According to Wikipedia, “The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21 or December 23, 2012, which is said to be the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mayan Long Count calendar. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae related to this date have been proposed, but none have been accepted by mainstream scholarship.”
Many have suggested that the end of the Mayan calendar is prophetic indication of the end times — the end of the world as we know it. There are many scenarios for the cataclysmic end of our world which include a collision with a passing planet (Nibiru), a strike by a large comet or asteroid, a black hold or radiation from a pulsar, or a severe solar storm. Pick your poison.
It doesn’t matter that predictions of impending doom are not found in either the classic Maya accounts or in contemporary science. Scholars of the Mayan society suggest that the idea that the Long Count calendar ends in 2012 misrepresents Maya history. What little evidence on the subject does exist is contradictory and there is little, if any, agreement among them about what this specific date might actually mean.
It depends upon your chosen source as to the exact day but, regardless, the question abounds, “Is the end of the world coming in the last weeks of 2012?” Or, I would ask, is it just the end of the Mayan calendar? After all, the current calendar hanging on my wall ends on December 31 of this year and I hardly think of it as predicting the end times!
New Agers suggest that the interpretation of this phenomenon is better suited to the earth and its inhabitants undergoing some sort of positive physical or spiritual transformation, suggesting that 2012 marks the potential beginning of a new era.
Wikipedia continues, “Astronomers and other scientists have rejected the apocalyptic forecasts, on the grounds that the anticipated events are precluded by astronomical observations, or are unsubstantiated by the predictions that have been generated from these findings. NASA has compared fears about 2012 to those about the Y2K bug in the late 1990s, suggesting that an adequate analysis should preclude fears of disaster.”
It makes for awesome disaster movies, though.