IS IT REALLY DOOMSDAY ON FRIDAY THE 21ST?

NAT GEO CHANNEL SCREEN GRAB SHOWING THE PREDICTION OF DOOM

It has been widely speculated that the world is coming to an end on Friday, the 21st day of December, 2012. The National Geographic Channel had long started a count down which is displayed on the top right hand corner of your tv screen.


The Doomsday prophecy is based on an ancient calendar from the Mayan civilisation that was based in what is now Guatemala in in Central America.The calendar lasts for more than 5,000 years but comes to an end on Friday, which has prompted fears it forecasts the end of the world.



MAYAN CALENDAR

Dark comets, famine, super-volcanoes, catastrophic climate change, and a plague of cancers are just some of the ends that could fulfill the prophecy.
Some scientists strongly believe the most likely disaster that could make doomsday happen is a black comet.
Such an end would match that of the dinosaurs who after walking the planet for about 165 million years - homo sapiens has been around for a mere 200,000 years - were killed off by a 10km asteroid or comet that slammed into the planet.Dark comets have little of the ice and snow that most comets have, and a lot more dust which makes it much more difficult to spot them as they speed through Space.
The collision itself, except for those near the point of impact, would be unlikely to be fatal to the world's population but it would throw up so much dust into the atmosphere that billions of people could expect a slow death.
Huge quantities of dust would bring on an 'eternal winter' in which the sun would be obscured and crops around the world would fail, leading to mass famine.

A COMET SLAMS INTO THE EARTH

Other favourite Doomsday scenarios include a vast solar storm which will flare out from the Sun and engulf the Earth.
An alternative doom-laden theory is that a rogue black hole will swallow up the Earth, or that a quirk of galactic alignments will trigger a disastrous reversal of the Earth's magnetic field.
Among the favourites is that a rogue planet, Nibiru, which has long been inhabiting the far reaches of the solar system, beyond even Pluto, is now on a collision course with Earth.
Scientists have dismissed the theory as ridiculous not just because no one has ever managed to detect it in the outer reaches of the solar system but because if such a large object was heading this way it would have been spotted by now
Scepticism on the part of experts, however, has done little to diminish the determination of thousands of people to find a safe haven from disaster.
In France the authorities have had to bar New Age followers from travelling to Bugarach, a tiny village home to fewer than 200 people, and the 'mystical mountain' where it is located.
Doomsday fanatics have identified Bugarach as a place of safety on the grounds that aliens live hidden within the mountain and are waiting for the end of the world when they will rescue humans in the area.
'I have issued an order barring anyone from climbing the mountain. And those trying to get into the village will be stopped and asked what their business is,' said Regional prefect Eric Freysselinard.
The village and the mountain will only be re-opened to outsiders two days after the end of the world is scheduled to have taken place.

                                  THE MOUNTAIN IN BUGARACH VILLAGE, FRANCE

But just how much of all these do you believe?