The world will not come to an end in 2012

The world will not come to an end in 2012. Some professor named Enrique Gomez from the University of Alabama disuptes the thesis. Professor Gomez asserts that the true intention of the Mayan calendar has been lost to history; the ending date of December 21 (by the Gregorian Calendar) is in dispute and cannot be used as any indication that the Mayans expected the end of the world on that day. The fact that the Winter Solstice occurs on December 21 2009 could be a happy coincidence or a dire warning based on the astronomical expertise of a civilization that peaked over 2300 years ago.

Consider the consternation surrounding our modern calendar and the "Year 2000 software bug". Programmers many years ago elected to encode dates in such a way that the year 2000 appeared to be the year 1900. In a digital nutshell, those guys needed the space; they had no idea their work would survive in production applications until the year 2000 and beyond. They intended no malice and they gave no consideration to apocalyptic hypotheses. Computer geeks buzzed about the situation for years, but eventually the mainstream media glommed onto the issue. We were told that our computers, cars, power grid, financial infrastructure, hospitals, cable TV service, and microwave ovens would all discombobulate at midnight on December 31, 1999. Aside from a few people in England having their natural gas shut off for a time (and that was a programming error created in an attempt to fix the original problem). nothing happened. New Years Eve came and went without any more fanfare than usual.

Imagine the point of view of a hyper-advanced extraterrestrial civilization as they study the cause and effect of "Y2K", as it was called in the press. This civilization, while hyper-advanced, still produces shrill TV talk shows on their equivalent of our HD TV:

Announcer: We see that ancient Earth software was programmed by humans to quit working on December 31, 1999.

In-Studio Guest Professor: Yes, the programmers neglected to include a facility for representing dates beyond that point,.

Announcer: What can we conclude from this? And remember, we are in Prime Time and you have a book to sell,.

In-Studio Guest Professor: Well, without becoming too alarming... They thought the world was going to end on that day. Therefore they saw no need to write computer software that functioned beyond that date.

Announcer: My apologies to our viewing audience. We are unable to present an opposing viewpoint because all the computer programmers have reality shows or presidential duties.

Announcer: Thank you. Stay tuned for my next guest, who asserts that professional athletes on Earth took steroids for the good of the game.