Mayan calendar: U.S. insists
world will not end this month
By Los Angeles Times
Those of you who take
everything that the U.S. government says and does with a large grain of salt,
be afraid, be very afraid, because the government has now made it official that
the world will not end this month.
In a blog
post on its official portal, the U.S. government
dismisses reports of the coming end of the world, predicted by the Mayan
calendar this month.
“Scary Rumors about the World
Ending in 2012 Are Just Rumors,” the government reassures its citizens and
presumably the rest of the world as well, because in the Marshall McLuhanesque
sense, we are indeed all in this together.
Reports of the imminent demise
of the planet are based on the Mayan prophecy of the end of time when the
current calendar expires. In some popular interpretations by doomsday adherents
-- fed in part by the usually reliable Hollywood blockbuster -- the expiration
signals the end of time, hence the destruction of the world. How the world will
end is a little vague but a collision with a comet or a planet is among the
favored exit strategies.
If that sounds vaguely
familiar, it is. Destruction by comet is a favored trope that we have seen when
one of those heavenly ice balls fall toward Earth from the depths at the edge
of the solar system. Destruction by planetary collision also has a long
pedigree. In some circles, it is known as the Nibiru cataclysm, with Nibiru, an
ancient Babylonian word, being the name of the offending planet.
NASA has recently reassured
everyone that neither of those celestial catastrophes are in the immediate
works. NASA
released a video earlier this year explaining why the Mayan calendar
doesn't accurately predict the apocalypse. Common sense dictates that when one
calendar runs out, you just flip the page and start a new cycle, which was
likely the Mayan response.
“False rumors about the end of
the world in 2012 have been commonplace on the Internet for some time. Many of
these rumors involve the Mayan calendar ending in 2012 (it won’t), a comet
causing catastrophic effects (definitely not), a hidden planet sneaking up and
colliding with us (no and no), and many others,” the post on the U.S.
government’s website notes.
“The world will not end on
December 21, 2012, or any day in 2012,” it says definitively, begging the
question of just how accurate most of the government’s predictions really are.
While most people will accept the government reassurance, there are always some
who will never agree. Just think back to the Y2K fears and the survivalist boom
it spawned.
Still, with all of the things
that the government does have to worry about, why would the government even
choose to get involved in this one?
“Unfortunately, these rumors
have many people frightened, especially children,” the post states. “NASA has
received thousands of letters concerned about the end of the world."
“David Morrison, a planetary
astronomer and senior scientist for NASA who answers questions from the public
about astrobiology, says," according to the post, "at least a once a
week I get a message from a young person -- as young as 11 -- who says they are
ill and/or contemplating suicide because of the coming doomsday.”