The Vatican reassures believers about

The Vatican's leading astronomer yesterday said the world would not perish on December 21 as some people predicted.

Bishop Jose Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, wrote on L'Osservatore Romano, a Holy See newspaper, that the end is the topic "not worth discussing", even though they are flooding the Internet and the AP. reported.

"Yes, the universe is expanding. According to some physical models, the universe will stop expanding at some point and the earth will perish. But that event will not happen for several billion years. ", Father Funes said.

Vatican in Rome, Italy.

Apocalyptic rumors confounded a part of the population in Russia, France, China, Serbia and the United States. They hoarded food and necessities, rushed to two "mystical" mountains in France, Serbia or built large ships to save people if the doom occurred.

The basis for many believing in the apocalyptic hypothesis is a Mayan calendar of stones. This set of timetable calculates the time from 3114 BC to December 21, 2012. Because the Mayan people have achieved many amazing achievements in mathematics and astronomy, many people believe that the next 21/12 will be the day when the world is destroyed by a disaster.

However, the scientific community affirmed that, because the Mayans have the idea of ​​the cycle of life, the last day in the stone calendar is merely the end of a period of time, not the time. The point of decline of this world.

"The Mayan calendar has no end. That's the beginning of a new cycle, that's all," said Erick Velasquez, a Mexican historian.

David Stuart, an archaeologist at the University of Texas in the US, is deciphering the oldest Mayan calendar in the Xultun ruins in northeast Guatemala.

"The oldest Mayan calendar is used to calculate time in billions of years, not just 2012," Stuart said.

Some researchers claim that the Gods mentioned much about the end of the world, not the Mayans. Mayan descendants also rejected the hypothesis of the risk of earth's demise this year.