Archive: Around Town

NASA graphicDan Piraro's 2009 cartoon has been reposted on endless Web sites and Facebook feeds.  One Mayan creates a calendar and says, "I only had enough room to go up to 2012."  "Ha!," says his companion.  "That'll freak somebody out some day!"

The last 2012 issue of the Lansing Star is scheduled to be published December 21, next Friday.  Some people say there won't be any readers for that issue, because that is the day the world is supposed to end according to the Mayan calendar.  NASA has been getting an increasing number of questions from people worried that the world will end.  The volume of questions has become so inflated that NASA has posted a disclaimer on their 'Ask An Astrobiologist' Web page.

"Ask an Astrobiologist has received more than 5000 questions about Nibiru and Doomsday 2012, with more than 400 answers posted. Please read a summary of the answers that have already been posted, view a video on these topics, use the search feature and read the FAQ’s before submitting questions on these topics," the page pleads.

That hasn't stopped the questions from worried Earthlings.  Nibiru is a supposed rogue planet that will collide with Earth next Friday.  Originally the collision was predicted for May of 2003, but when nothing happened the date was moved to this month and linked to the end of the solstice cycle in the Mayan calendar.  NASA reports that no rogue planets have been spotted anywhere near Earth.

NASA is so confident that the world isn't ending next Friday that it released a video Tuesday entitled 'Why the World Didn't End Yesterday', ten days before the Mayan Apocalypse is scheduled.  The video says you don't need scientists to verify that there will still be a world on Saturday.  All you have to do is look into the night sky and see for yourself that there are no rogue planets about to hit us.  If a rogue planet or anything else big enough to destroy our planet were going to hit us on Friday it would be so bright in the sky now that everybody could see it.



NASA says the Mayan calendar ended because... well, that version of the calendar ended, just as the 2012 calendar ends with this month, December.  The space administration notes that there will be a 2013 calendar after that, and then a 2014 calendar.  Just because the 2012 calendar ends with December doesn't mean there will be a cataclysm.

According to Dr. John Carlson, Director of NASA's Center for archeo-astronomy, the Mayan calendar rolls over like an odometer.  On August 11, 3114 BC the Mayan calendar read '13 0 0 0 0'.  Next Friday it cycles the same numbers.  Additionally scholars say none of the Mayan tablets, ruins, or standing stones predict the world's end.  NASA scientists tell us that matches their observations.  The space administration has posted more information at www.nasa.gov/2012.

NASA says Nibiru is not a real planet, and if it were they would have been tracking it for at least a decade.  So we can relax.  There will still be readers for next week's issue of the Lansing Star, and on into 2013.  You will be cooking dinner Saturday. 

NASA has some ideas for that as well.  Before Thanksgiving Gizmodo.com published an article entitled 'Four Crazy Ways to Cook Your Turkey Using NASA Equipment'.  We'll certainly still be here to try out the recipes for Christmas dinner as well.

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