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World Ending on May 21? Don’t Count on It

by Nancy Atkinson on May 17, 2011

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Why do some humans have a fixation on the world coming to an end? From ancient Nostradamus to Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate fame, there have been a myriad of ultimately failed predictions that the world will meet its demise. The latest prediction comes from Harold Camping, a preacher from California who says the Second Coming of Jesus will occur conveniently at 6 pm local time for each time zone around the world coming up this weekend, on May 21, 2011. While he claims to have used math to predict this event, perhaps a better use of math would be to count how many times soothsayers and doomsday con artists have incorrectly predicted the end of the world in the past. So far they have all been 100% wrong. Camping himself is guilty of incorrectly predicting the end of the world back in 1994, so his track record is not very good either. So if you’re wondering – mathematically speaking — based on the number of past predictions of the end of the world being right, and the number of past predictions of Camping about the end of the world being right, the odds of Camping being wrong this time are 100%.

So sleep well, and enjoy your weekend!

Need some proof? Here’s a look at some past failed predictions, as well as an infographic from LiveScience.com about the many predictions of doom. Humans seem to like doomsday predictions so much that we even like to make movies about it.

And by the way, the end of the world predictions being pure nonsense goes for the 2012 prognostications, as well. You can read our series about why they are all wrong here.

Interestingly, many past predictions of the end of the world coincide with religious fanaticism (from the top image, above, it appears Camping’s prediction has the biblical seal of approval…) and/or trying to make money. (Camping has amassed $120 million in donations from fervent followers). One of the most recent was God’s Church minister Ronald Weinland who pitched his book “2008: God’s Final Witness” by predicting the world would end by 2008, with the “end times” beginning in 2006.

Before that, it was the Heaven’s Gate mess, where Applewhite’s followers actually did kill themselves so that they would be taken by an alien spacecraft coming along with comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, (I guess, unfortunately the world did end for them…). This prediction included accusations of a huge cover-up by NASA who supposedly knew the alien craft was hidden in the comet’s coma.

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Televangelist Pat Robertson predicted Judgment Day would come in 1982. Scarily, Robertson later ran for president of the United States.

Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church predicted the world would end by 1891, and a group that would eventually become the Seventh-Day Adventists predicted the end by 1843.

Some bad-science related predictions include the Y2K scare (which didn’t even burn out a light bulb), several “planetary alignment” predictions that would throw the Earth into tumult (including one in 2000 by Richard Noone), the return of Halley’s Comet in 1910 would envelope Earth in deadly toxic gases, and of course, all the 2012 predictions, which are based on very inaccurate science and the downright mean and nasty tactic of trying to scare people.

Nostradumus, a.k.a. Michel de Nostrdame has been one of the longest-running predictors of doom and gloom, and his vague, metaphorical writings have intrigued people for over 400 years. The vagueness allows for very flexible interpretations, allowing some people to claim that a number of Nostradamus’ predictions have come true. One prediction he gave included a year: “The year 1999, seventh month / From the sky will come great king of terror.”

I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen, just like all the other predictions. The ones listed here are just a sampling of the incorrect predictions throughout time.

A brief history of doomsdays
Source:LiveScience

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About

Nancy Atkinson is Universe Today's Senior Editor. She also is the host of the NASA Lunar Science Institute podcast and works with the Astronomy Cast and 365 Days of Astronomy podcasts. Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador.

Tagged as: 2012, Bad Science, Doomsday predictions

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  • http://twitter.com/Versaries Versaries

    92,442 Seconds to go, There is a Count Down

    http://vrsry.com/endoftheworld

    http://vrsry.com/endoftheworld

  • http://twitter.com/QueenDalek Kelsey Carter

    That is not what Joseph Smith said. He said it wouldn’t end BEFORE 1891, not BY 1891.

    • Anonymous

      What a thing to say!!! Wow he must be a prophet!!! I too am a prophet!! I too have seen some stone tablets that god showed me! Yes ahem you cant see them cause they will burn your eyes out, so don’t ask me to show them to you…and erm yers ahem they are gone now anyway…i predict the world is going to not end before 13th dec 2011. If this prophecy comes true i am the messiah, not just a naughty boy! Oh and god told me woman can have more than one husband at the same time, but men can’t wives…hahahhaa

  • Tiana

    You know whats confusing? Why would “God” even want to kill everyone off?I thought he was only getting rid of the sinners and evil of our world to protect his “children”. And by that logic, everyone who told us the world was gonna end is a LIAR now and so why would God just beam them up to heaven? And what about all the other species of our planet? Do they not get a ride to Heaven as well? I just don’t get why people have to waste their time coming up with these ideas. If we were meant to die then we die. Not everything lasts forever, so the end of the world COULD possibly happen. But panicing about it will just ruin your life. Enjoy the present, not the future. It’ll do you wonders.

  • Richard

    if the Mayans predicted the world is ending in 2012 then why couldn’t they predict their own extinction. HMMMM. Think about it the worlds been around for trillions of years and all of a sudden all this end of the world nonsense is happening in the 2012 years weve been here. Everyone enjoy your weekend and the many years to come and don’t listen to these nutbags who has nothing better to do with their lives.

    • http://www.facebook.com/MIDIGHToddityFTW Alex William Smith

      Because they where killed by zombies.. nobody can predict that kind of stuff. heh

    • http://twitter.com/MasterOrange Lucy Zhang

      They ran out of space on their calendar, hahaha.

  • John

    I’m not sure I understand….if he is going to be taken up to heaven, why does he need $120 million dollars? Mansion renovations?

  • Jes-Jes

    People obviously have issues if all they do is predict the end of the world. Honestly, why can’t anyone leave it? If the world ends, it’d be better if it was a surprise for all of us so we’re not panicking and crying over such idiotic people rambling about their crazy delusions.
    People are being born everyday. If you have any religious beliefs, you’d surely have the brains to ask “Why would God send new life to Earth if he’s just going to end the world?” Jeez, think for once. People like this Harold Camping should have the intelligence to realise these things considering he’s a Preacher.
    2012 the world will end? Yeah, right. The world will become better after 2012. People will be more aware of the important things and be on a higher spiritual level. Stop doubting God; if he could end the world, he would have done it by now, considering all the murderers, the war, the terrorists, etc.
    Harold Camping, if you ever correctly predict the end of the world, I tip my hat to you. Until then, shut up and live your life the way you’re a meant to.

  • Sean Leslie

    Well, it’s well past 6pm local time, and… We’re all still here.

  • thierrylatour

    wow look am only 17 and have always been interesting in the 2012 world end prediction the mayan people were some of the best mathematician ever and have been the best at predicting things that would happen space wise with all their calculation and they have predicted things that would happen until 2012 and thats when their calender ended no one really know why but who ever came up with the idea that this would be the end of the world i dont know i wouldn’t say he/she is right but the mayan people have always been the best at predicting thing astronomy wise

  • **** MisS MaNd!! khang ***

    I wonder, if is is true, if the world ending… why people say it end and some say it dont end…

  • Anonymous

    This is a bit tough to convey, but I will try here. Suppose there is a vacuum which has a certain type of space associated with it we call a moduli space. This is a sort of space of spaces, where every point on this moduli space (called a moduli) corresponds to a type of space. Each one of the moduli has a certain time direction. Further each one of these has a quantum amplitude in the vacuum, which is a nilpotent orbit. Well what is that? It means that under a finite number of symmetry operations something about this vacuum configuration (eg a phase etc) returns to itself. Now we reduce the dimension on this moduli and there is a parameter which transforms these reduced moduli in such a way that one recovers the moduli. Think of a page in a book which in a foliation fills out something of one dimension higher. Then a page evolves through the book in a way so as to generate the “book,” or there is a map form one page to the other to generate the book. The entire book is this moduli or a space which has nilpotental orbit structure. These pages evolve according to what we call semisimple orbits.

    Now all of this is just a quantum vacuum. It is rather complicated, for the group structure involves exceptional groups and lots of weird math. However, that is all so that these transformations keep the vacuum a vacuum. Nilpotency is an aspect of this: transform the vacuum in any possible way and you get nothing but the vacuum. A quantum virtual cosmology comes about from the transformation between the pages in this “book.” So each book has a quantum virtual spacetime cosmology, a spacetime with the physics we observe in our spacetime, but this is not a real cosmology — something else must play a role.

    However there is a funny little thing. This vacuum contains virtual quanta that have all wavelengths. This set of transformations connects very high frequency virtual modes with very low frequency modes. It turns out the very low ones involve masses which break this symmetry. This involves the Higgs field and some stuff with conformal field theory. At this low frequency end you get a cosmology, such as the spacetime cosmology we observe. It also has a time direction, which we measure with a clock. Another way of thinking about this is that the mass serves as a sort of potential energy “hill” or barrier, and long wavelength quantum wave functions can quantum mechanically tunnel through it. The portion of the wave which tunnel through is what corresponds to a real spacetime cosmology.

    So our universe has a time that is really a local direction. There exist other spacetimes with opposite time directions, and the vacuum all of this is embedded in really in effect timeless. So of course people might ask where this vacuum came from. Yet if that question has some operative value it is beyond our ability to question. Also if it is timeless it did not really need to come, come being a tensed verb, from anything. Of course there is also the Tao issue, where this can be said to not be the eternal Tao. The Tao is the “void” in a sense, and the Tao Te Ching is about the paradox or mysticism of that. However, this approach with physics, or something similar to it, is pretty darn good. We may even get some experimental or observational evidence to at least obliquely support this or something like it in the next few decades.

    If you read some of my posts here on the anthropology and history of monotheism you might garner a sense that what I just spelled out here is a long way from the ideas that form the basis of Abrahamist religion. The basis of Abrahamist religion is the same stuff that all other Mediterranean mythologies came from. These are things which have their origin in our inner psychology. It is for that reason this issue is very touchy. The existence of gods strikes at the core of our need for purpose, which involves our ability to project ourselves outside of ourselves. We humans have a theory of the mind, where we have a sense of each other has being conscious, which is sort of the core of this. We also project our being-ness onto about everything else, certainly living things, we do so with fictional characters, and we has a penchant for doing this with spirits and gods, and the whole host of things that include devils, angels, ghosts, goblins, and … . I think it came from our evolution of language. This probably involved story telling, and stories about the natural world in character format or anthrotypic projection. This permitted survival skills to be handed down generations. If there is some grand consciousness behind existence it is clearly a long way from our ideas about things which emerged from the Bronze Age and assumed their more recent form around the same time our species got it figured out that the Earth’s surface was a sphere.

    LC

  • Anonymous

    This is a bit tough to convey, but I will try here. Suppose there is a vacuum which has a certain type of space associated with it we call a moduli space. This is a sort of space of spaces, where every point on this moduli space (called a moduli) corresponds to a type of space. Each one of the moduli has a certain time direction. Further each one of these has a quantum amplitude in the vacuum, which is a nilpotent orbit. Well what is that? It means that under a finite number of symmetry operations something about this vacuum configuration (eg a phase etc) returns to itself. Now we reduce the dimension on this moduli and there is a parameter which transforms these reduced moduli in such a way that one recovers the moduli. Think of a page in a book which in a foliation fills out something of one dimension higher. Then a page evolves through the book in a way so as to generate the “book,” or there is a map form one page to the other to generate the book. The entire book is this moduli or a space which has nilpotental orbit structure. These pages evolve according to what we call semisimple orbits.

    Now all of this is just a quantum vacuum. It is rather complicated, for the group structure involves exceptional groups and lots of weird math. However, that is all so that these transformations keep the vacuum a vacuum. Nilpotency is an aspect of this: transform the vacuum in any possible way and you get nothing but the vacuum. A quantum virtual cosmology comes about from the transformation between the pages in this “book.” So each book has a quantum virtual spacetime cosmology, a spacetime with the physics we observe in our spacetime, but this is not a real cosmology — something else must play a role.

    However there is a funny little thing. This vacuum contains virtual quanta that have all wavelengths. This set of transformations connects very high frequency virtual modes with very low frequency modes. It turns out the very low ones involve masses which break this symmetry. This involves the Higgs field and some stuff with conformal field theory. At this low frequency end you get a cosmology, such as the spacetime cosmology we observe. It also has a time direction, which we measure with a clock. Another way of thinking about this is that the mass serves as a sort of potential energy “hill” or barrier, and long wavelength quantum wave functions can quantum mechanically tunnel through it. The portion of the wave which tunnel through is what corresponds to a real spacetime cosmology.

    So our universe has a time that is really a local direction. There exist other spacetimes with opposite time directions, and the vacuum all of this is embedded in really in effect timeless. So of course people might ask where this vacuum came from. Yet if that question has some operative value it is beyond our ability to question. Also if it is timeless it did not really need to come, come being a tensed verb, from anything. Of course there is also the Tao issue, where this can be said to not be the eternal Tao. The Tao is the “void” in a sense, and the Tao Te Ching is about the paradox or mysticism of that. However, this approach with physics, or something similar to it, is pretty darn good. We may even get some experimental or observational evidence to at least obliquely support this or something like it in the next few decades.

    If you read some of my posts here on the anthropology and history of monotheism you might garner a sense that what I just spelled out here is a long way from the ideas that form the basis of Abrahamist religion. The basis of Abrahamist religion is the same stuff that all other Mediterranean mythologies came from. These are things which have their origin in our inner psychology. It is for that reason this issue is very touchy. The existence of gods strikes at the core of our need for purpose, which involves our ability to project ourselves outside of ourselves. We humans have a theory of the mind, where we have a sense of each other has being conscious, which is sort of the core of this. We also project our being-ness onto about everything else, certainly living things, we do so with fictional characters, and we has a penchant for doing this with spirits and gods, and the whole host of things that include devils, angels, ghosts, goblins, and … . I think it came from our evolution of language. This probably involved story telling, and stories about the natural world in character format or anthrotypic projection. This permitted survival skills to be handed down generations. If there is some grand consciousness behind existence it is clearly a long way from our ideas about things which emerged from the Bronze Age and assumed their more recent form around the same time our species got it figured out that the Earth’s surface was a sphere.

    LC

    • Daniel

      Now, by the use of complicated mathematics, you present a mathematical probability of the quantum vacuum existing. That can also be said for the Mandelbrot Set (Z(n+1)=Zn(squared)+C) which, to my knowledge, has never been recorded outside of a computer program.

      Plus the moduli space when used in physics is part of string theory, which is currently considered controversial. And when you said that the quantum vacuum has operational value, therefore making it beyond our questioning. This can be applied to anything a person puts value into whether it be space, politics, or even religion.

      Abrahamist religion, while having the same “origin” type as the other religions in its area (a god making the race of men out of clay), had a very different start. The Mediterranean religions had the gods just being there, not starting anything except man and earth. In the Abrahamist view, having God lay down the basis for lights, land, water, etc…

      Now, very few religions have a “start to the universe, not just earth and people” tale, and even fewer are specific in the order it happened. Now the interesting part of the Abrahamist religion is that, while very basic, it describes what is now the accepted start to the universe, the formation of stars (light); the formation of the the planet and water (separation of earth and water); and even the evolution pattern of our planet (plants, animals, and the people).

      Now if you tried to explain the currently known ways of the universe to a man from Abraham’s times, he would be completely lost. The best way would be to explain it to him in an almost storybook style.

      • Anonymous

        I am arguing in a generic way with regards to moduli spaces, which any mathematical system of principal bundles has. Something of the nature probably underlies the nature of our observable universe.

        I have written about the nature of Abrahamist religion quite a bit on this blog page. Some other religions at the time had origin stories. The Genesis story of the origin of the world is a version or re-edit of the Marduk-Tiamut story of the Babylonians.

        LC

  • Gnaell

    Who would believe all this stuffs. Oh come on a lot of people is making up all these doomsdays and it never happened? The only one who knows when the world is gonna end is,GOD. Last time they said that the world is gonna end in 2001, well did it? No, and now they are saying that the world is gonna end on May 21st but it didn’t.

  • Anonymous

    May the 22nd, i’m still breathing… It is windy….maybe he got confused and he really meant it will be quite windy? hahahaa can’t wait for 2012, i’ve been making friends with people for that day. On the morning of doomsday i’m gonna ask them all for their stuff, i wonder who really really believes it, and will give me their stuff?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Wasa-Hong/100002489190250 Wasa Hong

    You could surf this link for more :
    http://www.christianpost.com/topics/end-of-the-world/

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