Everyone can now relax. The world will not end in December...

[cynatnite]

Archaeologists have found a stunning array of 1,200-year-old Maya paintings in a room that appears to have been a workshop for calendar scribes and priests, with numerical markings on the wall that denote intervals of time well beyond the controversial cycle that runs out this December.

For years, prophets of doom have been saying that we're in for an apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012, because that marks the end of the Maya "Long Count" calendar, which was based on a cycle of 13 intervals known as "baktuns," each lasting 144,000 days. But the researchers behind the latest find, detailed in the journal Science and an upcoming issue of National Geographic, say the writing on the wall runs counter to that bogus belief.

"It's very clear that the 2012 date, this end of 13 baktuns, while important, was turning the page," David Stuart, an expert on Maya hieroglyphs at the University of Texas at Austin, told reporters today. "Baktun 14 was going to be coming, and Baktun 15 and Baktun 16. ... The Maya calendar is going to keep going, and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future."

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/10/11639788-maya-calendar-workshop-documents-time-beyond-2012?lite

[Warren DeMontague]

1. But we BOMBED THE MOON!!!

Honestly, my menstrual cycles still haven't recovered.

[zappaman]

4. I think bombing the moon was a big mistake.

Although it doesn't give out as much light as the sun, it can be pretty bright and is helpful when you want to see things at night.
Why are we trying to destroy the moon!!!!???

[Initech]

6. Why I have no idea...

[hifiguy]

5. That moon-bomb thread was

a real DU classic.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

2. Well, there's that...

...but there's also the fact that it should have already ended given daylight savings and leap year, neither of which existed back then.

[kayakjohnny]

3. Thanks for the spoiler alert.