It hasn’t been all that long since Roland Emmerich more or less blew up the world in 2012, a film renowned for its scrupulous scientific accuracy. You could see this almost from the first scene, where a news announcer refers to prophecies made by the Quiché (kee-CHAY) Mayans, whom he calls the “quiche” (keesh) Mayans. Ah, yes, the Quiche Mayans. Famous for their apocalyptic prophecies and their mastery of the cheese tart. Well, the Quiche Mayans and their dark lord Roland Emmerich are laughing at us now, because it looks as if the prophecies are true. A solar storm with “the force of 100 million hydrogen bombs” is brewing, and certain online experts predict it will strike the Earth in, you guessed it, 2012:

Dr Richard Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics division, told Mr Reneke the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning”, causing catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.

Why, a storm like that might wipe out all life on Earth. Or EMP effects might scramble the chips in our laptops and Blackberrys, rendering life on Earth boring and pointless. Or, as other experts have pointed out, this just might be the solar maximum in the sun’s 11-year cycle, and we’ll be telling our grandchildren about this event the same way we reminisce about the last solar max in 2000—i.e., not at all. But those are the alternatives: the end of life as we know it, or nothing much. Because I’ll be blasted into my elementary particles before I’ll tell Roland Emmerich that he was right all along.