Patricia Drury via Flickr

A statue of St. Malachy of Armagh (1094-1148) stands on the grounds of St. Malachy Catholic Church in Sterling Heights, Mich. Centuries-old prophecies that have been attributed to St. Malachy are causing a stir due to Pope Benedict XVI's surprise abdication announcement.

Just when you thought it was safe to go out of the bunker, there's a fresh wave of doomsday buzz over a purported 12th-century prophecy suggesting that the next pope will be the last pope before the end of the world. St. Malachy's "Prophecy of the Popes" has no credence in the Roman Catholic Church, but its effect could well be longer-lasting than the hype that surrounded the 2012 Maya apocalypse — especially if the papal conclave goes with one of the favored candidates for Benedict XVI's successor.

The text that's been attributed to Malachy came to light in 1595, in a book by Benedictine monk Arnold de Wyon. Supposedly, Malachy experienced a vision of future popes during a trip to Rome in 1139, and wrote down a series of 112 cryptic phrases that described each pope in turn. The text was said to have lain unnoticed in Rome's archives until Wyon published it.

Doomsday fans have found ways to link each phrase to a corresponding pope through the centuries. That includes John Paul II, who is associated with phrase No. 110, "From the labor of the sun," because he was born on the day of a solar eclipse and was entombed on the day of a solar eclipse as well. Benedict XVI, No. 111, is supposedly "glory of the olive" because some members of a branch of the monastic order founded by St. Benedict are known as Olivetans.

Then there's No. 112: "In the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit ... Peter the Roman, who will nourish the sheep in many tribulations; when they are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The end."

The end? This could be the beginning for a doomsday meme that hangs over a whole generation, if it's taken seriously. There's already a 586-page book about the coming apocalypse, titled "Petrus Romanus." One theologian, Michael K. Lake, is quoted as saying that "Catholic and evangelical scholars have dreaded this moment for centuries."

In fact, the Catholic Church doesn't put any stock in the prophecies, for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest red flags is that no mention was made about the papal prophecies until the 1590s — not even by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a close friend of Malachy's who wrote his biography and hailed his gift of prophecy. And then there's always the biblical dictum that no one knows the day or the hour for doomsday — a rule of thumb that works for believers as well as non-believers.

Most experts have concluded that the text was made up to boost a 16th-century cardinal's bid to become pope.

But if the coming papal conclave really wanted to drum up the doomsday talk, as well as sales for "Petrus Romanus," all they'd have to do is elect one of the leading candidates: Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, a member of the Roman Curia. Even though church tradition would forbid any pope from taking the name Peter II, Turkson could arguably be described as Peter the Roman. Others suggest that he could be the "young red black one" mentioned in the similarly cryptic doomsday prophecies of Nostradamus.

Whomever the conclave picks, there'll surely be a way to connect him somehow with "Peter the Roman" — after all, isn't every pope a successor to St. Peter, based in Rome? "Any pope can be thought of as the latest Peter in the line," Tom Horn, one of the authors of "Petrus Romanus," said a couple of months ago on the "Coast to Coast AM" radio show.

Which means we might have to deal with 2012-style doomsaying as long as the next guy is in office. What do you think?

Dearly departed doomsdays:

• Asteroid Apophis won't hit us in 2036
• No gloom or doom as Maya begin new age
• Rapture 'fail' sparks fresh worries

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 12, 2013 6:20 PM EST

Radar observations made during this week's close encounter with the asteroid Apophis have ruled out the risk of a catastrophic cosmic collision in 2036, NASA says. Experts say it'll be much farther away at that time than it is right now.

The crucial readings came on Wednesday when the space rock, which is thought to measure at least 885 feet (270 meters wide), approached within 9 million miles (14.5 million kilometers) of Earth. NASA is monitoring Apophis with its 230-foot (70-meter) Goldstone radio dish in California. Optical readings also have come in from the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico and the Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii.

The bottom line? "We have effectively ruled out the possibility of an Earth impact by Apophis in 2036," Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said today in the all-clear news release. "The impact odds as they stand now are less than one in a million, which makes us comfortable saying we can effectively rule out an Earth impact in 2036. Our interest in asteroid Apophis will essentially be for its scientific interest for the foreseeable future."

Jon Giorgini, who developed JPL's online Horizons database to keep track of solar system objects, would go even further. He says that according to calculations based on the Goldstone data, Apophis will probably pass by Earth at a distance of 36 million miles (58 million kilometers, or 0.39 AU), and absolutely no closer than 14 million miles (22 million kilometers, or 0.15 AU). "That is a very extreme minimum," he told NBC News. "Nothing else plausible can get you closer."

Apophis, a.k.a. 2004 MN4, created a huge splash when it was discovered in 2004 because the initial assessment of its orbit gave a 1-in-40 chance of Earth impact in 2029. That would be catastrophic: The space rock is big enough to wipe out a city if it struck land, or create killer tsunami waves if it splashed into the ocean.

Additional orbital data quickly eliminated the risk for 2029, but showed that it would pass within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of our planet at that time. That's so close that Earth's gravitational field will perturb Apophis' orbit. The experts worried that if the asteroid passed through a particular half-mile-wide zone in space, known as a "keyhole," its orbit would be perturbed just enough to set up a smash-up during the 2036 encounter. Fortunately, the latest observations indicate that Apophis will miss the keyhole by a long shot.

Did I just hear a cosmic sigh of relief?

UH / IA

The asteroid Apophis, highlighted here by a white circle, was discovered in June 2004.

There are still a few uncertainties surrounding Apophis: Astronomers don't yet have enough data to determine how the asteroid is spinning or how solar radiation is affecting its orbital path — a phenomenon known as the Yarkovsky effect. Giorgini said that even under the worst-case scenario, the effect won't push Apophis into a collision in 2036. But there could conceivably be other risky encounters in the decades or centuries ahead.

"There's a non-linear amplification that can really move it around more," Giorgini said.

Also, there are questions about Apophis' exact size. Just this week, readings from the European Space Agency's Herschel space telescope suggested that the asteroid may be nearly 20 percent bigger than previously thought. But that larger size estimate is based on the assumption that Apophis is a spheroid, and astronomers already know that it's elongated.

"We're not seeing that larger size in the radar data," Giorgini said.

By the end of next month, continued radar observations from Goldstone as well as the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico should give astronomers a much better fix on Apophis' spin and its size. When those factors are fully accounted for, the Jet Propulsion Observatory will update its official risk assessment for Apophis — and could take this bad boy off the hit list for good.

Update for 6:30 p.m. ET: Clark Chapman, senior scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, weighed in on the current state of the asteroid hunt in an email:

"One thing you should be aware of, and might mention, is that the next Planetary Defense Conference, an every-two-year international meeting, will be held April 15-19 in Flagstaff, Arizona. ... Some presentations are already listed in the program, which should be finalized a week from now, which is the due date for abstracts.

"An interesting tie-in with the new observations of Apophis is that a similar thing happened with 2011 AG5 a few weeks ago, when observations with the huge Gemini telescope in Hawaii showed that it would, in 2023, miss the roughly 350-km-wide 'keyhole' and, therefore, not strike the Earth in 2040.  Prior to these critical observations, the chance of a 2040 impact was unusually high (though still low in everyday terms) at 1 in 500.

"A point to be realized is that while the chances of impact in these cases are very low by ordinary standards, they aren't zero, and the consequences of an impact could be very terrible, so it is important to plan and prepare for the possibility of impact until it is ruled out.

"It was important to get these observations of AG5 in the autumn of 2012, because if it had turned out that AG5 was actually on an impact trajectory, it would have given us an additional year to mount a deflection mission and succeed in deflecting it from the 2023 keyhole. Without making a major observational effort with a very large telescope this autumn, the next routine observational opportunity wasn't until this coming autumn."

Update for 8:30 p.m. ET: One of NASA's experts on the asteroid threat and two former NASA astronauts have weighed in on the report about Apophis. David Morrison of NASA's Ames Research Center sent these comments via email:

"One possible angle is the recent proposal from [NASA Administrator] Charlie Bolden, based on a Keck study, that we retrieve a 7-meter carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid and bring it into lunar orbit. There are many questions about this idea, but the one I have in mind is our assumed ability, without Sentinel, to find 7-meter C-type asteroids in Earthlike orbits. If you can't find them, you can’t protect against them, or do anything with them as potential resources." 

Now here's an email from Ed Lu, a veteran of two space shuttle missions and an extended stay on the International Space Station. Lu now serves as chairman and CEO of the B612 Foundation, which is planning to launch the Sentinel space telescope to track half a million near-Earth asteroids:

"While it is great that Apophis is much better understood, and we know it won't hit us in 2036, the greatest danger from an asteroid strike is from the ones we haven't yet found.  Of asteroids larger than the one that struck Tunguska in 1908, we know of less than 1 percent of them.  And as David Morrison points out, we can't protect ourselves from the unknown asteroids (or make use of them either). The B612 Foundation Sentinel Space Telescope is going to work on finding and tracking these asteroids."

And here are some comments from Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who has played a key role in raising awareness about the threats and opportunities presented by near-Earth objects. It was Schweickart who warned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that asteroids like Apophis could spark a much more devastating "cosmic Katrina":    

"I'm hoping that you don’t follow the bad (surprisingly wide) precedent of stating that [the risk from] Apophis has been eliminated.  Please look on the JPL risk page  and especially the more detailed info and note that 1) The 2036 impact possibility is, while significantly reduced, still possible, and 2) that the 2068 impact possibility is now elevated ... to a level that exceeds what the 2036 impact was prior to this apparition.

"There’s certainly good news re the 2036 impact decreasing in probability ... but frankly it was 1 in 234,000 prior to the new observations ... not exactly an impact probability to worry one. (There are many NEOs with higher impact probability ... but no one pays attention to them ... they aren't the 'poster child' that Apophis is.) My personal reaction was one of surprise that the new 2036 impact was not zero!

"But/And ... there are more radar observations to integrate in ... as well as optical tracking both now and for the next several years.  Apophis isn't going away ... the impact possibilities are simply shifting around a bit with refinement of the tracking data. 2036 is now less probable; 2068 is now more probable (but still very low).

"Until JPL and the other guys get more data (enough to really define the Yarkovsky effect), we really won’t be able to get definitive data for longer time scales that we can rely on."

JPL's Giorgini said the risk assessment that Schweickart mentioned won't be full updated until after Goldstone and Arecibo finish their observational campaign in mid-February — so there may still be a non-zero risk listed until then. But Giorgini is confident that the 2036 risk will disappear when all the observations are factored in. (As of this writing, the estimated risk of collision is listed at 1 chance out of 10,989,000.) But you're right, Rusty: In order to eliminate the risk completely, astronomers will have to get more data about Apophis' physical characteristics. And then there are all those other unknown killer asteroids that might be out to get us...

More doomsday worries addressed:

• Asteroid 2012 DA14 won't hit Earth next month
• Asteroid 2011 AG5 won't hit Earth in 2040
• This year's big comets won't pose a threat
• Asteroid-hunting telescope to be launched in 2017

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Victor Ruiz Garcia / Reuters

A tourist raises her hands during a group meditation ceremony near the pyramid of Kukulkan at the Chichen Itza archaeological site on Dec. 21. Hundreds gathered to greet the sunrise on a day that marked a new age on the Maya calendar.

Tourists, mystics and Maya priests accentuated the positive this morning at Mexico's best-known Maya monument, the El Castillo pyramid at Chichen Itza, on a day that some thought would bring catastrophe.

For years, doomsayers warned that the end of a grand 5,125-year cycle in the Maya timekeeping system would signify the end of the world as well. Some feared that Dec. 21 would be marked by solar blasts, earthquakes, superstorms or other planetary disruptions. But the hundreds who flocked to El Castillo took a different message to heart.

"It's not the end of the world, it's an awakening of consciousness and good and love and spirituality — and it's been happening for a while," Mary Lou Anderson, a 53-year-old information technology consultant from Las Vegas, told Reuters.

Reuters reported that the rituals at Chichen Itza began just before the winter solstice, as dawn was breaking. A spotlight illuminated the western flank of El Castillo, a 100-foot-high pyramid that was built sometime between the 9th and the 12th centuries to serve as a temple to the Maya serpent god Kukulkan. Then a group of five English-speaking tourists, dressed in white,  made their way across the plain, dropped their bags and faced the pyramid with their arms raised. 

As the sun climbed into the sky, a man with dreadlocks played a didgeridoo at the north end of the pyramid, while a group of tourists meditated on brightly colored mats.

The visitors said they came to Chichen Itza not to face the world's end, but to make a new beginning. "I hope something happens to make me a better person," said Graham Hohlfelde, a 21-year-old student from St. Louis, Mo. "If I can get a little cosmic help, I won't turn it down."

Israel Leal / AP

Visitors and the El Castillo pyramid are silhouetted by the rising sun at Chichen Itza on Dec. 21, a day that some feared would bring disaster. Ceremonial fires burned and conches sounded off as dawn broke over teh steps of the pyramid, marking what many believe is the conclusion of a 5,125-year cycle in the Maya calendar.

Victor Ruiz Garcia / Reuters

Traditional costumes as well as T-shirts were worn by those attending Friday's rituals at Chichen Itza's El Castillo pyramid.

Pedro Pardo / AFP - Getty Images

Hundreds of onlookers - some holding mobile phones - raise their hands during rituals at Mexico's Chichen Itza archaeological site.

More about the non-apocalypse

• New, doom-free era begins
• What about doomsday preppers?
• French doomsday haven goes bust
• Year-end cartoon laughs at doomsday
• The Maya calendar's Big Day dawns
• Why NASA jumped the gun on doomsday
• Doomsday hot spots around the globe
• Video: 'We're very respectful of traditions'
• Cosmic Log archive on 2012 and doomsday fears

This report includes information from Reuters.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Guillaume Horcajuelo / EPA

Two men dressed in tinfoil stand in the French village of Bugarach on Friday. The mountain near Bugarach was touted as a haven from the Maya apocalypse, but most of those who came to the village on the big day were journalists.

Doomsday was a bust in the French village of Bugarach, which was supposed to be one of the rare safe havens during the Maya apocalypse.

In advance of today's supposed global crisis, rumor-mongers spread the word that a peak near the picturesque village in the French Pyrenees (population: 200) would be the only place on Earth to escape destruction. A giant UFO and aliens were said to be waiting under the mountain, ready to burst through and spirit those nearby to safety.

When the rumors cropped up, authorities worried that tens of thousands of New Agers would overwhelm the village — so French gendarmes tried to seal off access to anyone not having the proper papers.

Some believers made it through. Ludovic Broquet, a 30-year-old plumber, told The Associated Press that he put a year of preparation into his trek, in hopes of finding a "gateway, the vortex that will open up here (at) the end of the world."

But most of the visitors to Bugarach today were journalists. The Telegraph's Henry Samuel was among the throng looking for action in the village. He found two brothers from Marseille who spent the night in a cave on the mountainside waiting for the vortex to open.

Although they never found the vortex, they did report seeing a bluish light in the cave in the middle of the night.  "It stopped, started to look at us, and rushed towards us," one of the brothers, identified as Laurent, told The Telegraph. "I had a feeling of ecstasy. It’s hard to describe. We had our fair dose and are on our way out."

Guillaume Horcajuelo / EPA

People gather in the French village of Bugarach on Friday while authorities block access to a nearby mountain.

The journalists are on their way out, too, leaving behind some miffed villagers. "What is going on here is the creation of an urban legend," Michele Pous told AP.

Pous blamed the folks who started the rumors: "They created a media frenzy, they created a false event, they manipulated people."

More about the non-apocalypse:

• New, doom-free era begins
• What about doomsday preppers?
• Year-end cartoon laughs at doomsday
• The Maya calendar's Big Day dawns
• Why NASA jumped the gun on doomsday
• Doomsday hot spots around the globe
• Video: 'We're very respectful of traditions'
• Cosmic Log archive on 2012 and doomsday fears

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This morning's report on TODAY recaps the no-show for the apocalypse, and the segment raises an interesting question: What about all those folks who were preparing for the sort of doomsday portrayed in the movie "2012"?

"Doomsday Preppers" is the top-rated show on the National Geographic Channel, and the show will stay on the air even though the Maya apocalypse was canceled. I'm betting that the preppers will keep prepping as well. In fact, the devastation caused by Superstorm Sandy demonstrates that it's wise to stock up on emergency gear and extra supplies even if you see absolutely no deeper meaning in a centuries-old calendar.

Most of the people concerned about the end times are not motivated by the Maya myth, but rather by biblical reference to the end times — or just a general sense that things are going to go south sometime soon. That came through clearly when Zap2it's Jacqueline Cutter chatted with some of the National Geographic Channel's preppers.

Braxton Southwick, a mechanic living in a Salt Lake City suburb, told Cutter that he was inspired by the 9/11 crisis.

"I don't want to see my kids go though horrible crap or gangs or starve," he says. "If you were told you were going to be in a concentration camp, you would say 'I am going to die.' But they fought to live. So I look at it that way. Human nature is to fight to live."

Do you know of anyone who's making preparations for a future doomsday? Are you a doomsday prepper yourself? Feel free to get your point across in the comment section below.

More about coping with disaster:

• PhotoBlog: Survivalists prepare for the end
• Ready.gov: How to build an emergency kit
• Are you prepared for the worst?
• Cosmic Log archive about 2012 and doomsday

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

During the buildup to 12/21/12, some people added an extra solstice twist to the Maya doomsday myth, contending that the precise time of the end of the world would be 11:11 UTC, or 6:11 a.m. ET. That's because the turnover date of the Maya Long Count calendar also happens to be the date of the December solstice, when winter starts in the Northern Hemisphere and summer begins in the Southern Hemisphere. Well, the solstice has occurred, and we're all still here.

What good is an apocalypse without a Twitter account? Mayan Apocalypse (@kabooooooooom)  has just chimed in with its first tweet: "Sorry everyone, running a bit late."

While we're waiting for further updates from Chichen Itza and elsewhere, check out JibJab's hilarious year-in-review video, with an end-of-the-world theme. And keep tabs on http://cosmiclog.msnbc.com/2012 for further updates as the day wears on.

More about the non-apocalypse:

• Doomsday questions rain down on NASA
• Look down on a genuine Maya apocalypse

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

After years of claptrap about the Maya apocalypse on 12/21/12, the Big Day has dawned in many parts of the world. It's daytime in China, one of the world's hot spots for doomsday angst. So far, no solar flares have fried the earth, and no mountains have fallen into the sea. The sun will soon rise on Mexico's ancient Maya monuments, where thousands are gathering to greet a new era.

Then what?

"I don't think there's going to be a herd of jaguars descending from the heavens," said John Henderson, an anthropologist at Cornell University who specializes in the Maya world.

Archaeologists and astronomers have thoroughly debunked everything about the doomsday myth: The Maya never expected that the world would end when their Long Count calendar rolled over to the next 144,000-day cycle in 2012. Earth's magnetic field is not going haywire. There's no threat from the Large Hadron Collider, or the sun, or unseen planets, or the galactic plane.

More: Keep up to date on non-doomsday

Not everything about the Big Day is doom and gloom: Tourists and New Age types have flocked to the Maya ruins of Chichen Itza to greet Friday's dawn and the start of a new age with rituals old and new. "There is an explosion of consciousness through this," a gray-haired Californian musician named Shambala Songstar told Reuters. "We are becoming billionaires of energy. Opening to receive more light and more joy."

Minu Nair, a 27-year-old tourist from India, joked about the doomsday connection after hiking up to the top of the Maya pyramid at Coba, about an hour's drive from Chichen Itza. "At least we can die saying we saw the end of the world," he said with a laugh.

But not everything is sweetness and light, either. "We have to beware of mass psychosis," said Mexico's best-known soothsayer, Antonio Vazquez Alba. According to The Associated Press, Vazquez warned his followers to stay away from mass gatherings on Friday, out of concern about stampedes — or even mass suicides "of the kind we’ve seen before."

More: The scene at Chichen Itza

Victor Ruiz Garcia / Reuters

A man in a warrior costume dances in front of the Pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza in Mexico on Thursday.

Hector Retamal / AFP - Getty Images

A member of a folklore group places a Maya mask on his head in front of the Gran Jaguar temple in the Tikal archaeological site, north of Guatemala City.

Hector Retamal / AFP - Getty Images

A member of a folk group performs wearing a Maya mask at the Tikal archaeological site.

Orlando Sierra / AFP - Getty Images

Guatemalan shaman Christian Nottbohn conducts a Maya ceremony in Rastrajon, which was once a settlement for warriors tasked with protecting the ancient city of Copan in present-day Honduras.

Elsewhere, more than 1,000 members of Church of Almighty God were reportedly detained in China for spreading doomsday rumors. Hundreds more were heading for Serbia's Mount Rtanj and the French town of Bugarach, in search of a haven from the apocalypse. Authorities in Argentina limited access to a mountain called Cerro Uritorco after rumors spread about a plan for "massive spiritual suicide." In Michigan, dozens of schools were shut down early, partly because of end-of-the-world worries stoked by the Maya hype.

More: Rumors lead to school closures in Michigan

What would the ancient Maya think? "The Maya thought about everything in terms of cycles," Henderson told NBC News today. "Some may have expected the gods to fine-tune their creation of humanity. But others may have taken it more as an occasion to contemplate whether they were the kind of people they ought to be. And we can take it in the same way."

Think of it as the opportunity for New Year's Resolutions — or, in this case, New Baktun's Resolutions.

The Maya Long Count calendar divides time into a series of periods, building up to a cycle called the baktun that lasts 144,000 days, or a little more than 394 years. Dec. 21 marks the completion of 13 baktuns, which the Maya saw as a full cycle of creation. In some texts, the end of the 13th baktun — 13.0.0.0.0, in numerical notation — was used to refer to a long, long time.

"It would be like you and I saying, 'George Washington was such a great leader for us that we'll still be talking about him in the year 3000,'" said Walter Witschey, an anthropologist and Maya expert at Longwood University in Virginia.

But the Maya never thought time stopped in 2012 — or the year 3000, for that matter. A recently discovered Maya workshop demonstrated that calendar-makers contemplated time frames well beyond 2012, and the longest Maya calendar cycle, the alautun, goes out about 63 million years.

More: How the Maya calendar works

The concept of a Maya apocalypse appears to date to the 1960s: That was when anthropologist Michael Coe wrote a book speculating that the Maya saw the final day of the 13th baktun as the time for an "Armageddon" that would overtake all creation. Over the years, that idea became wrapped up with Christian ideas about the end times.

"So much of this Maya calendar fascination plays to very natural human tendencies to look for sources of information about the future, right?" said Loa Traxler, an archaeologist who is the curator of a "Maya 2012" exhibit at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. "When you add to that a lot of opinions that would point us to the end of days, and events of great reckoning, and destruction as the opening chapter of great change ... those are trends that play very strongly in modern society."

Some cultures get more concerned about it than others. In May, an international public opinion survey conducted by Ipsos for Reuters found that 20 percent of the Chinese respondents agreed that the Maya calendar would mark the end of the world. About 12 percent of the U.S. respondents felt that way, compared with only 4 percent in Germany.

Traxler said she encountered several well-educated people who asked her serious questions about the 2012 Maya apocalypse during a cruise through the Mediterranean in 2009. "It caught me by surprise," she said.

Her experience on that cruise was one of the reasons why she went to work on the "Maya 2012" exhibit, which tells the full story about the ancient Maya and their attentiveness to the cycles of time. "It has been quite an amazing adventure over the last several months," she said. "People have decided to make hay out of this."

More: In Maya doomsday, marketers see $$$

So when exactly does it stop? The consensus view among archaeologists is that the 13th baktun will end, and the 14th will begin, at sunrise Friday. "That would be sunrise in the Maya world, not in Beijing," Henderson joked.

But Witschey said there's still a bit of uncertainty about how the dates are calculated. "Most scholars would agree that we have a match within about three or four days," he said. "That means that the rollover of cycle 13 is going to hit on Dec. 21, or 23, or 24."

If past doomsday scares are any guide, it will take a while for the folks who were so worried about 12/21/12 to settle down. Some might claim that the date for the apocalypse was miscalculated, and will actually come at a later time. Others might say that the world-shifting change has actually begun, but the rest of us just can't sense it yet. Case studies abound, ranging from the Great Disappointment of 1844 to the Planet Clarion prophecy of 1954 to the Rapture of 2011.

The precise day or hour of the Maya calendar turnover doesn't matter all that much to Witschey.

"It's no big deal," he said. "Whatever day it is, I'm going to wake up the next day, going forward."

That sounds sensible to me. How's it sound to you? Even though it's no big deal, we'll be passing along updates during the Big Day and beyond. Just check in with http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/2012 for the latest.

Update for 9:15 p.m. ET: Although New Zealand hasn't had to contend with a Maya apocalypse, they might have to deal with the remnants of Cyclone Evan over the long weekend.

Update for 11:15 p.m. ET: NASA says it has been fielding hundreds of questions a day from people who are worried about 12/21/12. "We have done all we can to answer questions from the public," David Morrison, an astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center, told NBC News in an email. "Unfortunately, many don't believe us, like several mothers who have written to me in the last few hours asking if they should keep their children at home today."

Morrison forwarded one email message (with the sender's name removed) that he said was typical. Here's what it said: "Just like to know how I can survive the end of the world? Two friends of mine committed suicide this week because of that dreaded day, date. I just want to try to survive, and please tell me what to do!?"

It's impossible to verify the substance of that particular email, but if the sentiment is "typical," I'm hoping such folks are getting the reassurance they need. DON'T PANIC!

Update for 9:20 a.m. ET Dec. 21: I've added a video from TODAY that sounds the all-clear in the apocalypse drill. 

More about 2012:

• Why NASA jumped the gun on doomsday
• Doomsday hot spots around the globe
• Video: 'We're very respectful of traditions'
• Five apocalyptic dooms and why they won't happen
• Apocalypse-shmockalypse: 6 genuine natural threats
• Cosmic Log archive on 2012 and doomsday fears

This report includes information from Reuters and The Associated Press. The issue of when the 13th baktun ends is addressed in depth in "Exploring the 584286 Correlation Between the Maya and European Calendars" by Simon Martin and Joel Skidmore, published in the Fall 2012 issue of The PARI Journal.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA's latest video debunking doomsday hype comes from the future — to be precise, from Dec. 22, one day after the expected peak for worries that the end of an ancient Maya calendar cycle will signal the end of the world as well. Some might think that the video, titled "The World Didn't End Yesterday," was prematurely released. But it wasn't: The advance word about the non-apocalypse is a key part of the space agency's plan.

"The teaser for the video explains everything: 'NASA is so confident that the world is not coming to an end on Dec. 21, that they have already released a video for the day after,'" Tony Phillips, the writer and editor behind the NASA Science website as well as SpaceWeather.com, told NBC News in an email.

Phillips says the "day after" angle was his idea.

"I felt it was a lighter and more creative way to approach the topic than some of the other treatments we've seen," he wrote. "Some people have been confused by it, but not all. The unorthodox approach is definitely a conversation-starter, which was our goal all along."

Bashing the bunkum
As the 12-21-12 date approaches, NASA has been taking the lead in telling people that the connection between the Maya calendar and doomsday fears is pure bunkum. By some accounts, a grand 5,125-year cycle comes to an end on Dec. 21, but this year, archaeologists found that the Maya calendar counting system goes beyond 2012, just as our own calendar recycles itself after Dec. 31. For what it's worth, there's even some question whether Dec. 21 is the right date for the Maya calendar turnover.

INAH

The Maya "Long Count" calendar and its connection to 2012 has long been a topic of controversy.

Along the way, the Maya hype has gotten mixed up with other end-of-the-world memes, ranging from monster solar storms to the onset of a threatening Planet X. There's a germ of truth behind some of the memes. For example, the sun really is heading toward the peak of its 11-year activity cycle, but solar maximum won't cause the end of the world. In fact, Phillips has said the upcoming solar max could be "the weakest of the Space Age." Meanwhile, our planet is indeed heading toward a rough alignment with the sun and the galactic center on Dec. 21 — but that alignment happens every year at this time, due to the winter solstice.

NASA has been spending a lot of time lately separating the scientific fact from the scary fiction. Last month, the space agency put together a Web page that addresses the frequently asked questions about the 2012 hype, with links to even more information about topics ranging from polar shifts to supernovae and super volcanoes. This may sound like overkill, but it's not: Earlier this year, an international opinion survey conducted by Ipsos for Reuters found that 14 percent of the respondents believe the world will come to an end during their lifetime — and 10 percent said they were worried that the Maya calendar change-over would mark the end of the world.

What to tell your kids
All this doomsday hype can be particularly troubling for kids, who tend to look to the grown-ups for a reality check. Do your children need some reassurance? These tips from Kids.gov, the U.S. government's Web portal for the younger set, could come in handy:

• Take their fears seriously. Dismissing a fear with a quick "don't be silly comment" or brushing it aside by telling them not to worry is not going to help. If your children express a fear, take time to sit down and discuss it. This sends the message that you are really listening and that your kids can always come to you and they will be taken seriously.
• Educate yourself about the topic of their fears. This allows you to speak confidently about the subject and give you the facts when discussing a rumor.
• Help your child research the rumor. If your child heard the rumor at school or saw something scary on the Internet, sit down with him at the computer and help him to conduct his own research. Discuss the importance of finding credible sources for information and guide him to legitimate, authoritative resources.
• Take the fear off their plate. For younger children, sit down to discuss the child's fear and then tell them, "OK, from now on I will worry about this for you. You don’t have to worry about this anymore. I’ll look into it and I will let you know what I find out." Make sure to check back with your child once you have researched the topic. Anticipate any questions he may have and plan your responses.

Do you still have concerns about Dec. 21? Are you hearing the Maya hype from your friends? How are you handling all this? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below, and check back next week for our continuing coverage of the doomsday buzz. In the meantime, review our coverage of last year's Rapture rigmarole to get an advance look at how this is all likely to go down.

More about 2012:

• Stressed by storms? Don't panic
• Countdown to a non-doomsday
• 2012 and the Maya: What were they thinking?
• Serbian mountain draws the doomsday crowd
• Video: End of the world? Head to France

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Tyrone Turner / National Geographic

Boston University archaeologist William Saturno carefully uncovers art and writings left by the Maya some 1,200 years ago. The art and other symbols on the walls may have been records kept by a scribe, Saturno theorizes. Saturno's excavation and documentation of the house were supported by the National Geographic Society.

Archaeologists have found a stunning array of 1,200-year-old Maya paintings in a room that appears to have been a workshop for calendar scribes and priests, with numerical markings on the wall that denote intervals of time well beyond the controversial cycle that runs out this December.

For years, prophets of doom have been saying that we're in for an apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012, because that marks the end of the Maya "Long Count" calendar, which was based on a cycle of 13 intervals known as "baktuns," each lasting 144,000 days. But the researchers behind the latest find, detailed in the journal Science and an upcoming issue of National Geographic, say the writing on the wall runs counter to that bogus belief.

"It's very clear that the 2012 date, this end of 13 baktuns, while important, was turning the page," David Stuart, an expert on Maya hieroglyphs at the University of Texas at Austin, told reporters today. "Baktun 14 was going to be coming, and Baktun 15 and Baktun 16. ... The Maya calendar is going to keep going, and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future."

The current focus of the research project, led by Boston University's William Saturno, is a 6-by-6-foot room situated beneath a mound at the Xultun archaeological site in Guatemala's Peten region. Maxwell Chamberlain, a BU student participating in the excavations there, happened to notice a poorly preserved wall protruding from a trench that was previously dug by looters, with the hints of a painting on the plaster.

Saturno said he didn't think there'd be much to the wall, but "I felt we had a responsibility to find out at the very least how large this room was."

When archaeologists worked their way into the mound, they were amazed to find that it was a richly decorated room from the Classic Maya period, dating back to roughly the year 800. One niche was adorned with the faded picture of a Maya king, wearing a blue-feathered headdress and holding a white scepter. The picture of a scribe holding a stylus, perhaps the son or brother of the king, was painted nearby with the label "Younger Brother Obsidian." Another wall showed a row of three stylized black figures, with one bearing the hieroglyphic name "Older Brother Obsidian."

Tyrone Turner / National Geographic

The painted figure of a man — possibly a scribe who once lived in the house built by the ancient Maya — is illuminated through a doorway to the dwelling, in northeastern Guatemala. The structure represents the first Maya house found to contain artwork on its walls. The research is supported by the National Geographic Society.

Tyrone Turner / National Geographic

Never-before-seen artwork — the first to be found on walls of a Maya house — adorn the dwelling in the ruined city of Xultún. The figure at left is one of three men on the house's west wall who are painted in black and wear identical costumes. One of the black figures is named "Older Brother Obsidian." The figure in the center appears to be a scribe, labeled "Younger Brother Obsidian." A Maya king is portrayed at far right. Heather Hurst rendered the paintings in clearer detail below.

Heather Hurst / National Geographic

A vibrant orange figure, kneeling in front of the king on the ruined house's north wall, is labeled "Younger Brother Obsidian," a curious title seldom seen in Maya text. The man is holding a writing instrument, which may indicate he was a scribe. The painting re-creates the design and colors of the figure in the original Maya mural.

Heather Hurst / National Geographic

Three male figures, seated and painted in black, appear in a painting that re-creates the design and colors of a Mural found on the ruined house's west wall. The men wear only white loincloths and medallions around their necks, plus a headdress bearing another medallion and a single feather. One of the figures is particularly burly and is labeled "Older Brother Obsidian." Another is labeled as a youth.

Heather Hurst / National Geographic

A Maya king, seated and wearing an elaborate headdress of blue feathers, adorns the north wall of the ruined house discovered at the Maya site of Xultun. An attendant, at right, leans out from behind the king's headdress. The painting by artist Heather Hurst re-creates the design and colors of the original Maya artwork at the site.

Rows of numbers and hieroglyphs were painted on yet another wall. In fact, it appeared that the wall had been plastered over repeatedly and covered with new sets of figures. "What these are giving us are time spans," Stuart said. "Not so much dates, but Maya notations of elapsed time."

Stuart said some sets of numbers denoted lunar cycles of 177 or 178 days, along with the sign for a patron god that was associated with each cycle. "This was, we think, a calculator for a Maya priest, an astronomer, to figure out lunar ages," he said.

In a news release, Saturno said this represents the first look at "what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community."

"It's like an episode of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall," Saturno said. "They seem to be using it like a blackboard."

In addition to lunar cycles, the calculations on the wall could relate to the periods of Venus, Mercury and Mars, the researchers reported. Stuart said such calculations could have come into play for predicting eclipses. He imagined that there might be "one or more, maybe two or three of these astronomers or calendar priests working, sitting there on a workbench and writing these notations on the wall."

One array of numbers would be particularly intriguing to doomsday debunkers: lists that appear to denote wide ranges of accumulated time, including a 17-baktun period. "There was a lot more to the Maya calendar than just 13 baktuns," Stuart observed. Seventeen baktuns would stand for about 6,700 years, which is much longer than the 13-baktun cycle of 5,125 years. However, Stuart cautioned that the time notation shouldn't be read as specifying a date that's farther in the future than Dec. 21.

"It may just be that this is a mathematical number that they find interesting, kind of floating in time," he told me. "But it certainly is expressing a capacity of time. If they were calculating something from their time period, around 800 A.D., yeah, this would have gone way beyond 2012. But again, we're not sure exactly what the base of the calculation is."

William Saturno and David Stuart / National Geographic

Four long numbers on the north wall of the ruined house relate to the Maya calendar and computations about the moon, sun and possibly Venus and Mars; the dates may stretch some 7,000 years into the future. These are the first calculations Maya archaeologists have found that seem to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. Although they all involve common multiples of key calendrical and astronomical cycles, the exact significance of these spans of time is not known.

Saturno said archaeologists have been trying to get out the word that the end of the Maya culture's 13-baktun "Long Count" calendar didn't signify the end of the world, but merely a turnover to the next cycle in a potentially infinite series — like going from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1 on a modern calendar, or turning the odometer on a car over from 99999.9 to 00000.0.

"If someone is a hard-core believer that the world is going to end in 2012, no painting is going to convince them otherwise," he said. "The only thing that can convince them otherwise is waiting until Dec. 22, 2012 — which fortunately for all of us isn't that far away."

Saturno and his colleagues plan to be studying the Xultun site long after that time. He said the workshop was apparently part of a residential compound that had been razed over the ages; the workshop was preserved because it was filled in with material rather than smashed down from above. That could suggest that the room was recognized as a special place even when it was abandoned. Research into the room and its purpose is continuing, Saturno said.

In its day, Xultun apparently served as one of the major ceremonial cities for the Classic Maya civilization — and yet it's just barely been explored, in part because the area is so remote.

"We have probably 99.9 percent of Xultun left to explore," Saturno said. "We're going to be working on it probably for many decades to come. ... Four or five years in to the research project, we have yet to determine its actual boundaries — so my estimate may be off. We may have 99.99 percent left to excavate."

More Maya mysteries:

• How the Maya lived
• Maya myth revealed in stucco
• Maya doom teaches climate lesson
• Even the Maya are sick of 2012 hype
• Gallery: Seven archaeological mysteries

In addition to Saturno and Stuart, authors of the Science paper, "Ancient Maya Astronomical Tables from Xultun, Guatemala," include Anthony Aveni and Franco Rossi. The Xultun excavations between 2008 and 2012 were supported by Boston University and the National Geographic Society.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Last updated 5:25 p.m. ET Nov. 8

The asteroid 2005 YU55 will pose no threat to Earth when it zooms by on Tuesday, but it will spark a frenzy of picture-taking and online chatting. So where do you find the good stuff?

The hottest action will be up in the sky: This space rock (which we'll call YU55 from here on out) is about a quarter-mile (400 meters) wide, which makes it wider than an aircraft carrier. It's due to zoom past us at 30,000 mph (50,000 kilometers per hour) at a minimum distance of 198,000 miles (319,000 kilometers) at 6:28 p.m. ET. That would bring it just within the orbit of the moon. But don't worry: YU55 is on course to miss the moon as well as Earth, and even if it did hit the lunar surface, the only thing that'd happen would be a fantastic fireworks show.

If YU55 did smash into Earth, it could conceivably turn a city into a smoking crater, or stir up a destructive tsunami. But the asteroid's orbital path doesn't pose any risk in the foreseeable future. It's not expected to have any effect on Earth's tides, or on seismic activity. From the cosmic perspective, this is no big deal. In fact, YU55 has come even closer to Earth over the centuries, but went undetected until just six years ago.

The fact that YU55 went unnoticed for so long does raise a question, however: What else are we missing out there?

The science team for NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer recently estimated that more than 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids wider than a kilometer (0.6 miles) have been identified, but that thousands of asteroids in YU55's size range still remain to be detected. That's why astronomers around the world are so interested in watching for YU55 during this go-round. Getting a close look at this space rock should provide good practice for monitoring other potentially hazardous asteroids.

Asteroid experts say the last time a space rock as big as YU55 came this close was in 1976, and the next time will be in 2028.

Watching it pass by
You won't be able to see YU55 zoom by with your naked eye. Even at its closest approach, the asteroid will be no brighter than magnitude 11 — much dimmer than the magnitude-6.5 threshold for naked-eye observations. Astronomers say you'd need something on the order of a 6-inch telescope, and you'd have to know exactly where to look.

Sky & Telescope's editors have offered viewing advice as well as charts that show YU55's progress through the constellations. If you have your telescope aimed in the right place, you should be able to see a starlike point moving from west to east. "It will be gliding fast enough to move along in real time as you watch using a moderately high-magnification eyepiece," Sky & Telescope says.

Sky & Telescope

Best seen from North America, the asteroid 2005 YU55 will race far across the constellations in just 11 hours on the night of Nov. 8-9. The times shown on this chart are GMT. Subtract five hours for Eastern Standard Time. Click on the image for a larger view.

Some amateur astronomers are involved in an effort to monitor variations in the asteroid's brightness during the encounter. Those variations can be used to determine how YU55 is rotating as it flies by. Check out this Sky & Telescope webpage for details.

Most of us won't be peering through telescopes when 6:28 p.m. ET rolls around. Instead, we'll be looking for pictures from the professionals. The best pictures are expected to come from radar observations: NASA's Goldstone radio telescope in California and the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico are the big guns in this field, but the National Radio Astronomy Organization will be putting other assets on the case as well, including the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the Very Large Array in New Mexico, and the Very Long Baseline Array.

Other telescopes around the world will be watching as well. The Clay Center Observatory in Massachusetts, which became known for its telescopic imagery of high-flying SpaceShipOne, is planning to track the asteroid on video. Stay tuned for that imagery, which will be streamed online via msnbc.com as well as on Ustream and other outlets.

Watching it on the Web
NASA is offering two main portals to asteroid imagery: Asteroid and Comet Watch on the main NASA site, and Asteroid Watch on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's website. Both those sites should feature the latest and greatest images available to the space agency, and you should be able to see movies of YU55's encounter by late Tuesday or Wednesday.

NASA has just released a new radar view of the asteroid, produced from Goldstone data at 2:45 p.m. ET Monday when it was about 860,000 miles (1.38 million kilometers) from Earth. The image looks pretty pixellated, but it nevertheless reveals what appear to be lumps and craters on the surface. Arecibo is due to join the observing campaign on Tuesday, and the pictures should get progressively better as the asteroid zooms closer.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

The radar image at left shows the asteroid 2005 YU55, as imaged by NASA's Goldstone radio telescope from a distance of 860,000 miles. At right, a diagram shows the asteroid's trajectory past Earth and the moon.

Another popular place to look for space imagery is SpaceWeather.com, which is already passing along intelligence for the flyby. If amateurs come up with cool pictures of YU55, you can bet some of them will appear on that website. Space.com is keeping close watch on the asteroid encounter, and we'll be sharing the best of their coverage.

French astrophotographer Thierry Legault has made a name for himself as the chronicler of fast-moving space phenomena, ranging from space shuttles and the International Space Station to high-flying satellites. I'd be surprised if he didn't at least attempt to catch YU55 on video as it flies by. And if you can read German, you'll enjoy science writer Daniel Fischer's live blog of the flyby.

Share what you see
Have you got questions about the asteroid, or about asteroids in general? The Washington Post's website is hosting a live online chat at 1:30 p.m. ET Tuesday with Thomas Statler, a planetary scientist with the National Science Foundation. The chat follows up on last week's online encounter with NSF's Scott Fisher and NASA's Don Yeomans.

There's a growing buzz about the YU55 encounter on Facebook: You can easily find a whole bunch of event pages. And some wag has already set up a Twitter account for @AsteroidYU55 ("Uncomfortably Close"). For the real lowdown in tweets, do a search on YU55 or #YU55.

If you've made a great sighting, or even if you've found a great site on the Web, I hope you'll share it with the rest of the class. You can pass along links or observations in your comments below. You can also share comments or pictures via the Cosmic Log Facebook page or our brand-new Google+ page. We may use your submissions in our own follow-up coverage of the Great Asteroid Encounter.

Update for 11 p.m. ET: Discovery News' Ian O'Neill lets fly with an "Angry Asteroid" mashup.

More about the encounter:

• How to save our planet from a killer asteroid
• Want to see the space rock? Look fast!
• Could the asteroid destroy the moon? (No)
• Why radar's the best for tracking near-Earth objects
• Interactive: Close encounters of the asteroid kind

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or following the Cosmic Log Google+ page. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

As the talk of a world-ending Rapture turns to ridicule, a new set of worries is coming to the fore: How will the followers of Family Radio preacher Harold Camping react to their failure to ascend to heaven? What about all those millions of dollars that were contributed to Camping's cause, including the life savings that were exhausted in the effort? And what does this portend for next year, when an even more highly publicized date with doomsday is due?

First, about the failed prophecy: With just a few hours before Rapture Saturday goes into the history books, this day turned out to be pretty normal, all in all. No cataclysmic earthquakes (although there was an Icelandic eruption and a couple of significant shakers in Japan and a New Zealand island chain). No global strife (except for the usual mayhem in the usual places). And no snatching up of millions of believers into heaven (although a good number of pranksters made it look as if clothes and shoes were "left behind").

Also, no sign of Camping himself. The minister's California-based broadcasting concern has collected and spent millions of dollars over the past few years to promote his prophecy that Judgment Day would come on May 21, 2011, based on his own idiosyncratic interpretation of Bible numerology. He and other church leaders are likely to avoid making a public appearance until Sunday at the earliest. (The Family Radio website has been offline for most of the day today.)

Some of Camping's are already returning to their daily lives. The Associated Press highlighted the case of Keith Bauer, a tractor-trailer driver who hung around Family Radio's Oakland headquarters today waiting for the end. "I had some skepticism, but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God," Bauer told AP. "I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth."

Then he added, "It's God who leads you, not Harold Camping."

Bauer and his family took a week off to make the cross-country drive from their home in Maryland, and they'll start the drive back home on Sunday.

Anthea Butler, a professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, told NBC News that the ordeal is far from over for Camping's followers. For some of them, who have spent their life savings to spread the word of the Rapture, the worst days could well lie ahead.

"I think it's important to watch out for people who were in the midst of this group, to make sure that they don't harm themselves, or that they don't harm others," she said.

When prophecy fails
The Oakland connection brought to mind the case of Rev. Jim Jones, who got his start as a charismatic religious leader in that city, brought his followers to a People's Temple religious community set up in the jungles of Guyana ... and touched off a mass suicide there in 1978. The 1997 mass suicide of Heaven's Gate UFO cultists in the San Diego area serves as yet another cautionary tale from California.

But unlike People's Temple and Heaven's Gate, Family Radio did not isolate its supporters under cultlike conditions. Rather, these are regular Christians who sent in millions of dollars in contributions but continued to be engaged in their communities. A better analogy might be found in the case of the "Planet Clarion" UFO cult, which was the subject of the 1956 book "When Prophecy Fails." 

In the early 1950s, a Chicago housewife named Dorothy Martin attracted followers who believed her claim that a great flood would destroy the earth on Dec. 21, 1954. Only Martin's followers would be saved, supposedly by the alien beings that had alerted her to the threat via automatic writing. The authors of the book infiltrated the group and saw firsthand how the group reacted when the promised rescue (and flood) did not come. 

The group waited until past the bitter end for the aliens' arrival, experiencing deep disappointment at the prophecy's failure. But a few hours after the deadline, Martin transmitted the message that the cataclysm had actually been called off due to divine intervention. This re-energized the group to reach out and spread the word once more. The episode helped lay the foundation for the concept of cognitive dissonance, pioneered by social psychologist Leon Festinger, one of the co-authors of "When Prophecy Fails."

A great disappointment
In the case of Family Radio, there are additional factors in play: One has to do with the huge amounts of money collected and spent by the non-profit organization. Although verifiable figures on Family Radio's current finances are not available, the organization had $72 million in net assets at the end of 2009. How much of that remains, especially considering that Camping apparently expected to have shuffled off this mortal coil by now? Could contributors make legal claims on those funds?

The highly publicized failure of the prophecy could generate a backlash among the wider public as well. It's strange to think that the non-end of the world would spark an angry response, but there is a precedent: When Baptist preacher William Miller's prediction of a Second Advent on Oct. 22, 1844, failed to pay off, the "Great Disappointment" led to violence against Miller's followers in some quarters.

I can guarantee that there won't be any tarring-and-feathering of Camping or his supporters, as there was in the case of the Millerites. Nevertheless, there is some understandable resentment over this episode, as expressed in some of the postings to the Cosmic Log Facebook page.

At least one good thing may come out of today's non-Rapture: More folks are likely to realize that there's nothing to numerological mumbo-jumbo, whether it comes from the Bible or the Maya calendar. If fewer people are freaked out about the supposed predictions that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, that's a very good thing. The end will come, whether it's tomorrow or several billion years from now. But as a famous man once said, we do not know the day or the hour. Until then, make the most of every day, have your disaster kit ready ... and for heaven's sake, DON'T PANIC!  

Update for 9:15 a.m. ET May 22: Rapture Saturday is now history all over the world, and Camping's prophecy is now a total fail. Journalists caught up with Staten Island retiree Robert Fitzpatrick, who spent $140,000 of his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world and wrote a book about "The Doomsday Code." The Associated Press quoted him as saying, "I can't tell you what I feel right now. ... Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here."

After spending five years preparing for a Rapture that didn't come, Fitzpatrick said he didn't know what his next move would be. "I'm tired," the Staten Island Advance quoted him as saying. "I was working hard trying to get the word out. I'm very surprised. I fully expected that something would happen."

There's still no word from Camping himself, but things are getting ugly on his Facebook page.

More about the Rapture rumblings:

• All quiet on the Rapture front
• 'Left behind' by humorgeddon
• Why we're enraptured by the Rapture hype
• Rapture prophet says he'll be watching the action on TV
• Digital Life: Post-rapture video reveals stunning lack of zombies
• The Last Word: Only hours to go until the (fake) Rapture
• End of Days? Believers enter the final stretch
• End of the world? How about a party instead?
• Slate: 144 scenarios for America's apocalypse
• Pet sitting offered during Rapture
• Doomsday facts (or fictions)

Review all the Rapture weekend updates by checking CosmicLog.com/Rapture. You can also connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. And for something completely different, check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Delos Johnson via Flickr

Delos Johnson posted this photo from Alabama: "We just went for a short walk and then ... poof ... gone ... um ... what's that smell? ... yikes! ... brimstone."

The end times are no laughing matter, but when someone declares a particular day to be the start of the end, that can open the door for levity as well as lamentation. The most popular way to have a little fun with the Rapture — also known as Rapture bombing — has been to set out clothes to make it look as if the wearers were transported up to heaven.

There are literally scores of such pictures streaming onto Flickr, Yfrog, Instagram, Twitpic and other picture-sharing sites. Many of them have been flagged on Twitter with the hashtags #rapturebomb or #raptureprank. Here are a few of the favorites:

David Kinsey via Facebook

David Kinsey made this his new Facebook profile picture, with this caption:‎'"Interesting article in Ti....' It's Rapture Day! Hahahaha Pose your clothes, without you in 'em, and at the end of the day, give 'em away! A new, annual, halloween-ish holiday, 3rd Saturday in May, to benefit charity."

Delos Johnson via Flickr

Another one from Delos Johnson: "Close call! Almost had to cut the grass today. Feeling pretty rapturous about getting out of it!"

Rob Sheridan via Instagram

Here's a his-and-hers picture posted by Rob Sheridan: "Happy Rapture Day!"

Thanks to Delos Johnson, Rob Sheridan and David Kinsey for sharing. And special thanks to California photographer Brian Helm, a Cosmic Log correspondent who went the extra mile by shooting a five-minute video about the day of the fake Rapture:

One of the other popular concepts for Rapture bombing was to set loose a load of helium-filled blow-up dolls, to make it look as if souls were rising up into the sky. The interesting thing is, that idea was already caught on tape five years ago, as a lead-in for an episode of the "Six Feet Under" series about a quirky funeral-home family. Here it is:

Again, religious beliefs are nothing to laugh at, and there will be very serious repercussions in the days ahead, particularly for folks who spent their assets with the expectation that they'd enter immortality on Saturday. I hope Rapture bombing isn't seen as a criticism of Christianity. Think of it as a stress-reliever for the people who have been inundated by all the hype over the past week.

More about the Rapture rumblings:

• All quiet on the Rapture front
• Why we're enraptured by the Rapture hype
• Rapture prophet says he'll be watching the action on TV
• Digital Life: Post-rapture video reveals stunning lack of zombies
• The Last Word: Only hours to go until the (fake) Rapture
• End of Days? Believers enter the final stretch
• End of the world? How about a party instead?
• Slate: 144 scenarios for America's apocalypse
• Pet sitting offered during Rapture
• Doomsday facts (or fictions)

Even though Saturday is already finished with in some parts of the world, I'll still be blogging about the Rapture hype until the day is totally finished. You can follow the updates by checking CosmicLog.com/Rapture. You can also connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. And for something completely different, check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.