A new year is coming and hopefully it will bring us lots of happy experiences that we will remember over the years. We can’t predict the future but we already know of some events that will be on the news next year, take a look at some of them:
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1 January 31
433 Eros, the second largest known Near Earth Asteroid will pass the Earth at 26,729,000 km (16,608,000 mi) which is considered to be quite close.
Eros length is 33 kilometers and it weights 66900000000000000 Kg. This asteroid is believed to be a potential Earth impactor in a distant future.
433 Eros will pass Earth on January 31, 2012
2 June 6
Venus will passe between the Sun and the Earth, this phenomenon is known as the Transit of Venus and is one of the rarest astronomical events. The next time this happens will be in 2117.
3 June 23
Turing Centenary Conference at the University of Cambridge 2012 has been designated by the United Nations the Alan Turing Year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth, different conferences and public acts on his honor had been scheduled for this year.
Alan Turing (London 1912-1954) was a mathematician and computer scientist who is is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. He was also a cryptographer who worked during World War II breaking German ciphers and played an important role on this field, which was ultimately key for allies to win the war.
4 July 27
The 2012 Summer Olympics will start. The city of London will host them, becoming the first city to host the modern Olympic Games three times.
Athletes from 204 countries will compete for two weeks in 26 different sports.
5 October 18
As estimated by the United States Census Bureau, planet earth will host 7 billion human beings after that day. The world human population increases by an average of 204,000 people every day.
6 November 6
The United States of America will choose a president for the 2012-2016 period on general election. Election Day in USA occurs the Tuesday after the first Monday of November in years divisible by four. Tuesday was choosen as election day because it did not interfere with the Sabbath (the day of rest in the Bible) nor with market day, which used to be Wednesday.
7 December 21
The end of the world will come!
In the Mayan Calendar each cycle of 144,000 days is called a baktun. This calendar also counted the days passed since the world was created according to their mithology.
On december 21 the 13th baktun will complete and that’s the reason why Mayan prophecies predict the end of the world as we know it, but don’t worry: it will start again this same day.