RIO DE JANEIRO - The world will not end on December 21, 2012, the so-called "doomsday" on the Mayan calendar, Brazil's National Space Research Institute (Inpe) said on Monday.

Dismissing the doomsday predictions as rumors, Inpe researcher Clezio Marcos de Nardin stressed that there is nothing in the Mayan calendar that makes it better or more accurate than any other calendar used by mankind.

He said that populations using other calendars don't foresee such an impending catastrophe.

However, he said that "as a coincidence, the date is near a period in which the maximum solar activity is expected to occur."

"We can only speculate that the next period of the maximum solar activity will occur in 2013's spring, with a lower number of sunspots," he added.

US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has also rejected the doomsday predictions, denying any "planetary alignment" will happen and saying that even if such an event takes place, it will have little or no impact on the Earth.

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