Galactic Alignments 2012 - Article

The Mayans called the galactic plane the dark rift. It is actually theorized that the Earth's passage through the galactic plane caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The galactic plane is the most dense area of the galaxy at any given distance from the galactic center. Because it the most dense, the likely hood of an asteroid or other large gravitational body impacting the Earth increases.

Currently the Sun is about 30 parsecs from the galactic plane. We are moving at about 7.2 km/s perpendicular to the galactic plane. Let's assume worst case scenario; let's say we are moving toward the galactic plane. If moving toward the galactic plane, we will not pass through the middle of the galactic plane for another 4+ million years. However, despite this, we are actually quite close to the galactic plane in our current day. The Milky Way is estimated to extend up to 350pc in height, and likely even more, as astronomers have recently been finding out that they have likely underestimated the mass and size of our galaxy. We are, at the time, already in a relatively dense area of our orbit around the Milky Way's galactic center. The galactic plane has no significance in regards to December 21st, 2012.