June 21, the date Mayan calendar predicts the world ends, claim conspiracy theorists

The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic has already made the year 2020 an awful one so far and to worsen things conspiracy theorists are now claiming that the world will end 'next week' on June 21. The end of the world on this date has been predicted as per the Mayan calendar.

Majority of people across the world currently follow the Gregorian calendar but this calendar came into existence in 1582 and before this people used different calendars to keep a track of dates. Two of the most popular calendars were the Mayan and Julian calendars.

As per experts, the Gregorian calendar was introduced to better reflect the time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun. However, it is believed by many that as many as 11 days were lost from the year that was once determined by the Julian calendar.

Over time these lost days add up and now a conspiracy theory has cropped up which claims that we are actually be in the year 2012, not 2020.

Scientist Paolo Tagaloguin, in a now-deleted tweet, reportedly said, “Following the Julian Calendar, we are technically in 2012. The number of days lost in a year due to the shift into Gregorian Calendar is 11 days. For 268 years using the Gregorian Calendar (1752-2020) times 11 days = 2,948 days. 2,948 days / 365 days (per year) = 8 years."

Following this theory, June 21, 2020, would actually be December 21, 2012. It may be recalled that in 2012, December 21 was proposed by some as the end of the world by conspiracy theorists.

According to NASA, “The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012 and linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 - hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.”

The space agency previously explained: "For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.”