 2012." "But it seems that perhaps the" "Mayans had some glimpse into the future that we have yet to find out." "COPPENS:" "We are living in a time, specifically a culture, which really doesn't address the" "Ancient alien theory that we are not alone." "It is indeed gonna come for a global village as a complete revelation that we are not alone." "And that is really, I think, a gift from the Mayans when it comes to 2012." "TSOUKALOS:" "It is absolutely correct that a calendar round is about to end, but that does not signify the end of the world." "In fact, the only thing it signifies is the beginning of another calendar round of another period in time." "NARRATOR:" "Could the Mayan doomsday prophesies really come true?" "Will December 21, 2012 signal the end of civilization as we know it?" "Or are the dire predictions nothing more than a myth?" "A misinterpretation of an even greater truth?" "Perhaps what awaits us is not the end of our world, but a new beginning." "One that will reveal the celestial origins... of man."