By Dan Satherley
NASA scientists are sick of being asked if the world is going to end in 2012 – so much in fact, they've published an article on their website explaining just why it's a load of rubbish.
The release of Roland Emmerich's blockbuster film
2012, in which John Cusack's character Jackson Curtis has to deal with the end of the world, has only made matters worse.
There are several theories as to how the world is supposed to end, most of which focus on a particular date - December 21. The best-known is that relating to the Mayan 'long-count' calendar, which some say ends on December 20 and begins anew the following day – much like our modern calendar ends on December 31, and begins anew the next day.
Unfortunately for its modern-day adherents, it was already out of use by the time of Spanish colonisation in the 1500s, and there is little consensus on the exact start date of the current long-count cycle or what its renewal actually meant to the ancient Mayan civilisation.
NASA points out that doomsday was originally set for May 2003, but combined with a different Mayan calendar and shifted to 2012 when nothing happened.
Another theory says a planetary alignment will impact the Earth negatively, but according to NASA no such alignments are going to happen in the next few decades.
Nor will crossing the galactic plane (when the solar system crosses the centre line of the Milky Way galaxy) cause any problems, as that happens every year with no consequence.
NASA says theories which claim a planet, known by various names including Nibiru, Eris and the somewhat ominous Planet X, is going to strike the Earth in 2012 are an "internet hoax". Any incoming planet would already be visible to the naked eye, and Eris, though real, will never come closer than 4 billion miles to Earth.
Asteroids do strike the Earth on occasion, but none large enough to threaten life on Earth have been discovered.
Other theories involving pole shifts – when the North and South poles swap places – are barely more credible. Firstly, a shift in the rotational poles would require the Earth to suddenly start spinning in a different direction, which NASA say is impossible; secondly, magnetic pole shifts do occur infrequently – on average every 400,000 years – but is unlikely to happen in the next few thousand years, or cause harm to life on Earth.
Lastly, solar activity is expected to rise from 2012 to 2014, but only as part of the usual 11-year cycle. "Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms," NASA writes.
The article doesn't directly address the Timewave Zero theory, which states that increases in the universe's "organised complexity" will reach a singularity in December 2012, at which point "anything and everything imaginable will occur instantly" – at least according to Wikipedia. Needless to say, the concept is so unscientific, it's not surprising NASA didn't bother with it.
"There apparently is a great deal of interest in celestial bodies, and their locations and trajectories at the end of the calendar year 2012," says NASA senior research scientist Don Yeomans. "Now, I for one love a good book or movie as much as the next guy. But the stuff flying around through cyberspace, TV and the movies is not based on science."
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