It is not the end of the world ... is it?

• Position: Your Life

Earthquakes and hurricanes struck the East Coast within days of each other; there were extreme droughts in one part of the nation while floods devastated another part--and who could forget last winter's "Snowmageddon"? Violent weather and odd seismic events have fueled beliefs that the world is due to end later this year, but Christopher Keating, professor of physics at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, says that is a false prediction unnecessarily fueling fears.

Keating is positive that the world will not end on Dec. 21 as some self-proclaimed mystics assert the Mayan calendar predicts, while natural disasters and extreme weather events have nothing to do with the world's supposed demise.

With a mere 11 months to go before "doomsday," Keating indicates that such oddball prophesies could prompt bad decisionmaking on the part of some gullible believers, just as the supposed May 21, 2011, Judgment Day "rapture" did.

Take, for instance, the hype over Comet Elenin, whose passing trajectory is being promoted by some as the cause of recent earthquakes and as further proof that the end is near. The cornet actually is quite small, and twice as far from Earth as the sun. "Any...