The Maya Calendar did not predict the end of the world, according to NASA and ESA scientists who have talked to the Cyprus News Agency.
They also said that there is no such planet called “Nibiru” and humanity should not fear that this mysterious planet will hit and destroy the Earth on the day the Maya Calendar allegedly ceases to exist.
“I personally have understood that the Mayan calendar is a calendar just like the ones we are using today. After the last day of the currently valid calendar, we will have the first day of the next calendar”, Head of the Space Weather Segment in the European Space Agency Space Situational Awareness Programme, Juha Pekka Luntama, has told CNA.
He added that the “only scientifically predictable end of the world is in about 5 billion years from now when our Sun gradually runs out of fuel and becomes a white dwarf in the process that lasts another 4-5 billion years”.
The theory about the end of the world was dismissed also by NASA. “Just as the calendars we have at home do not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012”, a NASA official told CNA.
He explained that the 21st of December is the date marking the end of the Mayan long-count period but this does not mean that the world will cease to exist.
The two scientists also dismissed theories that a mysterious planet called Nibiru will collide in December with the Earth’s atmosphere and destroy humanity.
“The gravitational impact of an unknown planetary body in the inner solar system would be detectable in the orbits of the other planets and thus this kind of a planet could not be kept secret even from amateur astronomers. So, Niburu does not exist”, the ESA official told CNA.
But according to Zecharia Sitchin, an Azerbaijani-born American author and archaeologist, Nibiru is mentioned in ancient Sumerian iconography and symbology.
In his 1976 book “The 12th Planet” Sitchin attempts to translate the ancient Sumerian writings saying that they mention the existence of a 12th planet (the nine known planets, plus the Sun and the Moon) called Nibiru, which has an elliptical thousands of years long orbit around the Sun.
He also says that the ancient Sumerian writings speak about the creation of Homo Sapiens by the Nibiru inhabitants, the so-called “Annunaki” (which means “those who came from heaven to the Earth”) who mixed their own DNA with the Homo Erectus, thus creating us, Homo Sapiens.
“There are claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is heading towards the Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but nothing happened so they moved the end of the world to December 2012 linking it with the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar”, the NASA official told CNA.
He pointed out that "If Nibiru were real, it would be visible by now to the naked eye, so, obviously, it does not exist".
He also said that NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit.
There are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs, he concluded.
