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Have you been stockpiling Glenn Beck’s freeze-dried food, waiting for the world to end? You can climb out of that bunker now.
That’s because the foretold end of the world, marked by the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 (just like the movie predicted), might not be as soon as previously thought. A chapter in the new textbook, Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World, is questioning the conversion from the Mayan calendar to our contemporary Gregorian calendar. NewsFeed will spare you the academic jargon (because, frankly, we’re not sure we understand, either), but it involves the movement of Venus. (But wait — will a giant asteroid kill us instead?)
Some theorists now claim that the historical basis behind the calendar conversion might not even be valid, making this whole doomsday scenario fall “like a stack of cards.” The real problem now? If the end date is not Dec. 21, 2012, nobody knows the real end date — and it might have already passed. Spooky. Maybe NewsFeed will join you in that bunker. (via LiveScience)