Nothing will happen:
2012 MYTH 1
Maya Predicted End of the World in 2012
The Maya calendar doesn't end in 2012, as some have said, and the ancients never viewed that year as the time of the end of the world, archaeologists say.
But December 21, 2012, (give or take a day) was nonetheless momentous to the Maya.
"It's the time when the largest grand cycle in the Mayan calendar—1,872,000 days or 5,125.37 years—overturns and a new cycle begins," said Anthony Aveni, a Maya expert and archaeoastronomer at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.
The Maya kept time on a scale few other cultures have considered.
During the empire's heyday, the Maya invented the Long Count—a lengthy circular calendar that "transplanted the roots of Maya culture all the way back to creation itself," Aveni said.
During the 2012 winter solstice, time runs out on the current era of the Long Count calendar, which began at what the Maya saw as the dawn of the last creation period: August 11, 3114 B.C. The Maya wrote that date, which preceded their civilization by thousands of years, as Day Zero, or 13.0.0.0.0.
In December 2012 the lengthy era ends and the complicated, cyclical calendar will roll over again to Day Zero, beginning another enormous cycle.
"The idea is that time gets renewed, that the world gets renewed all over again—often after a period of stress—the same way we renew time on New Year's Day or even on Monday morning," said Aveni, author of The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012.
2012 MYTH 2
Breakaway Continents Will Destroy Civilization
In some 2012 doomsday prophecies, the Earth becomes a deathtrap as it undergoes a "pole shift."
The planet's crust and mantle will suddenly shift, spinning around Earth's liquid-iron outer core like an orange's peel spinning around its fleshy fruit. (See what Einstein had to say about pole shifts.)
2012, the movie, envisions a Maya-predicted pole shift, triggered by an extreme gravitational pull on the planet—courtesy of a rare "galactic alignment"—and by massive solar radiation destabilizing the inner Earth by heating it.
Breakaway oceans and continents dump cities into the sea, thrust palm trees to the poles, and spawn earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and other disasters. (Interactive: pole shift theories illustrated.)
Scientists dismiss such drastic scenarios, but some researchers have speculated that a subtler shift could occur—for example, if the distribution of mass on or inside the planet changed radically, due to, say, the melting of ice caps.
Princeton University geologist Adam Maloof has extensively studied pole shifts, and tackles this 2012 myth in 2012: Countdown to Armageddon, a National Geographic Channel documentary airing Sunday, November 8. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News and part-owns the National Geographic Channel.)
Maloof says magnetic evidence in rocks confirm that continents have undergone such drastic rearrangement, but the process took millions of years—slow enough that humanity wouldn't have felt the motion (quick guide to plate tectonics).
2012 MYTH 3
Galactic Alignment Spells Doom
Some sky-watchers believe 2012 will close with a "galactic alignment," which will occur for the first time in 26,000 years (for example, see the Web site Alignment 2012).
In this scenario, the path of the sun in the sky would appear to cross through what, from Earth, looks to be the midpoint of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which in good viewing conditions appears as a cloudy stripe across the night sky.
Some fear that the lineup will somehow expose Earth to powerful unknown galactic forces that will hasten its doom—perhaps through a "pole shift" (see above) or the stirring of the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's heart.
Others see the purported event in a positive light, as heralding the dawn of a new era in human consciousness.
NASA's Morrison has a different view.
"There is no 'galactic alignment' in 2012," he said, "or at least nothing out of the ordinary."
He explained that a type of "alignment" occurs during every winter solstice, when the sun, as seen from Earth, appears in the sky near what looks to be the midpoint of the Milky Way.
Horoscope writers may be excited by alignments, Morrison said. But "the reality is that alignments are of no interest to science. They mean nothing," he said. They create no changes in gravitational pull, solar radiation, planetary orbits, or anything else that would impact life on Earth.
The speculation over alignments isn't surprising, though, he said.
"Ordinary astronomical phenomena are imbued with a sense of threat by people who already think the world is going to end."
Regarding galactic alignments, University of Texas Maya expert David Stuart writes on his blog that "no ancient Maya text or artwork makes reference to anything of the kind."
Even so, the end date of the current Long Count cycle—winter solstice 2012—may be evidence