Thanks Brian. I tend to be long winded on the subjects of astronomy and religion because I love them so much and I'm sure you'll keep an eye out to keep me on the right track. I won't be offended if you tell me "don't go there." Even though I'm a Christian I won't promote any particular religion but will only talk about how it relates to science. I'll probably drop the subject if it looks like people are losing interest so I'd appreciate feedback from other folks in addition to CDoherty. But for now, let me deal with the above quote. There's a good possibility we are talking about the same show CDoherty. As I recall they said that the Mayan calander ends when the Sun, Earth and center of the galaxy is going to line up. There are three major flaws to that. 1) The Mayans didn't even know what a galaxy was. Nobody knew until Edwin Hubble (of Hubble Space Telescope fame) discovered in the 1920s that the small blobs in the sky they were observing weren't part of our galaxy but were galaxies seperate from our own. The Mayans DID know about the Milky Way because they had no light pollution and could see it perfectly. They didn't know where the center of the Milky Way was because they didn't know WHAT the Milky Way was. They might have suspected that the center was in (what we now call) Sagittarius because there's a lot more stars there. 2) The "scientists" (and I use the term losely) on the show in question claim that the trouble is going to happen when the center of the galaxy, the Earth and the Sun all line up. The problem with that theory is that they line up once a year. They never perfectly line up and they never will but it makes you wonder why the world hasn't been destroyed every year since its existence. 3) Which brings me to the third point. The idea is that the Mayans ended their calander because (although those three things won't line up perfectly) they'll be as close as they can get to lining up. The problem with that is that this is simply an astronomical cycle that will repeat itself and is nothing to worry about. I'll explain with an analogy that I made up. Imagine you're in a room with someone who speaks English but knows nothing else about our ways. You show that person how a calander works but forget to explain that Jan 1 repeats itself after Dec 31. You explain that this is June 7 and leave the room. They flip though the calander and see that it ends on December 31. They then have a panic attack because they think the world is going to end then. In other words, the astronomical cycle of things lining up, then drifting apart, then lining up again isn't going to stop. It's simply going to end another normal cycle and start again. The people trying to sell you books want you to think it is because if they wrote a book saying nothing bad is going to happen it would be too boring to make them rich. Okay, that covers part 1. I still have more subjects to cover concerning those two posts so stay tuned folks. In the meantime, if you have questions ask away.....