NASA UPDATES: NASA and Mayan priests working to quash 2012 fears

Forthcoming Sony Pictures blockbuster '2012' may be setting pulses racing among eager movie goers and end-of-the-world theorists, though NASA isn't exactly enamored with director Roland Emmerich's most recent global disaster epic -- to the point where the U.S. space administration is actively working to dispel any fears as regards the Mayan prediction the film is built upon.

More pointedly, NASA this week launched a campaign of information designed to squash mounting rumours that recommend it is covering up the existence of 'Nibiru', a planet on a collision course with Earth that will demolish our little blue and green marble in - all right, you guessed it - 2012.

NASA outlined that “There is no factual basis for these claims,”in an official question and answer session conducted through its Website. “Obviously [the proffered planet] does not exist.”

NASA also insisted that if such kind of planet was approaching ahead of a 2012 collision, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least a decade, and it would previously be noticeable to the naked eye.

Despite the looming release of Emmerich's disaster adventure also its accompanying doomsday mongering and this is not the first time the end of the Mayan calendar has been trotted out to terrify the global population.

For instance, May 2003 should supposedly have brought an abrupt close to life on Earth; however the resulting lack of destruction led to the inescapable date being bumped to 2012's winter solstice.

However, according to NASA, the Mayan calendar doesn’t come to an end in 2012 (December 21 to be precise), and a new calendar period starts instantaneously afterward.

Speaking with UK broadsheet The Sunday Telegraph, Mayan priests as well as spiritual guides from Guatemala and Mexico have also insisted that there will be not be any planetary destruction in 2012, adding up that the Mayan culture doesn't have a concept of apocalypse, and the furore surrounding 2012 is slight more than a distortion of Mayan tradition and belief.