NASA Assures Us the World Won’t End on Friday

For those worried that the world will end this Friday, don’t be, NASA says in a new video titled “Why the World Didn’t End Yesterday.” Around the world, some people are throwing up their arms in preparation for the end of the Mayan calendar—and therefore the world—on 12/21/2012. But in this video, NASA points out the blatant illogic of this apocalypse scenario and misconceptions that caused the false notion of an end-of-the-world prophesy to come about. A few key points from the video narrator conveys in a soothing, chipper voice:

The Mayan’s long-count calendar resembles the odometer in a car. Because the digits rotate, the calendar can roll over and repeat itself.

So, the Maya calendar will repeat, not come to an end.

None of the thousands of ruins, tablets or standing stones that archaeologists have examined foretell an end of the world.

Or modern fear-mongers just made this whole thing up. The Maya themselves never said the world would end.

No known asteroids or comets are on a collision course with Earth. Neither is a rogue planet coming to destroy us. If there were anything out there like a planet heading for Earth, said NASA astrobiologist David Morrison, it would already be one of the brightest objects in the sky. Everybody on Earth could see it. You don’t need to ask the government. Just go out and look. It’s not there.

The sun is not a threat either. The sun has been flaring for billions of years, long before the Maya even existed, and it has never once destroyed the world.

In other words, another end-of-the-world freak out bites the dust.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The World Won’t End in 2012
Why Did the Mayan Civilization Collapse?

Rachel Nuwer | | READ MORE

Rachel Nuwer is a freelance science writer based in Brooklyn.