2012 and The End Of The World
History has a long and rich tradition of apocalyptic predictions—all of which were wrong—yet some people still think that this time around in 2012 is the real deal.
长久以来，历史上流传着各式各样启示录预言的传说－－没有一个成真－－但还是有人相信，这次大概2012年就是世界末日。
Why 2012? Because of ancient Mayan calendars.
为什么是2012年呢？这就要追溯至古代的马雅历法。
Obviously, Mayan calendars not only recorded the days and years, but also longer cycles of about five Millennia, so they could easily make calendars that went thousands of years into the future. But, of course, thousands of years in the future from thousands of years ago brings us to the current times when the Mayan calendars stop in 2012.
很显然的，马雅历法不只是记载了日日年年，同时也记录了以约五千年为单位，较长的周期，所以他们可以很轻易的估算出未来几千年的历法。但是，想当然尔，几千年前的数千年以后，就把我们带到了现代，而马雅历法的预测就停在2012年。
Modern new-agey people decided that the wise Mayans stopped making calendars because they knew when the world will end. And because the new-agers are happy (though scientifically illiterate people), their vision of 2012 was a great spiritual awakening or world reboot or other hippy-consciousness-expanding nonsense that the Mayans, who spend time pulling strings of thorns through people's tongues probably didn't have in mind.
现代推崇“新时代运动”的人们(注一)，是如此解读的：睿智的马雅人知道何时是世界末日，才停止估算历法。而因为这些“新时代运动派”很高兴(虽然他们没什么科学概念)，他们的2012末日说，是一个伟大的精神觉醒、世界重生或是其他嬉皮式的“意识超脱”之类的废话，而马雅人忙着用荆棘穿过人们的舌头，大概从没想过以上解读方式。
To a normal person, the thought that "Calendar finished, therefore End of the World" is an odd conclusion to draw.
对正常人来说，“历法终止，因此世界末日来临”这种逻辑是个奇怪的结论。
After all, the amount of time in the Universe is infinite, and the amount of stone is limited. So, at some point, the Mayans had to stop carving calendars.
毕竟，宇宙的时间是无限的，但石头的数量有限。所以，有朝一日，马雅人必须停止刻历法。
But never mind.
但没关系。
What should have stayed a fringe belief turned into mass hysteria with the 2012 disaster movie that swept the Academy Awards and the numerous Emmy-nominated apocalypse documentaries on The History Channel.
这原本应该只是一个极端偏激的信念，随着灾难电影《2012》横扫奥斯卡，加上《历史频道》多部获艾美奖提名的天启纪录片渲染，转变成为大众恐慌。
What happened to you guys?
各位，你们到底在想什么啊？
Anyway, after this, NASA became so inundated with questions that they had to take time away from their busy robot building, frontier pushing, knowledge expanding, civilization inspiring schedule, to write a webpage explaining that "No, a human-sacrificing, stone-aged society, with neither wheels to pull carts nor glass to make telescopes, didn't know more about science at the dawn of history than real scientists do today."
不论如何，此后，NASA被大量涌入的问题淹没，还得从他们忙碌的打造机器人、开疆扩土、扩充新知及刺激文明发展的行程表中，抽空架网页澄清：“不，一个以人为祭品的石器时代社会，既没有发明轮子拉货车，也没有玻璃可以做望远镜，在人类历史起步之初，不可能比现代真正科学家更了解科学。”
But the parade of crazy marched on anyway making wilder and wilder predictions for Earth, including:
但不论如何，这狂热的风潮持续延烧，对地球的预测也越来越不着边际，包括：
Geomagnetic Reversal (A process that unfolds on a geologic time scale, not a single day.)
地磁反转(一个在地质年表上才会呈现出的过程，不是一天就会发生的。)
A collision with mysterious Planet X (That no astronomers have found.)
和神秘的X星球相撞(根本没有天文学家发现这个星球)
A local star going supernova (Despite there have been no such candidates.)
本星系群的一颗恒星变成超新星(只是没有这样的候选人)
An Alien Invasion (Which is ludicrous on the face of it...or is it?)
外星人入侵(从外表看起来是挺滑稽的...是吗？)
And a galactic synchronization beam, whatever the hell that is.
还有银河同步光束，管它是啥。
A sane person at this point would wonder how Mayans were able to predict astro-physical anomalies thousands of years in advance and millions of miles away yet didn't foresee the Spanish coming across the Atlantic.
现在，神智清楚的人可能会想，为什么马雅人有办法预测未来几千年的天文物理异象，而且还是发生在离他们数百万英里远的地方，却没办法预见西班牙人会横越大西洋(前来侵略)呢？
And that's because the Mayans never predicted apocalypse. The only people to claim that Mayans knew about the end of the world were distinctly not Mayans.
那是因为马雅人从没预言过启示录。唯一那些声称马雅人知道世界末日的人，很明显的，都不是马雅人。
注一：the New Agey people是指那些推崇“新时代运动”(the New Age Movement)的人。他们通常只吃有机食物、做瑜珈、喜欢冥想，相信世界末日会让世界重新来过，得以重生。
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