I think the subject is relevant to us at 2012Hoax for several reasons.
1. People who sincerely want to understand what the Galactic Alignment is about will research the Galactic Equator, and their online research is likely to lead them to apparently reliable information from which it would be correct to conclude that the debunkers are contradicting themselves. (See here.) This is an outcome I'm sure we'd all like to help avoid, by having a good page of our own on the subject.
2. Our characterization of the galactic equator as an arbitrary line (I've said this myself, based upon this article from Starry Night) is highly unsatisfactory. It's a disservice to the astronomers who defined it, and anyone who read the IAU's announcement thereof would recognize our statement as a half-truth. Worse still, the reader would see that Starry Night's characterization of it is flatly false:
[The Galactic Equator] was officially defined by the International Astronomical Union in 1959, but it is there by definition, not based on any physical characteristics or markers.
In fact, the IAU went to great lengths to explain that what we now call the Galactic Equator was based upon a strikingly planar concentration of neutral hydrogen within 7 kiloparsecs of the Galactic Center. The intentional differences between that plane and the Galactic Equator based thereupon are carefully described and justified in the cited article.
Bottom line: The woo-woo's would have no problem debunking the debunkers on this point.
3. John Major Jenkins describes the Galactic Equator as follows:
…I would like to emphasize that the Galactic equator -the precise edge of our spiraling Galaxy- is the zero point location of the turnabout moment in the cycle of precession. (Maya Cosmogenesis, p. 328)
Wrong, of course, but the average person would probably find it more credible, on the surface, than our assertion (also wrong) that the Galactic Equator is simply arbitrary.
Jenkins' statement is the clearest example I know, of how he speaks authoritatively on subjects about which he knows nothing. But to make use of it, we need to have our own ducks in a row.
4. 2012Hoax has been praised for the quality of its work by at least one astronomy association, and an international SETI group. I don't want to let them down.
(account deleted) 14 Oct 2010 12:54
