Chill out. It’s not the end of the world

I know it’s not a very Christmasy thing to write about. But what are you going to do to mark the end of the world on Dec. 21?

Yes, that’s the Mayan prediction date for all things to cease being, based on a bizarre theory about a rogue planet hurtling its way on a collision course with Planet Earth.

The rogue planet, called Nibiru and supposedly discovered by ancient Sumerians, is set to smack into our blue marble on Friday, Dec. 21, according to the Mayan calendar.

If you’ve watched the Lars Von Trier feel-good flick Melancholia, you no doubt have a distinct visual idea of what this will be like.

Electricity will flow from your fingertips. Horses will freak out and birds will fall out of the sky. People will be Instagramming the hell out of that huge blue planet, just before it hits. Kirsten Dunst will be secretly pleased.

The bad news is: you won’t get a chance to lose all that extra weight you gained at Christmas parties come Jan. 1, 2013.

The good news is: no more worrying about Christmas shopping!

There has been a lot of recent online “chatter” about the supposed Mayan prediction lately. While it’s tempting to give in to the whole “End of the World Party” vibe — perhaps mixed with a traditional Christmas theme to provide some kind of anting-anting protection, just in case — it’s worth remembering that we’ve all been down this doomsday road before. And it never happens. So chillax.

Hell, even the Mayans have been down this path. Those who spend their time poring over Mayan calendars looking for signs of the apocalypse first predicted the end would come in May 2003. Guess what? It didn’t.

Untroubled by this embarrassing setback, they proposed a new target date: December 2012. To make it more precise, they linked it to the end of the Mayan seasonal cycle: the winter solstice, which takes place on Dec. 21.

Now, if anybody else predicted events with such a lack of scientific foundation or basis, we would call them charlatans. Or PAGASA. Yet millions take up the ancient Mayan belief as though it’s a perfectly plausible theory. Hey, even Nostradamus had his skeptics. Maybe people just like getting caught up in the hoopla.

In the Von Trier movie, a rogue planet (previously hidden by the sun) emerges and does a “pass-by” perilously close to our planet (a move called the “dance of death”). Then it boomerangs, circling back around our globe with a tenacity rivaling the “magic bullet” that struck both JFK and Gov. Connelly in Dallas, 1963.

Anyway, the folks at NASA are getting a little annoyed at all the Internet chat predicting such a scenario. They especially don’t like rumors that a certain “Planet X” (a.k.a. Nibiru) has been spotted by government astronomers but is being kept under wraps. This in itself is ridiculous, because there are thousands of other large telescopes pointed at the heavens besides NASA’s, and one of them would certainly have spotted Planet X by now, then made a YouTube video that would go viral, getting enough hits to erase Psy’s Gangnam Style from our memory (finally!). No, that hasn’t happened, in an age when everyone is itching to be the first to photograph and upload some new phenomena.

It hasn’t happened because Nibiru just isn’t out there.

However, NASA scientists do confirm the existence of a dwarf planet called Eris in our very own outer solar system. Yes, that does sound similar to the “rogue planet” that smacks upside Earth in Melancholia. But unlike the rogue planet called Melancholia, Eris actually exists. It is smaller than Pluto. And NASA scientists do track it on a regular basis. Fortunately, it is not hurtling toward Earth; the closest its orbit comes to our planet is four billion miles.

(Of course, I am basing all this research on NASA website www.nasa.gov. There is always the possibility that this is just misinformation meant to calm a panicky, prone-to-freakout-and-looting public.)

The NASA scientists are a bit like the Keifer Sutherland character in Melancholia: patronizing, annoyed by people’s scientific ignorance, claiming that only “prophets of doom” talk about the Mayan prediction, “real scientists” don’t — yet probably buying emergency food supplies on the sly, just in case. 

Still, there are plenty of pesky questions still floating around. For instance:

Question: Is it true that the planets will align come Dec. 21 and we are all doomed?

(Again, NASA makes with the soothing hand):

Answer: “There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. One major alignment occurred in 1962, for example, and two others happened during 1982 and 2000. Each December the Earth and Sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.”

Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?

A: “Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after Dec. 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on Dec. 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then — just as your calendar begins again on Jan. 1 — another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.”

Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a huge meteor in 2012?

A: “The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA Near-Earth Object Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.”

Q: Is NASA predicting a “total blackout” of Earth on Dec. 23 to Dec. 25?

A: “Absolutely not. Neither NASA nor any other scientific organization is predicting such a blackout. The false reports on this issue claim that some sort of ‘alignment of the Universe’ will cause a blackout. There is no such alignment. Some versions of this rumor cite an emergency preparedness message from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. This is simply a message encouraging people to be prepared for emergencies, recorded as part of a wider government preparedness campaign. It never mentions a blackout.”

Still, the questions keep coming:

Q: If the world is going to end soon, can you guys invent a time travel machine so I can go into an alternate future and watch the next season of Game of Thrones before we all become extinct?

A: “…”

Q: Does anybody really know what time it is? And do you know the way to San Jose? And say, has anybody seen my Sweet Gypsy Rose?

A: “…”

Q: If your calculations turn out to be wrong, and the world is actually doomed, I can has cheezburger?

NASA had no response to that one, either.