The student news site of Hawthorne High School.

The Clarion

The student news site of Hawthorne High School.

The Clarion

The student news site of Hawthorne High School.

The Clarion

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Is the World Going to End in December 2012?

Scientific research states that the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012. This is understood by some to be a prediction for the apocalypse–the end of the world. While some people believe this prediction, others say that it’s just a superstition.

The Mayan calendar is an ancient calendar found in Guatemala City, Guatemala. According to ABC News, the Mayans began their calendar in 3,114 BC and the last cycle ends in late December of this year.  The Sumerians, who were the earliest urban societies to emerge into the world in Southern Mesopotamia, supposedly found a  brown dwarf-planet called Nibiru that is heading towards Earth to cause total destruction. NASA scientists say, however, that  that they have been researching and tracking the planet for years and that December 21, 2012 is just going to be another winter solstice not the end of the world.

Don Yeomans, a senior research scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said on the Scientific American website: “Their calendar does not end on December 21, 2012; it’s just the end of the cycle and the beginning of a new one. It’s just like on December 31, our calendar comes to an end, but a new calendar begins on January 1.”

An international poll taken by Ipsos Global Public Affairs for Reuters found that 15% of  people worldwide in China, Turkey, Russia, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, the United States, Argentina, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, France, Spain, Belgium, Canada, Australia, Italy, South Africa, Great Britain, Indonesia, and Germany believe that December 21, 2012 is the end of the world.

This is not the first time there have been worries about the end of the world at the end of a calendar year. Back in 1999, for example, there was a computer glitch called Y2K bug that could have changed the world when the calendar turned to 2000. It was feared that a computer bug would make all computers fail when the New Year came, creating total chaos. However, nothing terrible happened on January 1, 2000. The world will know this year on December 22 if the Mayan apocalypse will