Boffins think they've decoded mysterious 819-day Mayan calendar

A pair of researchers claim to have deciphered one of the most mysterious of the Mayan calendars, which they believe represents a 45-year cycle of our neighboring planets.  The recently published study of the 819-day Mayan calendar found it linked to synodic periods, which represent the amount of time it takes for another …

[Geoff May (no relation)]

"and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy"

Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.

[David 132]

Re: "and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy"

An amusing quote from the HHGTTG film (which was otherwise so-so compared to the books):

Arthur: Well, we can talk about “normal” till the cows come home.

Ford: What is ‘normal’?

Zaphod: What are ‘cows’?

Trillian: What’s ‘home’?

[Chipwidget]

Re: "and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy"

"...the books" - which were otherwise so-so compared to the radio play

[Mark 124]

Re: "and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy"

Good luck to you on your tod if you get long COVID and struggle to even make breakfast, let alone work a full day, for a number of months. How's your savings balance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy"

Well at least it'll give you a chance to read HHGTTG so you can understand most of the jokes presented in these forums

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy"

And Pterry.

[TRT]

Re: "and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy"

The chances of things ever returning to normal must be a million to one.

[Claptrap314]

Re: "and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy"

So, you're saying it is almost impossible?

[Tom Fred James]

Re: "and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy"

This the new normal

[Fred Dibnah]

Re: "and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy"

I prefer normality to normalcy, one of the few times where English English uses a shorter word than American English.

[cookieMonster]

we again note that we're still here

Thanks for that, was getting a bit worried there for a minute.

[Will Godfrey]

Re: we again note that we're still here

But some folks are not entirely here.

P.S. and never were :)

[ITMA]

Re: we again note that we're still here

And here was me naively thinking this coversation wouldn't involve Elon Musk... LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: we again note that we're still here

We think.

[Youngone]

Re: we again note that we're still here

I'm not, for tax purposes.

[TRT]

Re: we again note that we're still here

Although my wife is.

[David 132]

Has anyone…

…other than these boffins cared about, or even thought about, the Mayan calendar since 2012?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Has anyone…

The Mayans ?

[DS999]

Re: Has anyone…

Since 2012? Pretty sure that's a no!

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Has anyone…

Personally, the calendar does not interest me directly but I like the evidence it provides on the skill and dedication of Mayan astronomers and the independent corroboration of historical planetary observations.

A thousand years from now the discordian calendar may cause chaos and confusion among some historians. It may well say as much about us as the Mayan calendar say about them.

[David 132]

Re: Has anyone…

Fair enough.

[Tom Fred James]

Re: Has anyone…

Yes

[yetanotheraoc]

Perspective

Somehow ncal telling me the dates of Western and Orthodox Easter is less impressive than before. Forty-five years is a long time, let's see, what was I doing forty-five years ago today?

[Roger Greenwood]

Re: Perspective

Makes you think. I was learning to program a Texas 5Ti PLC at my first job. Getting it wrong meant throwing another 1K Prom away at extortionate cost as I remember.

[Tom 7]

I'm guessing this 'discovery' cycles round too

I'm sure this has been known for a long time - perhaps its not on the web though.

[Paul Kinsler]

Re: I'm sure this has been known for a long time - perhaps its not on the web though.

... for example, during the Mayan Civilization itself, perhaps? :-)

[Richard 12]

Re: I'm sure this has been known for a long time - perhaps its not on the web though.

Most of them died of smallpox, which makes it hard to ask.

[Slipoch]

Re: I'm sure this has been known for a long time - perhaps its not on the web though.

That was the Aztecs, the Maya (who used these calendars) had already died out a couple hundred years before I believe. (In the USA they seem to use Mayan as a catchall term for anyone from that region from pre-spanish settlement bloodlines)

[First Light]

Re: I'm sure this has been known for a long time - perhaps its not on the web though.

There are plenty of Maya in Guatemala and elsewhere. Around 5 million.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maya-people

[Bebu]

And "most" means?

"The Tzolk'in calendar is the Mayan 260-day calendar *most people* are familiar with"

I cannot pronounce Tzolk'in let alone knew it was a calendar and I am sure more than half the population are with me here.

A cynic might suspect the Maya contrived this calendar for the fallacious end time prophesies of later more gullible generations or indeed the internet.

A nice bit number fiddlery :) Given our own calendar stuffing around with leap years rules I could accept the Maya had such a calendar but whether they did is another matter.

[Diogenes8080]

Re: And "most" means?

Try the board game of the same name from Czech Games Edition - it's the only game I know of with working cogs.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/126163/tzolk-mayan-calendar

Beware - the head priest is allowed to fiddle the calendar!

[Dante Alighieri]

Track

here's another one for you then. I have it and played it a lot as a kid.

Spin your opponents master gear/cog in the correct direction to win.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6605/track

[Spherical Cow]

Re: And "most" means?

Mouse Trap has cogs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And "most" means?

Yes, but not exactly reliable though!

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

2012 was an inside job

Teach the controversy!

[Crypto Monad]

"Interestingly enough, the 819-day calendar also matches the Tzolk'in when multiple occurrences are allowed"

Any two numbers have a Lowest Common Multiple, so it's not *that* interesting really.

260 = 13 * 20

819 = 13 * 63

Since 20 and 63 don't share any factors, LCM = 13 * 20 * 63 = 16380

[GlenP]

My immediate thought when I started reading was that they've just looked for LCMs.

The flaw is that synodic cycles are rarely (never?) an integer number of days, so they'd have been inserting and removing days and making adjustments constantly.

[TeeCee]

...eschatologists predicting a world-ending cataclysm in 2012...

There's an official, scientific title for barking paranoid cockwombles? Who knew?

[TRT]

Eschatology sounds more like the study of cataclysmic sneezes that you manage to stifle just in time.

[Snowy]

NASA engineering

Maybe all the doom predictions are for when the machine the world is running on should have failed but due to some good engineering the machine is still running past the shut of date :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: NASA engineering

or maybe there was a software update or two involved....

[chololennon]

They took to long to figure that out...

"By increasing the calendar length to 20 periods of 819-days a pattern emerges in which the synodic periods of all the visible planets commensurate with station points in the larger 819-day calendar," the researchers wrote.

The Mayan numeral system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_numerals) was vigesimal (base-20) so I wonder why boffins took too long to figure that out :-P (of course I am just kidding, I am not an expert in Mayan civilization or calendars)

[Sceptic Tank]

Keep the receipts.

This is why one should always keep the user's manual. Now nobody knows how to operate the calendar and the documentatio is in some Mayan's desk drawer.