On November 28, as the winter solstice on December 21 approaches, NASA scientists undertook an hour-long video presentation, complete with a question and answer session via social media, to debunk Mayan apocalypse rumors tied to the approaching solstice. Stephanie Pappas, a senior writer for Space.com, reported on Yahoo News that part of the reason for the NASA’s presentation was “to soothe fears against the dark side of Mayan apocalypse rumors—frightened children and suicidal teens who truly fear the world may come to an end on December 21.”

David Morrison, an astrobiologist at the NASA Ames Research Center said, “There is no true issue here. This is just a manufactured fantasy.” However, as Morrison pointed out during a NASA Google+Hangout event on November 28, “While this is a joke to some people and a mystery to others, there is a core of people who are truly concerned.” In Pappas’s story, she writes that Morrison, who is one of NASA’s prominent speakers on 2012 doomsday myths, “receives many e-mails and letters from worried citizens, particularly young people. Some say they can’t eat, or are too worried to sleep.”

The NASA panel made clear that there are no rogue planets on a collision course with earth or killer solar flares waiting to engulf the earth. They went to great lengths to deconstruct a number of other myths that are currently working their way through the internet rounds, including rumors of a planet-wide blackout and that the earth’s magnetic field will suddenly reverse on December 21. Mitzi Adams, a heliophysicist at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, succinctly summed it up: “The greatest threat to Earth in 2012, at the end of this year and in the future, is just from the human race itself.”

NASA actually maintains a website debunking all the popular Mayan apocalypse rumors.