Five reasons the world won't end in 2012

Pointing to the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar on Dec. 21, 2012, many doomsday believers think that life as we know it on Earth has entered it's final year. NASA begs to differ. 

4. Flip-flopping Earth?

There is some alarm that 2012 could see the flipping of Earth's poles — either the planet's geographical poles, which mark the Earth's axis of rotation, or its magnetic poles, which our compasses point toward.

But, there is no reason to fear such an occurrence, scientists said, because the moon stabilizes our planet's spin. The planet's magnetic poles do flip, but over periods of about 500,000 years, and not suddenly, "but over thousands of years," with no evidence of a flip on Dec. 21, 2012, Yeomans said.

Even if the planet's magnetic poles do flip, no real problems would occur, other than the inconvenience of us having to change our compasses from north to south, he added.

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