Do scientists really think that the world will end in 2012?

Do scientists really think that the world will end in 2012?
Seriously? I’m confused by it all and its starting the holy **** out of me! If the world ends in 2012..thats a year after I get out of highschool..so I’m freaking out. Do scientists belive this will actually happen?

Answer by Brant
I have not run into or read or heard about any scientist who thinks this. Scientists generally know the difference between media hype and facts. This whole 2012 thing is utter nonsense, aired repeatedly by one of the truly worst sources of information on the planet: the History Channel.

Edit: The details — what scientists know:

Archaeology: The ancient Mayans had a very long calendar scheme and for their primitive society, it was quite accurate. They did not predict the end of the world or any great catastrophe. A period of time ends on Dec. 21, 2012, just like our 2nd millennium ended at midnight, the night of Dec. 31, 2000. People predicted the end of the world then, too. Well, they actually predicted it for the end of 1999 because of a world-wide media-driven misconception about when the millennium/century ended.

Anthropology/Sociology: Different cultures have predicted various disasters over and over again. These were just superstition, and correct only to the degree that would be expected by chance. These 2012 predictions are also myth and superstition, magnified by a pervasive, money-grubbing media and an informationally unregulated Internet.

Geology: There is no current scientific prediction of any kind of disaster occurring in or around 2012. Certain kinds of geologic traumas will certainly occur in the future, but no scientist can predict these to the accuracy of a year or even a decade. If they get one within a century, it was mostly luck. Also, the earth’s magnetic poles will not reverse any time soon. That process occurs *very* gradually over thousands of years. The stuff about the earth’s polar axis shifting is just nonsense. There is no evidence that it has ever changed in the last three billion years and no reason to believe it ever will. It precesses, which is a normal, continuous wobbling over a 26,000 year period, and has no effect on us at all except to nudge, over thousands of years, what time of the year the seasons occur.

Astronomy: 1) There is no object which is expected to collide with the earth in 2012, or any time this century. Even if one of the objects that pass near the earth did collide with us, the damage would be great, but not globally catastrophic.

2) The stories about a Planet X or Nibiru are all myth and pseudoscience. No such planet exists. New planetoids have been, (and will be), discovered outside of Pluto’s orbit. None of them will come anywhere near the inner solar system.

3) The earth and sun do not align with the center of the galaxy. They align with the galactic equator twice every year. No kind of celestial alignment has, or ever *could* have, any harmful effect on us. Our approach to the point where we do cross the actual plane of the galaxy in a few million years, *might* cause some slight climatic changes over that period of time. Nothing we would notice over a thousand years.

Bottom line: there are NO specific scientific predictions of any global catastrophe in the future. There is only a probability that at *some* time in the future, our descendants may experience a catastrophe. Maybe 100 years. Maybe 10 million.

What do you think? Answer below!