Ok, Dec 21st, 2012....yea yea...the galactic alignment?

What galactic alignment? No galactic alignment is predicted to happen in 2012. Anyway, the Earth rotates on its axis, so all parts of the world will be facing towards the galactic centre at some point during the day.

It doesn't matter. Galactic alignment is something dreamed up by crackpots in a desperate attempt to make out that 2012 is different in some way. The Sun follows the same path around the sky every year. If it lines up with a distant object one year, it will line up with that same object every single year. And it can never line up with the centre of the galaxy anyway. It never gets within 5 degrees of it.

Pay no attention to crackpots. Galactic alignment boils down to a complete non-event when looked at from a scientific point of view.

The ecliptic plane is tilted at approximately 61.5 degrees to the galactic equatorial plane, not five degrees. The Earth, sun, and the center of the galaxy line up every December 21 while the Earth is rotating, but if you extend the line from the Earth through the center of the sun at the exact moment of the solstice, the line will be 5.6 degrees OFF of the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

The whole Earth will face the center of the galaxy every single day of the year. It's in the lower right corner of the Teapot asterism in Sagittarius. Yes, I do know.

/facepalm

Guess what. Every day YOUR side of the earth is facing the center of the galaxy at some point.

And on a galactic scale? How would 12/21/2012 be any different from say 1500 years ago? It takes hundreds of thousands of years for the sun to orbit the center of the galaxy.

There will not be any direct alignment, since our solar system is angled by over 5 degrees to the galactic plane.

That means that the sun will be over 10 times its own width away from the galactic centre (hardly what I would call an alignment).

And since the galactic centre is 26,000 light years away and hidden behind light years of dust and gas, how could it possibly matter?

Oops, sorry, no galactic line ups other than the usual.

does it matter ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJjQMwEjC1I