Prophesies of Doomsday

The world is coming to an end on December 21, 2012! The ancient Maya made this stunning prediction more than 2,000 years ago. We'll peel back the layers of mystery and examine in detail how the Maya calculated the exact date of doomsday. Journey back to the ancient city of Chichen Itza, the hub of Maya civilization deep in the heart of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, to uncover the truth about this prophecy. The Maya were legendary astronomers and timekeepers--their calendar is more accurate than our own. By tracking the stars and planets they assigned great meaning to astronomical phenomena and made extraordinary predictions based on them--many of which have come true. Could their doomsday prophecy be one of them? In insightful interviews archaeologists, astrologers, and historians speculate on the meaning of the 2012 prophecy. Their answers are as intriguing as the questions.

Modern Marvels: Doomsday Tech looks at the technological threats to human civilization, as well as the technology that may one day save us. The doomsday threats range from very real ... (our nuclear arsenals) ...to controversial (global warming caused by fossil fuels) ... to futuristic: nanotechnology, cyborgs, and robots. Despite the end of the Cold War, we still live very much under the shadow of nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russia still have enough warheads on hair-trigger alert to end human civilization as we know it, even as Pakistan and India embark on a new arms race. We'll look at the potential for accidental launches, and examine near-disasters that have happened before. We'll also look at the nuclear threat in the age of terrorism. From Russia to China to the American heartland, safeguarding the raw material for nuclear weapons is a deadly serious task. We will look at the techniques used to keep plutonium and highly enriched uranium out of the wrong hands. And we'll see the technology used in turning nuclear swords into plowshares: dismantling a warhead and converting its deadly fuel into electric power for homes and industry. Doomsday Tech then takes on an even more heated topic: global warming, fossil fuels, and the connection between them. We'll look at the Age of Oil, and see how dependent we are on cheap fossil fuels for everything from food production to plastics... and of course, the cars we drive to work everyday. We'll see why there's more carbon in the atmosphere today than there was when dinosaurs walked the earth, and look at the technology used by scientists to measure just how warm global warming has become. We'll examine two very possible doomsday scenarios: a global economic breakdown when oil begins to run out, and a global climate catastrophe that could threaten human civilization. A sudden, new Ice Age is even possible. Then we'll see the technology that may save us from such a grim fate. We'll see how carbon emissions can be captured and buried deep below the earth. Most importantly, we'll look to the future of energy: hydrogen, solar, wind power, nuclear, natural gas, and maybe the return of the ultimate doomsday technology--- the atom-to provide clean, limitless power in the form of controlled fusion.

In this second hour of Doomsday Tech, we look at more of the threats-both natural and manmade-that may endanger civilization. From the reaches of space to tiny viruses inside our bodies, the sources of doomsday are many. But so are the technologies used to keep doomsday at bay. We begin with killers from space. Not little green men, but mile-wide chunks of rock traveling at 36,000 miles per hour: asteroids. Asteroids of significant size have hit the Earth before, and they will hit it again with planet devastating intensity. In fact, a series of close calls in the past several years have prompted an acceleration of the world's asteroid hunting programs. We'll meet some of the world's foremost asteroid hunters, from NASA and JPL, who will show us the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program. We'll not only check out the telescopes and enormous digital cameras used to track the asteroids; we'll examine the methods being developed to nudge or destroy an asteroid that sets its sights on Earth.

Two men sharing startling visions of the future possess distinctly different backgrounds: Michel de Nostradamus was a French apothecary and healer in the 16th century; he would become the most famous seer in history. His 21st century counterpart is Dr. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a renowned political scientist who teaches game theory at New York University and Stanford. While Nostradamus looked to the stars and mysticism to divine his apocalyptic revelations, Dr. Bueno de Mesquita relies on the most omnipotent tool ever designed by man to predict future events: the computer. This special explores not only the commonalities of these men's visions about World War III, famine and the coming of the Anti-Christ, but it also traces the evolution from mysticism to hard math, and determines whether science has always existed in prophecy, manifesting itself in different forms through the ages.

Comets--these celestial travelers have forever filled us with fear and wonder. Lurking in the furthest reaches of our solar system, they come close to Earth as they orbit our Sun. Could something as destructive as comets hold the key to life? Are the building blocks of carbon-based life forms frozen inside? Might they contain information about the creation of our solar system? At the conclusion of two spectacular NASA missions that sent spaceships to rendezvous with these mysterious objects, we examine the scientific and historical record of comets, including man's reaction to them. Did a comet lead the Wise Men to Bethlehem? Did they foretell the death of kings, the destruction of civilizations? How did Halley's Comet provide Isaac Newton with the clues for his theories of gravity? Finally, what comprises this "dirty snowball" and how can we protect ourselves if headed on a collision-course with one?

Sixty five million years ago dinosaurs were wiped off the face of Earth. Over the years there have been a number of theories as to why, and for the last three decades it has been thought that the cause was an asteroid impact in Mexico. Now, some scientists believe that a giant volcano in India was the culprit, as well as other environmental factors. Either way, many agree that the demise of the dinosaurs could not have been a simple story of a single impact event, followed by complete extinction. It is believed by many that a complex interaction of events combined to fulfill a fate many thousands of years in the making.