Mayan Calendar and Leap Years

As you probably have heard, the Mayan calendar ends this year on December 21st.  This has gotten a lot of people excited about doomsday predictions for that day.  However, the calendar ending is about as eventful as New Year's Eve, 1999.  Of course, that day had it's own doomsday predictions, but none of them happened, either.

Anyway, earlier this year someone tried to combat this idea with some math, which then spread online, especially through Facebook.  The claim:

There have been about 514 Leap Years since Caesar created it in 45BC. Without the extra day every 4 years, today would be July 28, 2013.

Also, the Mayan calendar did not account for leap year…. so technically the world should have ended 7 months ago.

 The idea the first statement is getting across is true:  Without leap days, we are going faster through the year than we should.  The statement itself is inaccurate*, but it's close enough to launch their hand grenade in the second part.

It is true that the Mayans didn't account for leap year, but they weren't using our calendar.  The Islamic calendar has a leap year almost every 3 years (11 out of 30 years) instead of our almost 1 out of 4.  But would I say, "Today is 3 Shawwal 1433?  That converts to 21 Aug, 2012, but since you have all these extra leap days then we better add those in, so it's actually a few years in the future!"  No, the calendar differences are already present in the conversion.  Today is today, neither the future, nor the past.

Aztec Calendar.
Unrelated to the Mayan calendar, but is impressive looking.

The Mayan Long Count calendar is especially easy to convert.  This calandar is simply a count of the number of days since they believe the world was created.  They believe the world was created on 13.0.0.0.0, which corresponds with a Gregorian calendar date of 11 August, 3114 BC.  The next day was 0.0.0.0.1, starting the count over again.  The idea is that the calandar will end on 21 December, 2012 is because this is the date that is 1,872,000 days later, or using the Mayan numbering system, it will be 13.0.0.0.0 again.  The calendar only "ends" in the sense that ours does every year-- the calendar ends, so we just start over again**

Yes, let's refute this Mayan 2012 apocolypse garbage.  But let's not use bad math and poor understanding to do it.



*There have been 511 leap years since Julius Caesar created the Julian calendar which went into effect in 45BC.  Ten of those leap days were nullified when the Gregorian calendar went into effect in 1582 and 4 October 1582 was followed by 15 October 1582.  One extra day is added every four years except on century years not divisible by 400.

Also, the claim clearly was written 1 March, 2012, so when they say "the world should have ended 7 months ago" they are subtracting the 514 from that date.  But if we're going to count the Julian leap years, why not count the leap years that existed in the Roman calendar, which existed before Julius Caesar?  They had a shorter calendar and added extra months every so many years instead of just a leap day.  Or at least why not extrapolate the Julian (or Gregorian) calendar backwards to 3114 BC?  Perhaps they actually believe that the year got longer only when Julius Caesar said so.

**Incidentally, today's date is 12.19.19.11.18.  The place value names in decreasing order are called: b'ak'tun, k'atun, tun, winal, and k'in.  The Mayans used a base-20 numbering system, instead of our base-10.  Each place-value is worth 20 of the previous, except for the tun, as the winal only went up to 18. (20*18 = 360, which is kinda close to a year.)

Mormons, Muslims, and Christians

About two weeks ago, the Huffington Post posted an article titled, Are Mormons Closer to Muslims or Christians?  And they answer the question (well, the slightly different question "Are Mormons closer to Christians than Muslims?") in the first sentence: no.

I realize that the Huffington Post has their own liberal agenda and is just another attack on Romney to show that he isn't Christian.  I'm not sure how popular or believed the Huffington Post is or this article, but even still, I couldn't help but be appalled at the shoddy reporting in that blog post.  The Article 6 Blog dismisses it as one of many "Buzzing of Gnats" that is only annoying because I'm paying attention to it.  And that I shouldn't pay attention to it because then it becomes an issue that has to be dealt with.  It seems Mormon American took their advice, because they literally didn't deal with it at all.

All the same, it's one thing to accuse me of not being a Christian, but (for some reason) quite another to accuse me of not believing in Christ at all.  I wish people did some research, but until then, I've gotta say something here.

Higgs Facts

Since the opening of the Large Hadron Collider in 2008, and especially within the past month, there has been a lot of interest in the media about the Higgs Boson.  But what is it?

It is usually said that it is the Higgs Boson that gives stuff mass, but that isn't quite right.  So let's get our facts straight.  Much like a gravitational field, or an electromagnetic field, the Standard Model says there is a Higgs Field.  The difference is that the Higgs field has the same strength everywhere.  Fundamental particles (such as quarks and leptons) are able to interact with this field, some more strongly than others.  It is this interaction that gives these particles mass.

Then, if you add the mass of the quarks to make a proton or neutron... you don't come close to the total mass of the larger particles.  In our world of the large, we are used to the mass of the whole equaling the sum of its parts.  At this atomic level though, the mass of the parts is tiny compared to the energy holding those parts together.*  And we should know that from E = mc² that mass and energy is really the same thing.  In fact, physicists measure particles in electronvolts, an amount of energy.  A proton has nearly 1 GeV, but the three quarks only have a combined mass of around 10 MeV, or about 1%.  So, no, even without the Higgs Field, we would still have mass.

So, we've talked a lot about this Higgs Field.  But what is this Higgs Boson supposed to be?  Much like the Photon exists as a particle representing the electromagnetic field, the Higgs Boson is a particle representing the Higgs Field.  If physicists could discover the Higgs Boson, that would show that the Higgs Field exists.  It was predicted to have much more mass than the other particles, and could only be discovered in a high-energy particle accelerator.

A particle accelerator works by speeding protons to near the speed of light.  As the protons collide, this kinetic energy is converted into mass and all this exotic matter appears until it decays into stable particles.  The Higgs Boson was predicted to decay so quickly that it couldn't be directly measured.  Instead, physicists measure the particles that it decays into, and if there were an unexpected spike in the graph, they would know they had something generating these extra particles.  On July 4th, 2012, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider announced that they had seen such a spike with enough statistical significance to announce a discovery.

As with any discovery, scientists are cautious.  Even though they have definitely found a particle with about 125 GeV, in the range they were expecting, they cannot say whither it is actually the Standard Model Higgs Boson.  They still need to see if it has all the properties they expect, not just the mass.  But until then, we are all very excited with this discovery, and are looking forward to how things go from here.

*Technically, its gluons holding the quarks together, but gluons are massless, and it is again the energy we are measuring here.

Is Mormonism the "Pluto" of the Religious World?

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for the first time provided the definition of a planet.

A planet must:

1. orbit the Sun
2. have enough mass to be rounded by its own gravity
3. cleared the neighborhood of its orbit

Thanks to this definition, (to the outrage of elementary school children everywhere) Pluto was no longer considered a planet.

I take this example and apply it to Christianity.   Unlike astronomy, there is no body of clergy internationally recognized for giving out designations and classifications for new religions and their features.  But people within each of the churches have for a long time tried to define what it is to be a Christian, and whether members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (usually called "Mormons") should belong to that group.

Latter-day Saints believe that a Christian is someone who believes in Jesus Christ.  Others, especially in the clergy of other faiths, believe that being a Christian is more than a simple belief in Christ, but a specific set of beliefs in Christ.  Usually prominent in such a list is the belief in the Trinity, which rules Latter-day Saints out because of our belief that Jesus Christ is a separate person than Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

So who is right?  Maybe we should first ask, why do we care?  This is the way I see it.  Mormonism is a proselyting church and it is a lot easier for people to listen to you when you share common beliefs.  When people don't think you also believe in Jesus Christ, they are less likely to listen.  This is the same reason those of other faiths want to define us as non-Christian.  There's probably other reasons, too, but I'll talk about them in a later post.

Anyway, back to planets.  The layman's definition of a planet has been for a long time, "A round thing that goes around the sun."  (And extended to things going around other stars that aren't other stars.)  But when we started finding a bunch of other round things (as well as another belt of debris) beyond Neptune, people asked, "do we really want all these planets?"  If a church claimed they were Christian, but they also preached that it was okay to rob and injure one another, wouldn't we also agree that perhaps the definition needed to be extended to include more than mere belief in Christ?

The analogy puts it into perspective for me, because I trust the IAU when it classifies Pluto as one of 5 dwarf planets.  But it's not a perfect analogy.  For one, although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints started small, and even today only 1.7% of the US population is a Latter-day Saint, that is enough to put us as the fifth largest religion in the United States.  Smaller than the 4 gas giants, perhaps the church is more like Earth than Pluto.

Then, of course, we come back to the main difference:  no recognized body to hand out definitions.  Even still, the IAU isn't universally recognized.  People will still recognize Pluto as a planet, and at the same time give blank stares when you ask about Eris.  Personally, even though I don't think Pluto is a planet, I do give it respect for being probably the most awesome ice ball out there.  Gotta respect something with at least 5 moons.

But if there was a group tasked with making a definition for Christianity, what would it be?  It would have to be simple, one the layman could understand, and eventually accept.  It would have to be one a majority of representatives of every religion, Christian and non-Christian could agree on.  It would also have to challenge the layman to look beyond mere belief.

Being Mormon, I'm going to be biased and pick something a Mormon would fall under.  But I don't think a definition of Christianity should be a list of doctrinal beliefs about Christ, but instead a list of behaviors that a Christian would follow.  What do you suggest?  It may lead to wanting more definitions, but I propose:

A Christian must:

1. Have faith in Jesus Christ
2. Become better by sacrificing sin through repentance
3. Clean up their neighborhood