(Lee Speigel-huffingtonpost.com) The ancient Mayan civilization calendar is believed to end this year on Dec. 21. And somehow, through word-of-mouth, movies, books, the Internet, etc., a cult-like belief system has sprung up in our culture suggesting any number of awful things will take place on that date.

Some of these include:

• An unknown planet on a collision path with Earth.
• A close encounter between Earth and a black hole in deep space.
• More natural disasters around our planet.
• A shifting of Earth's magnetic poles.

But where did all of these rumors actually start?

Many believe it goes back thousands of years to the ancient Sumerian culture who reportedly discovered a twelfth planet they called Nibiru -- aka Planet X -- which was predicted to have a close encounter with Earth in 2003.  When that didn't happen, a new Doomsday was moved to December 2012.

On the other hand, there are some who believe the December date heralds not doom and gloom, but a more positive transformative experience for Earth and its inhabitants.  It all sounds rather sketchy, especially to a scientist.

"It's all a hoax, and it's based on absolutely no factual information. None of the things that are supposed to happen are real, and so it's kind of hard to even have a scientific discussion about what they're worried about because there's no science there," saidDavid Morrison, a leading space scientist and director of the Carl Sagan Center for Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute in California.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/18/doomsday-2012-fact-sheet-_n_1989607.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news