UPDATED (Dan learned to read a calendar) below:

There are a lot of doomsday theories going around right now thanks to the approaching end to the Mayan calendar. This article pointed to it saying:

An old post by the bloggers at Categorists.com seems to be causing some stir with what appears to be a joke. CERN’s Upcoming Test Schedule Coincides with Mayan Calendar The post is dated April 1, and a laughing face with the byline …APRIL FOOLS! appears near the bottom. They are fools themselves, messing with folks that way.

The link included in the commentary has since 404ed but Google has a cached version yet.

Anyway, where is this all going? The categorists.com page seemed to be pretty hoaxy. It just fits the theories too well and is quite easily discountable.

Not so fast.

Cern has a PDF on their website indicating tests on week 50, Monday going into Friday. Now I’m not one to believe the theories but this is one piece that happens to be true.

Cern IS running LHC tests up to and including on December 21, 2012.

Oops, no – it’s the week before that the final tests will be done. I promise to learn how 52-week calendars work before I ever post again. CERN is cooling down the LHC the week that contains the 21st.

Curiouser still, the categorists.com article actually once had this disclaimer on it:

APRIL FOOLS!

We’re sorry if this article had given arise to any concerns you may have had, but looking on the bright side, there probably will be a December 22nd. If not, we would all be very pissed to miss out on this years Christmas. And besides, if the world did end, you wouldn’t be able to come visit our nifty little website!

They did embellish the story by claiming to know these would be the highest powered experiments in the LHC yet. I haven’t found any evidence to support that idea yet.