NASA Scientist to Distraught Dupes: The World Won't End in 2012
As it turns out, the end is not near after all. While you can't keep a good doomsday rumor down, NASA Senior Scientist David Morrison is trying to dispel widely circulated rumors that cosmic events will lead to the end of life on Earth, if not outright destroy the planet, on Dec. 21, 2012. Morrison, a planetary astronomer and keeper of NASA's "Ask an Astrobiologist" service, is publishing a rebuttal to many rampant apocalyptic rumors in the journal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, partially in response to an increasing number of letters and emails from a public worried that the end is nigh. Morrison specifically addresses the myth that a fictional planet called Nibiru will collide with Earth, but also addresses other persistent rumors that solar activity, alignments with the center of our galaxy and other astrological phenomena will wreak havoc on the blue planet and end...