Despite the hoopla surrounding the date Dec. 21, 2012, the world is not at risk of coming to a halt, NASA says.
Aside from that date marking next year's winter solstice, the longest night of that year, nothing else interesting is expected.
All in all, "sleep well on Dec. 21 of next year," said astronomer Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object program office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., at a public talk yesterday (Dec. 8) about rumors of a 2012 apocalypse.
"What's so special about Dec. 21 of next year?" Yeomans asked. "A lot of people think it's the end of the Maya calendar." [10 Failed Doomsday Predictions]
"The short-count was 52 of our years, and the long-count was 5,125 years long. This long-count calendar is coming to an end on Dec. 21," Yeomans said."Of course, a new calendar would start on Dec. 22. It would be like saying that our calendar ends Dec. 31, and that's the end of time, the end of days, that's it, no regard for how a new cycle would begin. The Maya never predicted the end of the world occurred at that time."
Although there are those who believe Dec. 21, 2012 will bring about a new age of enlightenment, many, many others fear a catastrophe. "I Googled '2012 disasters,' and you know how many hits I got? 35 million hits," Yeomans said. "A lot of people are concerned about Dec. 21, 2012."
Death from Planet X
One concern is over how, from Earth's point of view, the sun will cross in front of the plane of our galaxy on Dec. 21. However, the sun routinely does this twice a year without fanfare, Yeomans said.
Another fear is that a planet dubbed "Nibiru" or "Planet X" is supposedly headed toward Earth.
"There's no evidence whatsoever that Nibiru exists," Yeomans said. Notions that it might be hiding behind the sun are unfounded, as "it can't hide behind the sun forever, and we would've seen it years ago," Yeomans said.
While believers in Nibiru claim that astronomers and NASA are engaged in a conspiracy to cover up Nibiru to prevent panic, "there's no way on Earth to keep astronomers quiet about anything," Yeomans joked.
"But there is no planetary alignment on Dec. 21, 2012," Yeomans said.
Solar storms — torrents of energetic particles from the sun — do occur. These usually come and go in cycles 11 years long. When they slam into Earth, they create auroras and can cause damage to satellites and power lines, but it's "nothing that causes lasting damage," Yeomans said.
There are records of a solar "super-storm" striking the Earth in 1859. Although that caused little damage back then, there are fears that such a storm would inflict much more harm now that our world is far more dependent on electronics.
Still, "there is no evidence that one will happen on Dec. 21 next year," Yeomans said. It's impossible to predict solar activity that far out, and even an extremely strong solar storm wouldn't likely bring the apocalypse that some fear.
The Earth has two kinds of poles — its geographical poles, which mark the planet's axis of rotation, and its magnetic poles, which are associated with the planet's magnetic field that makes our compasses point toward north.
However, the geographical poles cannot flip because the moon stabilizes our planet's spin.
The magnetic poles do flip sometimes, but on time scales of about 500,000 years. These shifts are not sudden, but take place very gradually over thousands of years, "and there's no evidence of a flip on Dec. 21, 2012," Yeomans said. "Even if it did flip, it would not cause any real problems, other than us having to change our compasses from north to south."
"Scientists really have their work cut out for them," Yeomans said. "We really have to do a better job educating people about science."
