Examples include Cold War conspiracy theories and, more recently, fear of a millennial technological meltdown known as Y2K. Polar shifts happen too, when the Earth’s magnetic poles flip, but none are expected for thousands of years – and there is no indication they cause any harm to life when they do happen. As NASA continues to make progress toward sending astronauts to the lunar South Pole region with its Artemis campaign, data from a NASA-funded study is helping scientists better understand this strategic part of the Moon.

On the west panel at the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of text projects forward to the 80th 52-year Calendar Round from the coronation of the ruler Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal. When you have lots of sun spots, you have lots of solar flares and coronal mass ejections coming at you, but this has been happening for billions of years and it has yet to kill all life on earth,” says Lepo, adding that every few hundred years sees a particularly bad solar flare with real potential to do some damage. December 2012 marked the conclusion of a bʼakʼtun—a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used in Mesoamerica prior to the arrival of Europeans.R. Rahman, known for Slumdog Millionaire, released his single " Infinite Love" to "instill faith and optimism in people" prior to the hypothesised doomsday.

Many Christian communities were almost abandoned when believers left their homes and migrated to a plain between the two villages of Pepuza and Tymion in Phrygia, where Montanus claimed the heavenly Jerusalem would descend to Earth. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. David Morrison attributed the rise of the solar storm idea to physicist and science popularizer Michio Kaku, who claimed in an interview with Fox News that a solar peak in 2012 could be disastrous for orbiting satellites, and to NASA's headlining a 2006 webpage as "Solar Storm Warning", a term later repeated on several doomsday pages. This "alignment" takes place over tens of millions of years, and could never be timed to an exact date. The Book of the Jaguar Priest: a translation of the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin, with commentary.A New Age interpretation held that the date marked the start of a period during which Earth and its inhabitants would undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 21 December 2012 would mark the beginning of a new era. Jean-Pierre Delord was criticised by members of the community for failing to take advantage of the media attention and promote the region. Others focus their fears on an immense planet, dubbed Nibiru, that is supposed to be heading for collision with Earth – but has somehow remained invisible, or at least well concealed. The 2012 date was also loosely tied to the long-running concept of the photon belt, which predicted a form of interaction between Earth and Alcyone, the largest star of the Pleiades cluster.