LOS ANGELES (NYT) -- As the person who is widely credited with helping usher in the 2012 Doomsday Craze, John Major Jenkins says he doesn’t want to spoil the party, but the world won’t end on Dec. 21, 2012.

An author of 10 books on Mayan culture, Jenkins says the end of the Mayan calendar did not prophesy Armageddon, but simply reflected their belief in the “birth of a new age.”

Interest in the Mayan calendar has been peaking recently with the upcoming release of the $200 million disaster film “2012” and an Internet campaign meant to promote hysteria surrounding the Mayan beliefs.

“It’s really interesting right now because there is a lot of hype around this date, especially with the movie ‘2012’ coming out,” said Jenkins, who will speak today at a conference at the Glendale Hilton. “But the idea that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012 is actually not the case.”

The ancient Mayans, known for their sophisticated knowledge of astronomy and mathematics, saw the end of the 5,125-year period as a time of “destruction and renewal,” some Mayan scholars say.

“Rather than simply the end of the world, the Maya would no doubt have viewed the end of this great cycle as an important and powerful time of reordering and renewal of the world,” said Eleanor Harrison-Buck, a Maya expert and an assistant professor of archaeology at the University of New Hampshire.

As the movie and hundreds of books, Web sites and blogs have piqued interest in ancient prophecies – especially those connected to 2012 – astronomers, archaeologists and prophecy scholars have found themselves busy debunking much of the apocalypse hysteria.

E.C. Krupp, director of Los Angeles’ Griffith Observatory and author of “The Great 2012 Scare” in this month’s issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, said, no, there is no scientific evidence to suggest the Earth’s magnetic poles will flip, California will slide into the sea or a rogue planet called Nibiru will smash into the globe in 2012.

“These are the hallucinatory visions of all-night talk radio and the World Wide Web,” said Krupp, who will give a free presentation on 2012 at the observatory on Dec. 4.

“The Earth is no more vulnerable to catastrophe in 2012 than it ever is, but the human imagination is probably more vulnerable to premonitions of catastrophe thanks to those who have exploited the traditions of the ancient Maya and distorted our understanding of modern astronomy.”

David Morrison, a senior scientist at NASA’s Astrobiology Institute and host of NASA’s Web-based “Ask an Astrobiologist,” has received thousands of questions from people who are “genuinely frightened” by the prophecy.

While it’s always possible an undetected asteroid could strike the Earth, Morrison said none of the thousands of asteroids NASA is tracking are expected to hit the world anytime soon. In the worst-case scenario, Morrison said, increased solar activity in 2012 could result in temporary damage to some communications satellites.

Sony Pictures is scheduled to release “2012” on Friday the 13th. The film by Roland Emmerich, who directed “Independence Day,” stars John Cusack, Danny Glover and Woody Harrelson.

The movie – featuring a 10.5-magnitude earthquake that destroys Los Angeles and a mega-tsunami that breaks over the Himalayas – is about the struggle of the survivors of a global cataclysm on Dec. 21, 2012 – the day the Mayan’s 5,125-year “Long Count” calendar ends.

In more than 200 books on Amazon.com and countless Web sites, some of the writers predict solar storms, a pole shift, galactic alignment and other celestial chaos will unleash carnage of biblical proportions upon the Earth, resulting in the extinction of nearly all life.

The Mayans aren’t the only culture with predictions of doom connected to 2012. The Hindus, Cherokee and Hopi tribes and Q’ero Indians of Peru also have prophecies regarding 2012. The date also aligns with Egyptian and Incan calendars, as well as with some interpretations of the prophecies of Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce and the I Ching.

The Skeptics Society, a national group headquartered in Altadena that uses science to study various myths and scientific controversies, examined the phenomenon in its magazine this month, with a cover story titled “2012: The End of the World – Again?”

“I have to say the 2012 phenomena has to be the most diverse end-of-the-world prediction ever in terms of the number of bad things that are supposed to happen – maybe the worst since the Book of Revelation with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” said Michael Shermer, executive director of the society.

Still, some pastors hope the 2012 mania can help serve as a jumping-off point for them to talk in their regular sermons about the Bible and its predictions of the future.

“It’s definitely a hot topic,” said Dudley Rutherford, pastor of the 12,000-member Shepherd of the Hills church in suburban Porter Ranch.

Jim Tolle, pastor of the 25,000-member Church on the Way in suburban Van Nuys, said the Mayan prophecy is capturing the public imagination because some people feel the world is in the “beginning of sorrows of the last days.”

An ABC.com poll last year found 16 percent of Americans expect apocalyptic events to occur on Dec. 21, 2012. Another poll found 59 percent of Americans believe prophecies in the Book of Revelation will come true.

“There is a premonition, there is an awareness, there is an almost subconscious, if not conscious, awareness of the end-times, the finality of things,” Tolle said. ‘`Everybody has it. Some deny it exists because they don’t want to have to grapple with the situation. (NYT)