NASA's 7 reasons the world won't end in 2012

Is this the end?

What about the ancient prediction that the world ends in 2012?

Around December 12, 2012, the Mayan calendar completes a 5,126-year cycle. Author Jose Arguelles called the date "the ending of time as we know it" in a 1987 book that spawned today’s rampant Mayan alarmism and all those vivid descriptions of a cataclysmic end.

However, anthropologists specializing in Mayan folklore say the end of the Mayan cycle merely marks the termination of one period and the beginning of another – much like taking down last year’s calendar on January 1 and putting up a new one.

"We have to be clear about this,” says Erik Velasquez at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The claims are bogus – and only served to sell a lot of books. “There is no prophecy for 2012."

It can’t be that simple!

After all, the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012!

The National Institute of Anthropological History in Mexico has been trying for months to quell the barrage of forecasts predicting the apocalypse. "The West's messianic thinking,” the institute said in a recent statement, “has distorted the world view of ancient civilizations like the Mayans."

“Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall,” says NASA’s website. “does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period. Then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins.”

Planet Nibiru

Is there a planet or brown dwarf star called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?

There is no factual basis for these claims, says the NASA website: “Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax.” The story of the stray planets may have started with claims that a wandering planet discovered by the ancient Sumerians is headed toward Earth.

According to NASA: “This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened, the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.

“If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist.”

On the other hand, Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.”

What about polar shift theory?

Will Antarctica end up on the equator with Miami as the new North Pole?

NASA: “A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-shift to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway.”

What about impending impact?

Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?

NASA: “The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA NEO Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.”