Upcoming Sony Pictures blockbuster '2012' might be setting pulses racing among eager movie goers and end-of-the-world theorists, but NASA isn't exactly enamored with director Roland Emmerich's latest global disaster epic -- to the point where the U.S. space administration is actively working to dispel any fears regarding the Mayan prediction the film is built upon.
Don\'t panic! Image: NASA.
More pointedly, NASA has this week launched a campaign of information designed to squash mounting rumours that suggest it is covering up the existence of 'Nibiru', a planet on a collision course with Earth that will destroy our little blue and green marble in – yes, you guessed it – 2012.
“There is no factual basis for these claims,” outlined NASA in an official question-and-answer session conducted through its Web site. “Obviously [the proffered planet] does not exist.”
NASA also insisted that if such a planet was approaching ahead of a 2012 collision, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least a decade, and it would already be visible to the naked eye.
Despite the looming release of Emmerich's disaster adventure and its accompanying doomsday mongering, this is not the first time the end of the Mayan calendar has been trotted out to frighten the global population.
For example, May 2003 should supposedly have brought an abrupt close to life on Earth, but the resulting lack of destruction led to the inescapable date being bumped to 2012's winter solstice.
However, according to NASA, the Mayan calendar does not come to an end in 2012 (December 21 to be precise), and a new calendar period starts immediately afterward.
Speaking with UK broadsheet The Sunday Telegraph, Mayan priests and spiritual guides from Guatemala and Mexico have also insisted there will be no planetary destruction in 2012, adding that the Mayan culture doesn't have a concept of apocalypse, and the furore surrounding 2012 is little more than a distortion of Mayan tradition and belief.
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