Fire in the Sky!

Although the end of the Earth has been predicted many times, 2012 seems to be another "special time." Some are certain that the ancient Mayan calendar ends on the 21st of December this year because ... well that's the last day it will be needed ... and others are certain that the ephemeral planet "Nibiru" will bring the end times. NASA has provided some facts concerning these ideas, and if you're interested, click here.

One of the most dramatic instances of recent doomsday predictions was centered on the Large Hadron Collider, operated near Geneva, Switzerland. This giant 17-mile circular accelerator was built to learn more about the building blocks of all matter ... and does its work by bringing particles to very high energy states, and then smashing them into each other. Click here to learn more. Some believed that these collisions would create a man-made black hole which would in turn, consume the entire earth. This did not happen, and the results of one of these collisions is shown on the backing photo here. And if you'd like a brief explanation of some of what's going on at the CERN facility, click here.

Black holes do exist, and the top picture here shows a computer simulation, based on data collected during a spectacular event in a galaxy called Centaurus A ... where its central black hole shredded a nearby star.