End of world? Not today

If you're reading this, presumably the world hasn't ended. Yet.

If it's only breakfast time, there's still a chance of a major catastrophe this afternoon.

According to some, December 21, 2012 will be our last day on Earth. It's a little hard to understand why. The origins of the 2012 doomsday phenomenon are pretty murky.

A lot of fingers are pointing at the Mayans, but actual scholars say otherwise. They say the date in Mayan calendars just signified the end of one cycle and the beginning of another.

But that calendar flip has sparked predictions of all sorts of calamities for today and this month, including solar storms, a catastrophic shift in the Earth's axis, a collision between Earth and another planet, and a planetary alignment causing a colossal tidal wave.

All of those have been debunked by Nasa, although if you also subscribe to the theory that Nasa is hiding the evidence from us to prevent mass panic, then you probably won't believe them anyway.

I know very little about astronomy and I concede that Nasa , having successfully put stuff on other planets, have a fair idea, so I'll take their word for it.

But more than I believe Nasa, I subscribe to the theory that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is a bit silly.

There have been many, many predictions that the world will end and none of them have proved true.

This one will be the same.

A colleague of mine suggested the mythical world-end was a nice excuse to tell your family you love them. By all means do so - but, even better, stop anyone you see today with a grumpy look on their face and say: "Cheer up, it's not the end of the world."