NASA: The World Won’t End in 2012

Sorry, all you Mayan-influenced doomsday enthusiasts, but it’s looking to some of the great minds over at NASA as though 2012 isn’t going to be particularly apocalypse-friendly as such. Ancient augury versus contemporary astronomy: Who will prevail?  —KA

MSNBC:

One fear is that a rogue planet that has been dubbed “Nibiru” or “Planet X” is supposedly aimed at Earth. Self-proclaimed Nibiru expert Nancy Lieder, who says she is in contact with the aliens from Zeta Reticuli, first said Nibiru would cause widespread disaster in May 2003, only to change it to Dec. 21, 2012.

There is, however, no evidence that Nibiru is real.

“Nibiru is ridiculous because it doesn’t exist — it never existed as anything other than a figment of the imagination by pseudo-scientists who don’t seem bothered by a complete lack of evidence,” astronomer Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object program office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told SPACE.com.

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