In-Depth Reports | Mind & Brain

Humankind's Enduring Fascination with the Apocalypse

The so-called Mayan apocalypse is just the latest in a long line of doomsday predictions

TechMediaNetwork

NASA Crushes 2012 Mayan Apocalypse Claims

The agency's Near-Earth Objects Program head points out many fallacies, including the claim that an imaginary planet will collide with Earth in December. Thousands of astronomers have not seen this

140

Observations

Psychology Reveals the Comforts of the Apocalypse

Deep down, for various reasons, there’s something appealing--at least to some of us--about the end of the world

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Scientific American Magazine

Eternal Fascinations with the End: Why We're Suckers for Stories of Our Own Demise

Our pattern-seeking brains and desire to be special help explain our fears of the apocalypse

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Guest Blog

The 2012 Apocalypse, or why the world won't end this week

A historian specializing in Mesoamerica unpacks the source of the claims that the Maya foretold doom in December 2012

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More in this Report

Multimedia

Podcasts

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    The World Without Us: Suppose Humans Just Vanished--Then What?

    In this episode, journalist Alan Weisman discusses his new book "The World Without Us," a massive thought experiment about the aftermath of humanity's sudden disappearance

    Jun 27, 2007  | 6

  • 60-Second Science 60-Second Science

    End of the World [1999 Edition]

    At the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Stony Brook University's Robert Crease talked about how a 1999 article in Scientific American on Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and a future Nobel laureate got a few people thinking the planet was in jeopardy. Steve Mirsky reports

    Feb 25, 2010  | 5

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