The
Nibiru cataclysm is a supposed disastrous encounter between the
Earth and a large planetary object (either a collision or a
near-miss) which certain groups believe will take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this
doomsday event usually refer to this object as
Planet X or
Nibiru.
The idea that a planet-sized object could collide with or pass by Earth
in the near future is not supported by any scientific evidence and has
been rejected as
pseudoscience by astronomers and planetary scientists.
[1]
The idea was first put forward in 1995 by Nancy Lieder, founder of the website ZetaTalk. Lieder describes herself as a
contactee with the ability to receive messages from
extra-terrestrials from the
Zeta Reticuli
star system through an implant in her brain. She states that she was
chosen to warn mankind that the object would sweep through the inner
Solar System in May 2003 (though that date was later abandoned) causing Earth to undergo a
pole shift
that would destroy most of humanity. The prediction has subsequently
spread beyond Lieder's website and has been embraced by numerous
Internet doomsday groups, most of which link the event to the
2012 phenomenon. Although the name "Nibiru" is derived from the works of the late
ancient astronaut writer
Zecharia Sitchin and his interpretations of
Babylonian and
Sumerian mythology, Sitchin denied any connection between his work and various claims of a coming apocalypse.
Origins
Nibiru cataclysm
| Claims |
Earth's imminent collision or near miss with a giant planetoid |
| Related scientific disciplines |
Astronomy, archaeology |
| Year proposed |
1995. |
| Original proponents |
Nancy Lieder |
| Subsequent proponents |
Marshall Masters, Jaysen Rand, Mark Hazlewood, Pana Wave |
| Pseudoscientific concepts |
The idea of the Nibiru encounter originated with Nancy Lieder, a
Wisconsin woman who claims that as a girl she was
contacted by
gray extraterrestrials
called Zetas, who implanted a communications device in her brain. In
1995, she founded the website ZetaTalk to disseminate her ideas.
[2] Lieder first came to public attention on Internet
newsgroups during the build-up to
Comet Hale–Bopp's 1997
perihelion.
She stated, speaking as the Zetas, that "The Hale-Bopp comet does not
exist. It is a fraud, perpetrated by those who would have the teeming
masses quiescent until it is too late. Hale-Bopp is nothing more than a
distant star, and will draw no closer."
[3]
She claimed that the Hale-Bopp story was manufactured to distract
people from the imminent arrival of a large planetary object, "Planet
X", which would soon pass by Earth and destroy civilization.
[3] After Hale-Bopp's perihelion revealed it as one of the brightest and longest-observed comets of the last century,
[4] Lieder removed the first two sentences of her initial statement from her site, though they can still be found in
Google's archives.
[3] Her claims eventually made the
New York Times.
[5]
Lieder described Planet X as roughly four times the size of the
Earth, and said that its closest approach would occur on May 27, 2003,
resulting in the Earth's rotation ceasing for exactly 5.9 terrestrial
days. This would be followed by the Earth's pole destabilising in a
pole shift (a
physical pole shift, with the Earth's pole physically moving, rather than a
geomagnetic reversal)
caused by magnetic attraction between the Earth's core and the
magnetism of the passing planet. This in turn would disrupt the Earth's
magnetic core and lead to subsequent displacement of the Earth's crust.
[6]
After Lieder, the first person to propagate her Planet X idea was
Mark Hazlewood, a former member of the ZetaTalk community, who in 2001
published a book:
Blindsided: Planet X Passes in 2003. Lieder would later accuse him of being a confidence trickster.
[7] A
Japanese cult called the
Pana Wave Laboratory,
which blocked off roads and rivers with white cloths to protect itself
from electromagnetic attacks, also warned that the world would end in
May 2003 after the approach of a tenth planet.
[8]
Roughly a week before the supposed arrival of Planet X, Lieder appeared on
KROQ-FM radio in
Los Angeles,
and advised listeners to put their pets down in anticipation of the
event. When asked if she had done so, she replied that she had, and that
"The puppies are in a happy place." She also advised that "A dog makes a
good meal".
[9] After the 2003 date passed without incident, Lieder said that it was merely a "White Lie ... to fool the establishment,"
[10] and said that to disclose the true date would give those in power enough time to declare
martial law and trap people in cities during the shift, leading to their deaths.
[11]
Many Internet sites continue to proclaim that Lieder's object is en
route to Earth, often citing its arrival date as December, 2012. This
date has gathered many
apocalyptic associations, as it is the end of the current cycle (
baktun) in the
long count in the
Mayan calendar. Several writers have published books connecting the encounter with 2012.
[12]
Zecharia Sitchin and Sumer
Although Lieder originally referred to the object as "Planet X", it has become deeply associated with
Nibiru, a planet from the works of
ancient astronaut proponent
Zecharia Sitchin, particularly his book
The 12th Planet.
According to Sitchin's interpretation of Babylonian religious texts,
which contradicts conclusions reached by credited scholars on the
subject,
[13][14] a giant planet (called Nibiru or
Marduk) passes by Earth every 3,600 years and allows its
sentient inhabitants to interact with humanity. These beings, which Sitchin identified with the
Annunaki of Sumerian myth, would become humanity's first gods.
[15]
Lieder first made the connection between Nibiru and her Planet X on her
site in 1996 ("Planet X does exist, and it is the 12th Planet, one and
the same.").
[16]
However, Sitchin, who died in 2010, denied any connection between his
work and Lieder's claims. In 2007, partly in response to Lieder's
proclamations, Sitchin published a book,
The End of Days, which
set the time for the last passing of Nibiru by Earth at 556 BC, which
would mean, given the object's supposed 3,600-year orbit, that it would
return sometime around AD 2900.
[17]
He did however say that he believed that the Annunaki might return
earlier by spaceship, and that the timing of their return would coincide
with the shift from the astrological
Age of Pisces to the
Age of Aquarius, sometime between 2090 and 2370.
[18]
Scientific criticism
Astronomers reject the idea of Nibiru, and have made efforts to inform the public that there is no threat to Earth in 2012.
[19] They point out that such an object so close to Earth would be easily visible to the naked eye, as
Jupiter and
Saturn
are both visible to the naked eye, and are dimmer than Nibiru would be
at their distances. A planet such as Nibiru would create noticeable
effects in the orbits of the outer planets.
[20]
Some counter this by claiming that the object has been concealed behind
the Sun for several years, though this would be geometrically
impossible.
[12] Amateur photographs supposedly showing Nibiru near the Sun are usually the result of
lens flares, false images of the Sun created by reflections within the lens.
[21]
Astronomer
Mike Brown
notes that if this object's orbit were as described, it would only have
lasted in the Solar System for a million years or so before Jupiter
expelled it, and that there is no way another object's magnetic field
could have such an effect on Earth.
[22]
Lieder's assertions that the approach of Nibiru would cause the Earth's
rotation to stop or its axis to shift violate the laws of physics. In
his rebuttal of
Immanuel Velikovsky's
Worlds in Collision, which made the same claim that the Earth's rotation could be stopped and then restarted,
Carl Sagan
noted that, "the energy required to brake the Earth is not enough to
melt it, although it would result in a noticeable increase in
temperature: The oceans would [be] raised to the boiling point of
water ... [Also,] how does the Earth get started up again, rotating at
approximately the same rate of spin? The Earth cannot do it by itself,
because of the law of the
conservation of angular momentum."
[23]
In a 2009 interview with the
Discovery Channel,
Mike Brown noted that, while it is not impossible that the Sun has a
distant planetary companion, such an object would have to be lying very
far from the observed regions of the Solar System to have no
gravitational effect on the other planets. A Mars-sized object could lie
undetected at 300 AU (10 times the distance of Neptune); a
Jupiter-sized object at 30,000 AU. To travel 1000 AU in two years, an
object would need to be moving at 2400 km/s – faster than the galactic
escape velocity. At that speed, any object would be shot out of the Solar System, and then out of the
Milky Way galaxy into intergalactic space.
[24]
Conspiracy theories
Many believers in the imminent approach of Planet X/Nibiru accuse
NASA of deliberately covering up visual evidence of its existence.
[25] One such accusation involves the
IRAS
infrared space observatory, launched in 1983. The satellite briefly
made headlines due to an "unknown object" that was at first described as
"possibly as large as the giant planet
Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this Solar System".
[26]
This newspaper article has been cited by proponents of the Nibiru
cataclysm, beginning with Lieder herself, as evidence for the existence
of Nibiru.
[27]
However, further analysis revealed that of several initially
unidentified objects, nine were distant galaxies and the tenth was "
intergalactic cirrus"; none were found to be Solar System bodies.
[28]
Another accusation frequently made by websites predicting the collision is that the U.S. government built the
South Pole Telescope (SPT) to track Nibiru's trajectory, and that the object has been imaged optically.
[29]
However, the SPT (which is not funded by NASA) is a radio telescope,
and cannot take optical images. Its South Pole location was chosen due
to the low-humidity environment, and there is no way an approaching
object could be seen
only from the South Pole.
[30] The "picture" of Nibiru posted on YouTube was revealed, in fact, to be a
Hubble image of the expanding
light echo around the star
V838 Mon.
[29]
Another conspiracy claim regards a patch of missing data in
Google Sky
near the constellation of Orion, which has often been cited as evidence
that Nibiru has been redacted. However, the same region of sky can
still be viewed by thousands of amateur astronomers. A scientist at
Google said that the missing data is due to a glitch in the stitching
software used to piece the images together.
[31] Another piece of claimed evidence drawn from Google Sky is the
carbon star CW Leonis, which is the brightest object in the 10 μm infrared sky and is frequently claimed to be Nibiru.
[32]
Misappellations
Believers in Planet X/Nibiru have given it many names since it was
first proposed. All are, in fact, names for other real, hypothetical or
imaginary Solar System objects that bear little resemblance to Nibiru as
described by Lieder or Sitchin.
Planet X
Lieder drew the name Planet X from
the hypothetical planet once searched for by astronomers to account for discrepancies in the orbits of
Uranus and
Neptune.
[16] In 1894, Bostonian astronomer
Percival Lowell
became convinced that the planets Uranus and Neptune had slight
discrepancies in their orbits. He concluded that they were being tugged
by the gravity of another, more distant planet, which he called "Planet
X".
[33] However, nearly a century of searching failed to turn up any evidence for such an object (
Pluto was initially believed to be Planet X, but was later determined to be too small).
[34]
In 1992, astronomer Myles Standish showed that the supposed
discrepancies in the planets' orbits were illusory; the product of an
overestimation of the mass of Neptune.
[35] Today astronomers accept that Planet X does not exist.
[36]
Hercolubus
In 1999,
New Age author V. M. Rabolu wrote in
Hercolubus or Red Planet that
Barnard's star
is actually a planet known to the ancients as Hercolubus, which
purportedly came dangerously close to Earth in the past, destroying
Atlantis, and will come close to Earth again.
[37] Lieder subsequently used Rabolu's ideas to bolster her claims.
[38]
Barnard's star has been directly measured to be 5.98 ± 0.003
light years from Earth (35.15 trillion miles).
[39]
While it is approaching Earth, Barnard's Star will not make its closest
approach to the Sun until around 11,700 AD, when it will approach to
within some 3.8 light-years.
[40] This is only slightly closer than the closest star to the Sun (
Proxima Centauri) lies today.
Nemesis
Believers in Planet X/Nibiru have often confused it with
Nemesis,
[41] a hypothetical star first proposed by physicist
Richard A. Muller. In 1984, Muller postulated that
mass extinctions were not random, but appeared to occur in the
fossil record
with a loose periodicity that ranged from 26–34 million years. He
attributed this supposed pattern to a heretofore undetected companion to
the Sun, either a dim
red dwarf or a
brown dwarf,
lying in an elliptical, 26-million-year orbit. This object, which he
named Nemesis, would, once every 26 million years, pass through the
Oort cloud, the shell of over a trillion icy objects believed to be the source of
long-period comets
that orbit at thousands of times Pluto's distance from the Sun.
Nemesis's gravity would then disturb the comets' orbits and send them
into the inner Solar System, causing the Earth to be bombarded. However,
to date no direct evidence of Nemesis has been found.
[42]
Though the idea of Nemesis appears similar to the Nibiru cataclysm,
they are, in fact, very different, as Nemesis, if it existed, would have
an orbital period thousands of times longer, and would never come near
Earth itself.
[41]
Sedna or Eris
Still others confuse Nibiru with
Sedna or
Eris,
trans-Neptunian objects discovered by Mike Brown in 2003 and 2005 respectively.
[43][44] However, despite having been described as a "tenth planet" in an early NASA press release,
[45] Eris (provisional designation:
2003 UB313) is now classified as a
dwarf planet. Only slightly more massive than Pluto,
[46] Eris has a well-determined orbit that never takes it closer than 5.5 billion km from the Earth.
[47] Sedna is slightly smaller than Pluto,
[48] and never comes closer to Earth than 11.4 billion km.
[49] Mike Brown believes the confusion results from both the real Eris and the imaginary Nibiru having extremely
elliptical orbits.
[43]
Tyche
Others have tied it to
Tyche;
[50] the name proposed by John Matese and Daniel Whitmire of the
University of Louisiana at Lafayette for an object they believe to be influencing the orbits of comets in the Oort cloud.
[51] The name, after the "good sister" of the Greek goddess
Nemesis,
was chosen to distinguish it from the similar Nemesis hypothesis as,
unlike Nemesis (or Nibiru), Matese and Whitmire do not believe that
their object poses a threat to Earth.
[52]
Also, this object, if it exists, would, like Nemesis, have an orbit
hundreds of times longer than that proposed for Nibiru, and never come
near the inner Solar System.
[50]
Comet Elenin
Some have also associated Nibiru with
Comet Elenin,
[53] a
long-period comet discovered by Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin on December 10, 2010.
[54] On October 16, 2011, Elenin made its closest approach to the Earth at a distance of 0.2338 AU (34,980,000 km; 21,730,000 mi),
[55][56] which is slightly closer than the planet
Venus.
[57]
Nevertheless, in the leadup to its closest approach, claims spread on
conspiracy websites concluded that it was on a collision course, that it
was as large as Jupiter or even a
brown dwarf, and even that the name of the discoverer, Leonid Elenin, was in fact code for ELE, or an
Extinction Level Event.
[53]
Although the sizes of comets are difficult to determine without close
observation, Comet Elenin is likely to be less than 10 km in diameter.
[58] Elenin himself estimates that the
comet nucleus is roughly 3–4 km in diameter.
[59] This would make it millions of times smaller than the supposed Nibiru. Comet hysteria is not uncommon.
[60] Attempts have been made to correlate Elenin's alignments with the
2011 Japan earthquake, the
2010 Canterbury earthquake, and
2010 Chile earthquake;
however, even discounting Elenin's tiny size, earthquakes are driven by
forces within the earth, and cannot be triggered by the passage of
nearby objects.
[61]
In 2011, Leonid Elenin ran a simulation on his blog in which he
increased the mass of the comet to that of a brown dwarf (0.05 solar
masses). He demonstrated that its gravity would have caused noticeable
changes in the orbit of Saturn years before its arrival in the inner
Solar System.
[62]
In August, 2011, Comet Elenin began to disintegrate,
[63][64] and by the time of its closest approach in October 2011 the comet was undetected even by large, ground based telescopes.
[65]
Public reaction
The impact of the public fear of the Nibiru cataclysm has been
especially felt by professional astronomers. Mike Brown now says that
Nibiru is the most common
pseudoscientific topic he is asked about.
[22]
David Morrison, director of
SETI,
CSI Fellow and Senior Scientist at
NASA's Astrobiology Institute at
Ames Research Center,
says he receives 20 to 25 emails a week about the impending arrival of
Nibiru: some frightened, others angry and naming him as part of the
conspiracy to keep the truth of the impending apocalypse from the
public, and still others asking whether or not they should kill
themselves, their children or their pets.
[25][66] Half of these emails are from outside the U.S.
[12]
"Planetary scientists are being driven to distraction by Nibiru," notes
science writer Govert Schilling, "And it is not surprising; you devote
so much time, energy and creativity to fascinating scientific research,
and find yourself on the tracks of the most amazing and interesting
things, and all the public at large is concerned about is some crackpot
theory about clay tablets, god-astronauts and a planet that doesn't
exist."
[1]
Morrison states that he hopes that the non-arrival of Nibiru could
serve as a teaching moment for the public, instructing them on "rational
thought and baloney detection", but doubts that will happen.
[25]
Morrison noted in a lecture recorded on
FORA.tv
that there was a huge disconnect between the large number of people on
the Internet who believed in Nibiru's arrival in 2012 and the majority
of scientists who have never heard of it. To date he is the only major
NASA scientist to speak out regularly against the Nibiru phenomenon.
[66]
Cultural influence
A
viral marketing campaign for
Sony Pictures' 2009 film
2012, directed by
Roland Emmerich,
which depicts the end of the world in that year, featured a supposed
warning from the "Institute for Human Continuity" that listed the
arrival of Planet X as one of its doomsday scenarios.
[67] Mike Brown attributes a spike in concerned emails and phone calls he has received from the public to this site.
[43]
Lars von Trier's 2011 film
Melancholia features a plot in which a planet emerges from behind the Sun onto a collision course with Earth.
[68] Announcing his company's purchase of the film, the head of
Magnolia Pictures said in a press release, "As the 2012 apocalypse is upon us, it is time to prepare for a cinematic last supper."
[69]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.crystalinks.com/nibiru.html