Will the world end in 2012?

Happy New Year.

Are we all going to die?

Yes. That was certain as soon as we were born. But is the whole world going to end?

No.

Well there’s always the small chance that some crazy person will do something incredibly stupid with nuclear weapons, but that’s about the same every year.

Is the Earth going to collide with planet Nibiru?

No. If there was anything that big and that close, we’d have seen it coming. In fact by now we’d be able to see in with the naked eye in daylight. And did you know that this was originally going to happen in May, 2003? Obviously they’ve been wrong once.

Does the Mayan calendar end on December 21st, 2012?

No. That will be the the end of the 13th “long cycle” or b’ak’tun, but the ancient Maya seem to have regarded this as just an excuse for a really good party, rather like the millennium. There’s nothing in the original ancient writings that suggested they thought the world would end then. And how good was Mayan science anyway? I’m sure they weren’t stupid, but we’ve got an extra thousand years-worth of knowledge.

Will the Earth, sun and the centre of the Galaxy line up on the 21st?

Yes. They do this every year. If you think about it, since the Earth goes around the sun once a year (that’s the definition of a year), then they’re going to line up with any arbitrary point once a year.

Is the asteroid Apophis going to hit us in 2012?

Again, no. At one point it looked like there was a chance it would hit us in 2029 (not 2012!), but the measurements waken in 2004 showed that it will be a very near miss. It will pass closer than geostationary satellites -that’s parting our hair- but it won’t hit us. There is a small chance that it will hit the Earth on its next approach in 2036, and we should know better in 2013 and definitely in 2029. Even if it’s heading for us then, given 7 years warning and maximum priority, I think NASA or ESA could nudge it into a safe trajectory.

Put it this way, Wikipedia has a list of dates when the world was supposed to end here. It’s a very, very, very long list, but we’re still here.

I don’t worry about astronomy killing us all. Global warming, and the people who believe it’s their god-given mission to bring about the end of the world, now that’s a different matter.

Posted by sheila

Sheila came to La Palma with a six month contract and has stayed 24 years so far. She used to work as a software engineer at the observatory, but now she's a writer and Starlight guide.