Why the World Won't End in 2012
Fears of Mysterious Planets and Mayan Predictions Groundless
End-of-the-world predictions are nothing new; humans have been predicting their own fiery demise since brains evolved to be able to imagine such an end. None of these predictions have come to pass so far, but as 2012 grows nearer, many people are not comforted. After all, numerous books and websites tell of an unseen planet that is heading right into Earth's orbit, or of a baleful alignment of planets that will surely spell humanity's doom. Besides that, the Mayans, who were so advanced for their time, ended their calendar precisely on December 21, 2012, so they must have known what was coming. But as NASA astrobiologist David Morrison discusses in a pair of articles he wrote for Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer magazines, despite the predictions and scaremongering, the world is not going to end in 2012; the reasons given for the apocalypse are exaggerations or outright fabrications.
Nibiru, Eris, or Planet X
In the mid-1970s, fiction author Zecharia Sitchin posited a "phantom planet" called Nibiru that was discovered by the Sumerians and is supposedly due to hit the earth in 2012. Nibiru was actually a character in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation poem that was written many centuries after the golden age of Sumerian civilization. Nibiru was certainly not a planet of any kind, and as advanced as the Sumerians were, they did not have the technology available to discover such a planet, as there is no evidence they even had knowledge of the outer planets of our solar system.
In 1983, NASA carried out a ten-month sky survey in which they discovered many unidentified infrared sources. Though conspiracy theorists today claim that one of these unidentified objects was Nibiru –called Planet X or Eris – a close examination of the research shows this was not the case. None of the unidentified objects were planets; most, in fact, were distant galaxies. Eris is indeed real and was once called Planet X, as are many newly discovered planets. But Eris was not discovered in the 1983 survey; it was discovered in 2005, and it is simply a dwarf planet like Pluto whose orbit brings it no nearer to the earth than 4 billion miles. In any case, if there really was a planet near enough to the earth to collide with it in 2012, scientists or amateur astronomers would surely have detected it by now.
The End of the Mayan Calendar
A great deal of ink has been spilled over the fact that the ancient Mayan calendar supposedly stops counting on December 21, 2012. Both the Mayans and the Aztecs developed these complex "long-count" calendars – in use at least since 36 BCE – calculated on a base of twenty and cycling through periods of 52 years, or calendar rounds. There were also longer cycles of about 395 years called b'ak'tun, and we are currently living in the thirteenth of these cycles. The thirteenth b'ak'tun is slated to end on December 21, 2012, but to the Mayans this was simply the start of a new cycle and a cause for celebration. These periods have ended before – the twelfth b'ak'tun ended on September 18, 1618 – without a noticeable apocalypse, and in fact many Mayan inscriptions refer to dates beyond 2012, indicating that the date was simply the end of another b'ak'tun cycle, and not the end of the world.
Planet Alignments, Dark Rifts, Black Holes
There have also been rumors circulating that a planetary alignment of some sort will wreak havoc on the planet, either by reversing the earth's rotation or sucking it into a black hole. None of these scenarios has any basis in reality; there is no unusual planetary alignment of any kind occurring in 2012 or at any time in the near future, and even if there were, alignments happen occasionally and have no ill effect. Even the much-hyped lining up of the sun with the center of the galaxy – toward the so-called "dark rift" of dust clouds on the inner arm of the Milky Way – is no different than the alignment that takes place every December.
As for a reversal in the earth's rotation, this is an impossible occurrence which has been erroneously conflated with a reversal of the planet's magnetic poles, which does happen from time to time but is unlikely to happen in 2012 or in the near future, and would be harmless to life on earth in any case. Finally, while it is true that the center of the galaxy does contain a supermassive black hole, it is much too far away (about 30,000 light years) to have a noticeable effect on the earth in 2012 or at any other time. And while there is of course always the remote possibility that the planet could be struck by an asteroid, scientists who scan the skies for near earth objects see nothing to fret over in 2012 or for many years to come. So in all likelihood, 2012 will come and go as other "doomsdays" have before, and the human race will pick itself up, laugh at its folly, and then assign the next date when the end of the world will occur.
Morrison, David. "2012 and Counting: A NASA Scientist Answers the Top 20 Questions About 2012." Skeptic. Vol. 15 #2 2009: 47-53.
Morrison, David. "The Myth of Nibiru and the End of the World in 2012." Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 32 #5 Sept/Oct 2008: 50-55.
Stray, Geoff (2007). The Mayan and Other Ancient Calendars. Walker & Company. ISBN: 0802716342.
Dwarf Planet Eris and Its Moon
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