Current News Affairs Bulletin

9/9/09: Will the world end on 9th Sep 2009?

What is the important of 09/09/09 ?

Today was heralded by some pessimists as the last day in the history of the human race. Internet chat rooms devoted to the occult have been awash with talk of 09/09/09.

On Tuesday the term 09/09/09 was among the top 100 search terms on Google, with some warning that the world would be sucked into a black hole created by the Cern particle collider in Switzerland, or humans would be hit by a killer outbreak of swine flu.

But at 9am this morning nothing happened, although there is still the possibility that the world could end at precisely 9pm of course.

But so far the most interesting things to have happened have been engineered by marketing companies wanting to benefit from the conspicuous date.

Today sees the release of a Beatles computer game, as well as the release of their digitally remastered back catalogue and the announcement of the new Apple iPod.

A new animated feature film, "9," set in a post-apocalyptic world, will also hit movie theatres in the states as US hotels offer discounts and American county clerks offer special "9/9/09" wedding prices

In the UK, where 999 is the emergency phone number, conspiracy theorists were particularly hopeful that the date would herald the end of the world.

This is despite the fact that the world has endured despite a number of previous dates for Armageddon, including the millenium and 06/06/06.

Though technically there's nothing special about the symmetrical date, some concerned with the history and meaning of numbers ascribe powerful significance to 09/09/09.

Users of the alien-earth.org website combined Nostrodamus, the Book of Revelation and the Mayan prophecies with fears about the Cern Large Hadron Collider in Geneva in their predictions.

But scientists dismissed the conspiracy theories and said numerology and the belief in special dates should be ignored.

Professor Chris French of Goldsmiths, University of London and editor of The Skeptic Magazine, told the Daily Mail: "Numerology, like any other system of divination, has no validity whatsoever with the exception that sometimes your belief that a day is auspicious may affect your behaviour."

"If a deeply superstitious person is anxious about driving on Friday 13th it's possible they may be more likely to crash.

"We are very good at seeking out meaning and patterns in randomness – it's one of the reasons humans are such a successful species. But the price is that we see significance in things that aren't there at all."

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