Question: Is the world going to end this year?

Pete Etchells answered on 25 Apr 2012:

That’s a fun question! There is absolutely no scientific evidence that the world is going to end this year, don’t worry! The reason a lot of people think that something terrible is going to happen in December is to do with something call the Mayan ‘Long Count calendar’. Basically, the ancient Mayans had a system of counting the days, weeks, months and years that is completely different to how we count them – for example, we have a cyclical calendar, because when we get to December 31st, we go back to the start (January 1st) and carry on. The Mayans had a more linear way of counting the years, and their calendar abruptly stops about 20,000 years into their count. That stop, so some people argue, coincides with December this year, and has taken to mean the end of the world. However, it’s a just a misunderstanding of how the Mayans counted! The end of a cycle for them was a time for celebration (like a really big new year’s party), and there was no reason to think that they didn’t expect a new cycle to start the very next day!