• Question: In 2012 everyone said the world is going to end? Did you believe it at the time and do you think it will ever happen in the future?

    Asked by Diva to Jackie, Michele, Oliver, Vicky, Yelong on 13 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Jaclyn Bell

      Jaclyn Bell answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      The media made a really big deal of the LHC being switched back on in 2012 and people thought it was going to create a black hole which would swallow the Earth. I think once the media take hold of something it is very easy for the facts to get lost and people panic. I didn’t think the world was going to end… I think nuclear weapons could cause the world to end, but hopefully it will never come to that. I’m confident in the scientists at Cern – I don’t think any future experiments there would put any of us in danger 🙂

    • Photo: Oliver Brown

      Oliver Brown answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      Yeah as Jackie said the media like to make a big deal out of these things because it sells papers, but CERN won’t be destroying any planets! Although actually, I think that ‘end of the world’ was a bit sooner, in 2009.

      The 2012 thing was just the end point of the Mayan long-count calendar — I wasn’t at all worried. It was like thinking the world would end on 31st December because it was New Year’s Eve (by our modern, Gregorian calendar)! Actually the idea that anything would happen was disproven by several scientists, but “21st December 2012 Will Be Ordinary Winter Day” isn’t such a good headline…

    • Photo: Michele Faucci Giannelli

      Michele Faucci Giannelli answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      What was that time? I think was the Maya calendar which every expert would say was not even accurate, that was just the end of an era, not of the World.
      In 2000 was “1000 and no more than a 1000” from some place in the Bible, than there was the Nostradamus prediction.
      People are always looking for coincidences. If you look hard enough you will find them. But that is what they are, coincidences, nothing more!
      I hope that the general public, which reflect the average person, will become more educated so that will not even consider such pieces of news, making them disappear. I think we are still a long way from my hope, but getting more people in science will make my dream come true sooner rather than later.

Comments