August 25, 2009
The World Won’t End in 2012
Someone is always predicting the end of the world, it seems. The latest popular theory says that the world will end on December 21, 2012, when the Mayan calendar will reach the end of its 5,126 year cycle. That alone is fairly nuts, as USAToday wrote two years ago:
“For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle,” says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Fla. To render Dec. 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.”
But the theory has gotten even crazier since then, as astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson notes in the video clip above. There are tales of an alignment between the Earth, Sun and the galaxy that will end in great catastrophe. There is Nibiru, a.k.a. Planet X, which will supposedly come close enough to Earth to knock the planet off its axis, with resulting calamity. (NASA has a great page debunking Nibiru.) And there’s even more.
I had thought that end-of-the-world predictions and cults were a 20th-century invention until I read recently about some dating to the early 1800s. It doesn’t matter that prediction of the future is impossible in an Einsteinian universe (that would be the one we live in). There will be people crazy enough to make this stuff up and others gullible enough to believe it. Don’t be one of them.
So, when 12/21/12 comes along, don’t despair. Instead, let’s celebrate the end of the Mayan calendar cycle. Who’s bringing the beer?
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
26 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Can we have a poll as to when the world is *really* going to end?
People who are greedy for their wealth are afraid to die. and people who are afraid to die can’t accept anything about the end of the world.
It’s predicted in all religious books you maybe a Muslim it’s in the Qur an, or Bible for Christians etc.
Just prepare for it might be true.
When Noah preached about end of the world people can’t accept and reviled him instead. But happen to them where are they?
Good luck!
There are plenty of 2012 notions to debunk, but there are also possibilities that nobody can predict (yet): supervolcano, magnetic pole shift, coronal mass ejection, and something that the ancients could have predicted (if Halley could, then they could as well), and we might not even see coming – a dark comet.
i hope the world doesnt end this is crap i hope they are wrong but look how we treat the earth if it happens we can only blame ourselves we need to try and realize that we need to make a change I HOPE THEY ARE WRONG LETS ALL HOPE THE MAYANS ARE WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Veronica, I think you missed the point. The point of the article clearly stated that the Mayans never said the world will end on that date. That’s just when their calendars ended. Therefore, they are neither wrong nor right. They never made any prediction of the sort. That’s just the way the people of the 21st century are interpreting it. I know for an absolute fact that, yes, this world IS going to end one day. That’s just common sense. Nothing lasts forever. But to honestly believe that something like this can be predicted. Come on people? You should realize that the world we live in is extremely complex and full of possibilities. For every predicition there is a defense as to why it’s not true. It’s just too wishy-washy to be completely sure. Instead of spending your whole life trying to figure out when your life will end, why don’t you just live life to the fullest, not think about that crap, and we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It’s not like there’s anything we can DO if these bunk predictions are true, so get a life. NOBODY KNOWS AND WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW!
i just played the game choose youre 2012 and one of the achievments are called the realist and you do nothing to earth to get it and what are the chances of a huge black hole sucking up our galaxy in 2012 the world will end some day but that will be in 500 milion years but we will probably all be dead by that time. i will be laughing my ass of when the clock turns to 12:00 and im still alive so theres nothing to be afraid of.
They said the same thing for 6/6/06, fed us all bullcrap and reasons why it will end..but hey..we are still alive aren’t we?
[...] (2009): Tentatively tied to the date when the Mayan calendar ends, this is another apocalyptic movie. This time, neutrinos from a solar flare trigger the heating of [...]
i think this artical is very ture the world wont end people , mostly weird , have said this for years that the world will end and look here i am i well and happy at first when i found out about 2012 i was scared but now nothing :D
Come on, people. Remember Y2K? Computers crashing worldwide, nuclear warheads being launched, boom boom pow. Are we not alive? 2012 is just another hoax spawned from our paranoid minds. And, if the world ends SOME DAY, hopefully it’ll take us by surprise. What would you rather want: Fighting to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, or being pulverized instantly by a meteor impact?
I don’t know if I should believe it or not. But I know one thing, you should never rely on the Internet websites that say the world will end. It’s a hoax. People make it up don’t they and there’s no planet X. It takes 5,000 years for poles to switch, i’m certain there won’t be anything destroying earth. But we do need to make a better difference to earth because of the pollutions on it. I assure you it’s a better chance earth won’t end if we make a difference. We should start NOW!
[...] The World Won’t End in 2012 | Surprising Science [...]
I was also a little scared a few years ago when I first heard…but now I know that the world won’t end that day. And for all the christians out there….the bible says no one knows the day or the hour of Jesus’s return so it surely wouldn’t be on that day, since people are predicting it.
Paul, i love your comment. It is beautiful and true, and i love people spreading the Christian word. :)
Thank You for an intellectual assessment on the topic of 2012. I just hope that people are actually listening to scientific and historical accounts that prove the impossibility of an end date. Not to mention the fact that ‘an object set in motion will stay in motion’ and ‘energy can neither be created of destroyed’. These truths weren’t written by a bloggster to reach in your pocket, this is elementary physics.
Apply this to earth and one can see that regardless of the physical changes that may occur an Object with the magnitude and energy transfer potential of Earth there is simply no possibility of it ending. There may come a time of the demise of humanity but the Earth will live on.
What IS has existed for a least the last 14 billion years, and will continue on and on and on.
Energy is endless. It can neither be created nor destroyed.
This farce about the end times and apocalypse is an evident sign that there is the real need for a massive paradigm shift not only in the values that we hold dear, but a change in our understanding of our own importance within the Earth and the multi-verse as a whole.
Like an Energizer battery ‘it just keeps going and going and going!’
people are crazy saying it will end in 2012 no one knows when ts gonna end so stop setting fake dates CAUSE ITS NOT GONNA HAPPEN PEOPLE it will end 3034 not 2012., bacicly all im saying is its not gonna end in 2012 they’ve BEEN SAAYING THAT FOREVER.
plus they said it was gonna end may 21st 2011 bull of crap were alive arnt we it wont happen peeople TRUST ME
Well, Some people say the sun will explode (Wich scientists say it will in a million year), some people say the earth will freeze (wich I dont think theres a way?) some people say the earth will be flooded by water, some people say the earth will be split in half and tornadoes.. , and most people say its because of the Mayan Calender.., Well let me tell you something , its just life.. if we die we die, if we live we live, if it was defo that the world will end we will get on a rocket and start a new life… i’m guessing it wont end …. (=
It kind of cracks me up how scared I was thinking about the world ending but it’s not going to end it’s just the end of the Mayan cycle and that’s when the new cycle begins. The sun has 10 billion years of life time in it…it’s already been through 4 billion years so if it’s true that the world will end some day because of a solar flare then it won’t probably happen until like 6 billion years or so. So until then no one on this planet has to worry but by then we wil all be dead anyway…
First the Mayans never said the world was going to end is just the end of a calendar just that!!!! so don’t worry and live your life!!! (= go to this page http://www.2012hoax.org
Maya were able to predict solar eclipses thousands of years into the future. Their calendars were more accurate than our own (Christian formed) calendar.
They had 3 extremely accurate calendars, they’re months were not measured in ridiculous numbers.. such as, oh this months has 30 days, next has 31,, oh and feb has 28 and we have a leap year.. they had 18 months, 20 days.. 360 days.. and a 5 day period that was celebrated..
so.. each month, the 1st was on, lets say a sunday.. how convenient.. also interesting they predicted this would be a transition time, where poles would change, sun would change, so on.. here’s a thought for everyone… youtube pole shift on CNN news… you’ll find a video about our north pole, moving at 40 plus miles per year, and speeding up… ?? what I havent heard that from any government people?!… so our magnetic north pole is now in Russia?…. thats serious stuff eh?… sensitive species, ie. birds, marine life start to vanish… crazy?..
Interesting, 2 weeks ago, I watched something where scientists are now saying marine life is going to disappear in a fashionable manor, like the dinosaures… weird.. crazy maya…
student mayan: “teacher i ran out of rocks so now i have no room for my calender”
teacher mayan: ” it will be hilarious to see people freak out 5,000 years from now
student mayan: “hahaha ya true that, stupid people!”
The Mayan calendar was established in 3372 BC. It is a very complex calendar system and predicts the end of the word to happen in 2012.
Julius Caesar was behind the origin of leap year in 45 BC.
There have been about 514 Leap Years since Caesar created it in 45BC. The Mayan calendar did not account for Leap Year… so technically the world should have ended a couple months ago.
i feel so good of myself now. and anyways….my yogurt expires in 2015(:
and Courtney you are so right it shoulda ended 8 months ago.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html read it guys. Also to whoever the guy up above said the world will never end is wrong. Eventually the sun Will go supernova or something will happen to destroy earth but we humans will probably be dead long before then.