Breitbart.com reports: “A new detailed map of Mars shows what was likely a vast ocean in the north and valleys around the equator, suggesting that the planet once had a humid, rainy climate, according to research.

The computer-generated map, based on topographic data from NASA satellites, also shows that the network of valleys on the red planet is at least twice as extensive as previously estimated.

‘The relatively high values over extended regions indicate the valleys originated by means of precipitation-fed runoff erosion — the same process that is responsible for formation of the bulk of valleys on our planet,’ said Wei Luo, geography professor at Northern Illinois University who co-authored the report.

‘A single ocean in the northern hemisphere would explain why there is a southern limit to the presence of valley networks,’ Luo said.

‘The southernmost regions of Mars, located farthest from the water reservoir, would get little rainfall and would develop no valleys. This would also explain why the valleys become shallower as you go from north to south, which is the case.’

Rain, said Luo, ‘would be mostly restricted to the area over the ocean and to the land surfaces in the immediate vicinity, which correlates with the belt-like pattern of valley dissection seen in our new map.’

The report appears in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Since NASA’s Mariner 9 space probe discovered the ancient Martian valley networks in 1971, debate has raged over whether the valleys resulted from water erosion — meaning that there was humidity and rainfall — or through groundwater sapping erosion, which can happen in cold and dry conditions…” (Luke 21:25 – “There shall be signs in the sun, moon, and stars“.)

Breitbart.com reports: “The world is not coming to an end on December 21, 2012, the US space agency insisted in a rare campaign to dispel widespread rumors fuelled by the Internet and a new Hollywood movie.

Sony Pictures’s latest big screen offering ‘2012’ arrived in theaters with a 200-million-dollar production about the end of the world supposedly based on myths backed by the Mayan calendar.

The doomsday scenario revolves claims that the end of time will come as an obscure Planet X — or Nibiru — heads toward or collides into Earth.

The mysterious planet was supposedly discovered by the Sumerians, according to claims by pseudo-scientists, paranormal activity enthusiasts and Internet theorists.

Some websites accuse NASA of concealing the truth on the wayward planet’s existence, but the US space agency denounced such stories as an ‘Internet hoax.’

‘There is no factual basis for these claims,’ NASA said in a question-and-answer posting on its website.

If such a collision were real ‘astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye,’ it added. ‘Obviously, it does not exist.’

‘Credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012,’ NASA insisted.

Initial theories set the disaster for May 2003, but when nothing happened the date was moved forward to the winter solstice in 2012 to coincide with the end of a cycle of the ancient Mayan calendar.

But NASA insisted the Mayan calendar in fact does not end on December 21, 2012, as another period begins immediately afterward. And it said there are no planetary alignments on the horizon for the next few decades.

And even if the planets were to line up as some have forecast, the effect on our planet would be ‘negligible,’ NASA said.

Among the other theories NASA has set out to debunk are that geomagnetic storms, a pole reversal or unsteadiness in the Earth’s crustal plates might befall the planet…” (NASA is right in debunking the “End of the World Theory” because God’s Word states 120 times that ours is “A world without end” – Isaiah 45:17; Ephesians 3:21. However, they miss or misunderstand the prophecies concerning unusual events and the 21 judgments in space and upon earth that occur during the 7-year Tribulation period of Revelation chapters 6 – 18.)