A religious leader known as Pakistan's Nostradamus has predicted that a comet or asteroid will crash into Earth this year, ending all life on the planet.
Who is Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi?
Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi was born in Pakistan and is best known for creating the spiritual group RAGS International, now known as the Messiah Foundation International (MFI). His books and teachings are banned in his country of birth because they are regarded as controversial.
Shahi's book 'The Religion of God', published in 2000, made the chilling world-ending asteroid prediction. If it is true, the year Shahi predicted the impact is 2026.
The prediction and its aftermath
Shahi said the comet will cause "total destruction" because God wishes to intimidate humans. A year after publishing the book, Shahi mysteriously went missing in London, England, in September 2001. No sign of the alleged prophet has been seen since, though he still has many followers who claim he is alive and living in secrecy.
If he were still alive today, Shahi would be 84 years old. NASA has rebuffed all claims that a massive asteroid is heading to wipe out humanity.
Related interstellar event
Last year, a piece of interstellar space junk made headlines when it whizzed past Earth. Many believed it might have been an alien spaceship hurtling towards us. Harvard professor Avi Loeb was one such person. Writing a blog last year, he said: "This multi-jet structure constitutes a remarkable target for future observations with the Hubble and Webb telescopes, as 3I/ATLAS will arrive at closest approach to Earth on December 19, 2025."
"Its minimal distance from Earth will be 269 million kilometers, about a hundred times larger than the extent of the jet structure in today's images." The 3I-ATLAS asteroid did not arrive on Earth.
