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Scientists Calculate The Precise Chance The World Will End On Friday

NASA and others have chimed in on the likelihood of black holes, solar flares striking on Dec. 21.

Scientists Calculate The Precise Chance The World Will End On Friday

According to a Mayan calendar that's been widely misinterpreted, the world is supposed to end on Friday, December 21, 2012.

Doomsdayers think the world will end one of four ways:

  • -We'll be engulfed in a giant black hole
  • -The sun will pass through a "galactic plane"
  • -Solar flares will fry us
  • -A planet called Nibiru will collide with Earth

Scientists and historians say there's no way any of those will happen.

According to John Carlson, the Director of the Center of Archaeoastronomy, no Mayan calendar ever suggested the world would end on Friday. The Mayan calendar doesn't end in 2012 either. "The whole thing was a misconception from the very beginning," he tells The Atlantic.

The popular misconception stems from a long-count calendar the Mayans created to keep track of extended intervals of time. According to that calendar, the world was created on August 11, 3114 BC.

Like the odometer in a car, the numbers on the calendar can roll over, so number schemes that represent Mayan dates can repeat themselves.

On August 11, 3114 BC, the Mayan "odometer" looked like this: 13-0-0-0-0.

This Friday, it will look the same: 13-0-0-0-0.

While historians acknowledge that number scheme was significant to the Mayans, its arrival on 12/21/12 never meant the end of the world -- at least not as evidenced by ancient Mayan ruins or tableaus historians have found.

NASA

The sun is approaching a maxiumum of its 11-year activity cycle, but that doesn't mean solar flares will fry us on Friday

Scientists agree with historians: there's no evidence whatsoever that an unusual cosmic occurrence will occur this Friday. The head of NASA's near-earth object program, Dan Yeomans, hasn't seen any strange asteroids or planets headed toward Earth.

Another NASA scientist, David Morrison, confirms this. He says the government wouldn't be able to hide an object large enough to destroy Earth hurtling towards us in outer space. It'd be visible by now to everyone in the sky, and it would look like a very, very bright star.

"Just go outside and look," he suggests to anyone with a morsel of doubt.

Lika Guhathakurta leads NASA's star program, and she says the theory that solar flares will destroy earth on Friday are also false. It's true that the sun is approaching a solar maximum, but that happens every eleven years, and it poses no threat this Friday.

If you still aren't convinced, you can watch all of these experts explain why there is no, scientifically-plausible way the apocalypse will occur on Friday, below:



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Geopolitics

How Turkey's Jumbled Opposition Bloc Can Take Erdogan Down

Turkey heads to the polls in May, with a newly formed opposition bloc hoping to dislodge President Tayyip Recep Erdogan. Despite some party infighting, many remain hopeful they can bring an end to Erdogan's 20 years in power. But first, clarity from within a complicated coalition is needed.

Photo of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey

Bekir Ağırdır

-Analysis-

ISTANBUL — Turkey was hit by a political earthquake recently, at the same time that we were mourning the victims of the actual earthquakes. It was a crisis triggered among the main opposition coalition, the so-called “ the table of six,” by the inner dynamics of the nationalist Good Party (IYI) that resulted in a renewed understanding among the rearranged table.

The six-party coalition has been set up to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “one-man rule” and is looking to dislodge him after 20 years in power in the country’s upcoming national elections scheduled on May 14.

I am not a fan of analyses based on a who-said-or-did-what perspective, nor those focusing on the actors themselves either. I won’t attempt to analyze the political actors unless the daily agenda forces me to. They are not my priority: the condition of our society and our political system are what matters to me.

We were all told to follow the tabloid version of the story, articles based on hot gossip and anonymous statements full of conspiracy theories about the disagreements of the table of six, and the question of who would run against Erdoğan.

The truth is that there were three crises in one. The first is what we call the political crisis, which is actually shortcomings in collaboration and taking control of the process. The second is the structural problems of the political parties. And the third is the gap between politics and the vital needs of the society.

From day one, there were shortcomings in the general functioning of the table of the six — in their ability to act together in critical situations and, more importantly, in their ability to take control of the process. There were clues for these in recent times, such as the different stances the opposition parties took for the issue of providing constitutional protection for the headscarf.

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