The end of the world is nigh!

Tomorrow we might be reading this paper by candlelight, while eating canned food and sheltering from a comet that may smash into Earth. Fears that the end is nigh have been running wild since someone figured out that December 21, 2012, is when the 5,125-year long Mayan calendar ends and interpreted that as the Earth’s extinction day. Since then several doomsday theories have been bandied about, with blockbuster help from Hollywood. This is how it is supposed to happen: the Earth will be blasted into nothing by a solar storm, a comet crash or the collision of a mythical planet called Nibiru. Amateur astronomer David Pace scoffs at these possibilities: “It’s not really possible for an entire planet as big as Earth to be destroyed in such a tight time-frame. “We have the technology to detect such near-Earth asteroids before they hit and can even mount limited expeditions to deflect them.” The most plausible scenario is an asteroid or large meteorite impact, but such impacts have happened in the past without destroying the world, he said. For example, 65 million years ago dinosaurs were made extinct. But the Earth survived. He dismissed the possibility of planetary impact: “A large...