Nibiru collision
Encyclopedia
The Nibiru collision 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.
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 predicted collision 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 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.
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. 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." 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. After Hale-Bopp's perihelion revealed it as one of the brightest and longest-observed comets of the last century, Lieder removed the first two sentences of her initial statement from her site, though they can still be found in Google
's archives. Her claims eventually made the New York Times.
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.
Lieder's Planet X idea first spread beyond her website in 2001, when Mark Hazlewood, a former member of the ZetaTalk community, took her ideas and published them in a book: Blindsided: Planet X Passes in 2003. Lieder would later accuse him of being a confidence trickster. A Japan
ese 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.
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". After the 2003 date passed without incident, Lieder said that it was merely a "White Lie ... to fool the establishment," 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.
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 collision with 2012.
, 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, 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. 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.").
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. 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.
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. Some counter this by claiming that the object has been concealed behind the Sun for several years, though this would be geometrically impossible. Amateur photographs supposedly showing Nibiru near the Sun are usually the result of lens flare
s, false images of the Sun created by reflections within the lens.
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. 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."
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.
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". This newspaper article has been cited by proponents of the collision idea, beginning with Lieder herself, as evidence for the existence of Nibiru. However, further analysis revealed that of several unidentified objects, nine were distant galaxies and the tenth was "intergalactic cirrus
"; none were found to be Solar System bodies.
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. 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. 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.
Another conspiracy claim regards a patch of missing data 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 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. 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.
once searched for by astronomers to account for discrepancies in the orbits of Uranus
and Neptune
. 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". 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). 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. Today astronomers accept that Planet X does not exist.
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. Lieder subsequently used Rabolu's ideas to bolster her claims.
Barnard's star has been directly measured to be 5.98 ± 0.003 light years from Earth (35.15 trillion miles). 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. This is only slightly closer than the closest star to the Sun (Proxima Centauri
) lies today.
, 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 brown dwarf
, a dim red dwarf
or a gas giant
planet, 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. Though the idea of Nemesis appears similar to the Nibiru collision, 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.
or Eris
, trans-Neptunian object
s discovered by Mike Brown in 2003 and 2005 respectively. However, despite having been described as a "tenth planet" in an early NASA press release, Eris (provisional designation: 2003 UB313) is now classified as a dwarf planet
. Only slightly larger than Pluto, Eris has a well-determined orbit that never takes it closer than 5.5 billion km from the Earth. Sedna is slightly smaller than Pluto, and never comes closer to Earth than 11.4 billion km. Mike Brown believes the confusion results from both the real Eris and the imaginary Nibiru having extremely elliptical orbits
.
; 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. The name, after the "good sister" of the Greek goddess Nemesis
, was chosen to distinguish it from the similar Nemesis hypothesis as, unlike Nemesis, Matese and Whitmire do not believe that their object poses a threat to Earth. However, 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.
, and even that the name of the discoverer, Leonid Elenin, was in fact code for ELE, or an Extinction Level Event.
Although the sizes of comets are difficult to determine without close observation, Comet Elenin is likely to be less than 10 km in diameter. Elenin himself estimates that the comet nucleus
is roughly 3–4 km in diameter. This would make it millions of times smaller than the supposed Nibiru. Comet hysteria is not uncommon. 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. 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.
In August, 2011, Comet Elenin began to disintegrate, and by the time of its closest approach in October 2011 the comet was undetected even by large, ground based telescopes.
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. Half of these emails are from outside the U.S. "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." 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.
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.
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. Mike Brown attributes a spike in concerned emails and phone calls he received from the public to this site.
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. 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."
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
and a large planetary object (either a collision or a near-miss
Near-Earth object
A near-Earth object is a Solar System object whose orbit brings it into close proximity with the Earth. All NEOs have a perihelion distance less than 1.3 AU. They include a few thousand near-Earth asteroids , near-Earth comets, a number of solar-orbiting spacecraft, and meteoroids large enough to...
) which certain groups believe will take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event
Doomsday event
A doomsday event is a specific, plausibly verifiable or hypothetical occurrence which has an exceptionally destructive effect on the human race...
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
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
by astronomers and planetary scientists.
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
Zeta Reticuli
Zeta Reticuli is a binary star system located about away from Earth. It is located in the constellation Reticulum, and is visible to the unaided eye in very dark skies...
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
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
in May 2003 (though that date was later abandoned) causing Earth to undergo a pole shift that would destroy most of humanity. The predicted collision 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
2012 phenomenon
The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012. This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar...
. Although the name "Nibiru" is derived from the works of late ancient astronaut writer Zecharia Sitchin
Zecharia Sitchin
Zecharia Sitchin was an Azerbaijani-born American author of books promoting an explanation for human origins involving ancient astronauts. Sitchin attributes the creation of the ancient Sumerian culture to the Anunnaki, which he states was a race of extra-terrestrials from a planet beyond Neptune...
and his interpretations of Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, Sitchin denied any connection between his work and various claims of a coming apocalypse.
Origins
The idea of the Nibiru encounter originated with Nancy Lieder, a WisconsinWisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
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. Lieder first came to public attention on Internet newsgroups during the build-up to Comet Hale-Bopp
Comet Hale-Bopp
Comet Hale–Bopp was perhaps the most widely observed comet of the 20th century, and one of the brightest seen for many decades...
'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." 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. After Hale-Bopp's perihelion revealed it as one of the brightest and longest-observed comets of the last century, Lieder removed the first two sentences of her initial statement from her site, though they can still be found in Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
's archives. Her claims eventually made the New York Times.
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
Geomagnetic reversal
A geomagnetic reversal is a change in the Earth's magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged. The Earth's field has alternated between periods of normal polarity, in which the direction of the field was the same as the present direction, and reverse...
) 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.
Lieder's Planet X idea first spread beyond her website in 2001, when Mark Hazlewood, a former member of the ZetaTalk community, took her ideas and published them in a book: Blindsided: Planet X Passes in 2003. Lieder would later accuse him of being a confidence trickster. A Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese cult called the Pana Wave
Pana Wave
The Pana-Wave Laboratory is a Japanese religious group. Estimates of membership range from several hundred to 1,200.- Origin :Pana-Wave is an offshoot of a religious group called Chino-Shoho based in Shibuya, Tokyo, founded by a woman called Yuko Chino in 1977 and combining elements of...
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.
Roughly a week before the supposed arrival of Planet X, Lieder appeared on KROQ-FM
KROQ-FM
KROQ-FM — branded 106.7 KROQ — is a commercial modern rock radio station licensed to Pasadena, California serving the Greater Los Angeles. The call sign is pronounced "kay rock." It is the flagship station of Loveline hosted by Dr...
radio in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, 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". After the 2003 date passed without incident, Lieder said that it was merely a "White Lie ... to fool the establishment," and said that to disclose the true date would give those in power enough time to declare martial law
Martial law
Martial law is the imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions on an emergency basis— only temporary—when the civilian government or civilian authorities fail to function effectively , when there are extensive riots and protests, or when the disobedience of the law...
and trap people in cities during the shift, leading to their deaths.
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
2012 phenomenon
The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012. This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar...
, as it is the end of the current cycle (baktun
Baktun
A baktun is 20 katun cycles of the ancient Maya Long Count Calendar. It contains 144,000 days, equivalent to 394.26 tropical years. The Classic period of Maya civilization occurred during the 8th and 9th baktuns of the current calendrical cycle. The current baktun will end, or be completed, on...
) in the long count
Mesoamerican Long Count calendar
The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal and base-18 calendar used by several Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is sometimes known as the Maya Long Count calendar...
in the Mayan calendar. Several writers have published books connecting the collision with 2012.
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 SitchinZecharia Sitchin
Zecharia Sitchin was an Azerbaijani-born American author of books promoting an explanation for human origins involving ancient astronauts. Sitchin attributes the creation of the ancient Sumerian culture to the Anunnaki, which he states was a race of extra-terrestrials from a planet beyond Neptune...
, 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, a giant planet (called Nibiru or Marduk
Marduk
Marduk was the Babylonian name of a late-generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi , started to...
) passes by Earth every 3,600 years and allows its sentient
Sentience
Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think from the ability to feel . In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences...
inhabitants to interact with humanity. These beings, which Sitchin identified with the Annunaki of Sumerian myth, would become humanity's first gods. 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.").
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. 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
Age of Aquarius
The Age of Aquarius is either the current or new age in the cycle of astrological ages. Each astrological age is approximately 2,150 years long, on average, but there are various methods of calculating this length that may yield longer or shorter time spans depending upon the technique used...
, sometime between 2090 and 2370.
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. They point out that such an object so close to Earth would be easily visible to the naked eye, as JupiterJupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
and Saturn
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.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. Some counter this by claiming that the object has been concealed behind the Sun for several years, though this would be geometrically impossible. Amateur photographs supposedly showing Nibiru near the Sun are usually the result of lens flare
Lens flare
Lens flare is the light scattered in lens systems through generally unwanted image formation mechanisms, such as internal reflection and scattering from material inhomogeneities in the lens. These mechanisms differ from the intended image formation mechanism that depends on refraction of the image...
s, false images of the Sun created by reflections within the lens.
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. 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
Immanuel Velikovsky
Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American independent scholar of Jewish origins, best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950...
's Worlds in Collision
Worlds in Collision
Worlds in Collision is a book written by Immanuel Velikovsky and first published on April 3, 1950. The book proposed that around the 15th century BCE, Venus was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or comet-like object, and passed near Earth...
, which made the same claim that the Earth's rotation could be stopped and then restarted, Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
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."
In a 2009 interview with the Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
, 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
Escape velocity
In physics, escape velocity is the speed at which the kinetic energy plus the gravitational potential energy of an object is zero gravitational potential energy is negative since gravity is an attractive force and the potential is defined to be zero at infinity...
. At that speed, any object would be shot out of the Solar System, and then out of the Milky Way
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System. This name derives from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky...
galaxy into intergalactic space.
Conspiracy theories
Many believers in the imminent approach of Planet X/Nibiru accuse NASA of deliberately covering up visual evidence of its existence. One such accusation involves the IRASIRAS
The Infrared Astronomical Satellite was the first-ever space-based observatory to perform a survey of the entire sky at infrared wavelengths....
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
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this Solar System". This newspaper article has been cited by proponents of the collision idea, beginning with Lieder herself, as evidence for the existence of Nibiru. However, further analysis revealed that of several unidentified objects, nine were distant galaxies and the tenth was "intergalactic cirrus
Infrared Cirrus
Infrared cirrus are filamentary structures seen in infrared light. The name is given because the structure looks cloud-like in appearance. First detected by the Infrared Astronomy Satellite at wavelengths of 60 and 100 micrometres.-External links:...
"; none were found to be Solar System bodies.
Another accusation frequently made by websites predicting the collision is that the U.S. government built the South Pole Telescope
South Pole Telescope
The South Pole Telescope is a 10 metre diameter telescope located at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica. It is a microwave/millimetre-wave telescope that observes in a frequency range between 70 and 300 GHz...
(SPT) to track Nibiru's trajectory, and that the object has been imaged optically. 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. The "picture" of Nibiru posted on YouTube was revealed, in fact, to be a Hubble image of the expanding light echo
Light echo
thumb|right|250px|Reflected light following path B arrives shortly after the direct flash following path A but before light following path C. B and C have the same apparent distance from the star as seen from [[Earth]]....
around the star V838 Mon.
Another conspiracy claim regards a patch of missing data Google Sky
Google Sky
Google Sky is a feature for Google's Google Earth and an online sky/outer space viewer at www.google.com/sky. It was created on August 27, 2007...
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 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. Another piece of claimed evidence drawn from Google Sky is the carbon star
Carbon star
A carbon star is a late-type star similar to a red giant whose atmosphere contains more carbon than oxygen; the two elements combine in the upper layers of the star, forming carbon monoxide, which consumes all the oxygen in the atmosphere, leaving carbon atoms free to form other carbon compounds,...
CW Leonis, which is the brightest object in the 10 μm infrared sky and is frequently claimed to be Nibiru.
Other names
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 planetPlanets beyond Neptune
Following the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, there was considerable speculation that another planet might exist beyond its orbit. The search began in the mid-19th century but culminated at the start of the 20th with Percival Lowell's quest for Planet X...
once searched for by astronomers to account for discrepancies in the orbits of Uranus
Uranus
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It has the third-largest planetary radius and fourth-largest planetary mass in the Solar System. It is named after the ancient Greek deity of the sky Uranus , the father of Cronus and grandfather of Zeus...
and Neptune
Neptune
Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. Named for the Roman god of the sea, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third largest by mass. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times...
. In 1894, Bostonian astronomer Percival Lowell
Percival Lowell
Percival Lawrence Lowell was a businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death...
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". However, nearly a century of searching failed to turn up any evidence for such an object (Pluto
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...
was initially believed to be Planet X, but was later determined to be too small). 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. Today astronomers accept that Planet X does not exist.
Hercolubus
In 1999, New AgeNew Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
author V. M. Rabolu wrote in Hercolubus or Red Planet that Barnard's star
Barnard's star
Barnard's Star, also known occasionally as Barnard's "Runaway" Star, is a very low-mass red dwarf star approximately six light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Ophiuchus . In 1916, the American astronomer E.E...
is actually a planet known to the ancients as Hercolubus, which purportedly came dangerously close to Earth in the past, destroying Atlantis
Atlantis
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
, and will come close to Earth again. Lieder subsequently used Rabolu's ideas to bolster her claims.
Barnard's star has been directly measured to be 5.98 ± 0.003 light years from Earth (35.15 trillion miles). 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. This is only slightly closer than the closest star to the Sun (Proxima Centauri
Proxima Centauri
Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star about 4.2 light-years distant in the constellation of Centaurus. It was discovered in 1915 by Robert Innes, the Director of the Union Observatory in South Africa, and is the nearest known star to the Sun, although it is too faint to be seen with the naked eye...
) lies today.
Nemesis
Believers in Planet X/Nibiru have often confused it with NemesisNemesis (star)
Nemesis is a hypothetical hard-to-detect red dwarf star, white dwarf star or brown dwarf, originally postulated in 1984 to be orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 95,000 AU , somewhat beyond the Oort cloud, to explain a perceived cycle of mass extinctions in the geological record, which seem to...
, a hypothetical star first proposed by physicist Richard A. Muller
Richard A. Muller
Richard A. Muller is a noted American professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.-Career:...
. 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 brown dwarf
Brown dwarf
Brown dwarfs are sub-stellar objects which are too low in mass to sustain hydrogen-1 fusion reactions in their cores, which is characteristic of stars on the main sequence. Brown dwarfs have fully convective surfaces and interiors, with no chemical differentiation by depth...
, a dim red dwarf
Red dwarf
According to the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a red dwarf star is a small and relatively cool star, of the main sequence, either late K or M spectral type....
or a gas giant
Gas giant
A gas giant is a large planet that is not primarily composed of rock or other solid matter. There are four gas giants in the Solar System: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune...
planet, 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
Oort cloud
The Oort cloud , or the Öpik–Oort cloud , is a hypothesized spherical cloud of comets which may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun. This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun...
, 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. Though the idea of Nemesis appears similar to the Nibiru collision, 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.
Sedna or Eris
Still others confuse Nibiru with Sedna90377 Sedna
90377 Sedna is a trans-Neptunian object discovered in 2003, which was about three times as far from the Sun as Neptune. For most of its orbit it is even further from the Sun, with its aphelion estimated at 960 astronomical units , making it one of the most distant known objects in the Solar System...
or Eris
Eris (dwarf planet)
Eris, formal designation 136199 Eris, is the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to orbit the Sun directly...
, trans-Neptunian object
Trans-Neptunian object
A trans-Neptunian object is any minor planet in the Solar System that orbits the Sun at a greater distance on average than Neptune.The first trans-Neptunian object to be discovered was Pluto in 1930...
s discovered by Mike Brown in 2003 and 2005 respectively. However, despite having been described as a "tenth planet" in an early NASA press release, Eris (provisional designation: 2003 UB313) is now classified as a dwarf planet
Dwarf planet
A dwarf planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union , is a celestial body orbiting the Sun that is massive enough to be spherical as a result of its own gravity but has not cleared its neighboring region of planetesimals and is not a satellite...
. Only slightly larger than Pluto, Eris has a well-determined orbit that never takes it closer than 5.5 billion km from the Earth. Sedna is slightly smaller than Pluto, and never comes closer to Earth than 11.4 billion km. Mike Brown believes the confusion results from both the real Eris and the imaginary Nibiru having extremely elliptical orbits
Elliptic orbit
In astrodynamics or celestial mechanics an elliptic orbit is a Kepler orbit with the eccentricity less than 1; this includes the special case of a circular orbit, with eccentricity equal to zero. In a stricter sense, it is a Kepler orbit with the eccentricity greater than 0 and less than 1 . In a...
.
Tyche
Others have tied it to TycheTyche (hypothetical planet)
Tyche is the nickname given to a hypothetical gas giant planet located in the Solar System's Oort cloud, first proposed in 1999 by astronomer John Matese of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Matese and his colleague Daniel Whitmire argue that evidence of Tyche's existence can be seen in a...
; the name proposed by John Matese and Daniel Whitmire of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, or UL Lafayette, is a coeducational, public research university located in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the heart of Acadiana...
for an object they believe to be influencing the orbits of comets in the Oort cloud. The name, after the "good sister" of the Greek goddess Nemesis
Nemesis (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Nemesis , also called Rhamnousia/Rhamnusia at her sanctuary at Rhamnous, north of Marathon, was the spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris . The Greeks personified vengeful fate as a remorseless goddess: the goddess of revenge...
, was chosen to distinguish it from the similar Nemesis hypothesis as, unlike Nemesis, Matese and Whitmire do not believe that their object poses a threat to Earth. However, 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.
Comet Elenin
Some have also associated Nibiru with Comet Elenin, a long-period comet discovered by Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin on December 10, 2010. On October 16, 2011, Elenin made its closest approach to the Earth at a distance of 0.2338 AU, which is slightly closer than the planet Venus. Nevertheless, in the leadup to its closest approach, some conspiracy websites concluded that it was on a collision course, that it was as large as Jupiter or even a brown dwarfBrown dwarf
Brown dwarfs are sub-stellar objects which are too low in mass to sustain hydrogen-1 fusion reactions in their cores, which is characteristic of stars on the main sequence. Brown dwarfs have fully convective surfaces and interiors, with no chemical differentiation by depth...
, and even that the name of the discoverer, Leonid Elenin, was in fact code for ELE, or an Extinction Level Event.
Although the sizes of comets are difficult to determine without close observation, Comet Elenin is likely to be less than 10 km in diameter. Elenin himself estimates that the comet nucleus
Comet nucleus
The nucleus is the solid, central part of a comet, popularly termed a dirty snowball. A cometary nucleus is composed of rock, dust, and frozen gases. When heated by the Sun, the gases sublimate and produce an atmosphere surrounding the nucleus known as the coma...
is roughly 3–4 km in diameter. This would make it millions of times smaller than the supposed Nibiru. Comet hysteria is not uncommon. Attempts have been made to correlate Elenin's alignments with the 2011 Japan earthquake, the 2010 Canterbury earthquake
2010 Canterbury earthquake
The 2010 Canterbury earthquake was a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, which struck the South Island of New Zealand at 4:35 am on local time ....
, and 2010 Chile earthquake
2010 Chile earthquake
The 2010 Chile earthquake occurred off the coast of central Chile on Saturday, 27 February 2010, at 03:34 local time , having a magnitude of 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale, with intense shaking lasting for about three minutes. It ranks as the sixth largest earthquake ever to be recorded by a...
; 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. 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.
In August, 2011, Comet Elenin began to disintegrate, and by the time of its closest approach in October 2011 the comet was undetected even by large, ground based telescopes.
Public reaction
The impact of the public fear of the Nibiru collision has been especially felt by professional astronomers. Mike Brown now says that Nibiru is the most common pseudoscientific topic he is asked about.David Morrison
David Morrison (astrophysicist)
Dr. David Morrison is director of the Carl Sagan Center for Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute, former director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute, and senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute, at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He is the past...
, director of SETI
SETI
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Some of the most well known projects are run by the SETI Institute. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for intelligent life...
, CSI Fellow and Senior Scientist at NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
'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. Half of these emails are from outside the U.S. "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." 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.
Morrison noted in a lecture recorded on FORA.tv
FORA.tv
FORA.tv, Inc. runs a website that gathers a large collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates at universities, think tanks and conferences....
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.
Cultural influence
A viral marketingViral marketing
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...
campaign for Sony Pictures' 2009 film 2012
2012 (film)
2012 is a 2009 American disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich. It stars John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, and Woody Harrelson. It was produced by Emmerich's production company, Centropolis Entertainment and was distributed by Columbia Pictures...
, directed by Roland Emmerich
Roland Emmerich
Roland Emmerich is a German film director, screenwriter, and producer.His films, most of which are Hollywood productions filmed in English, have grossed more than $3 billion worldwide, more than those of any other European director...
, 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. Mike Brown attributes a spike in concerned emails and phone calls he received from the public to this site.
Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective, although his own films have taken a variety of different approaches, and have frequently received strongly divided critical opinion....
's 2011 film Melancholia features a plot in which a planet emerges from behind the Sun onto a collision course with Earth. Announcing his company's purchase of the film, the head of Magnolia Pictures
Magnolia Pictures
Magnolia Pictures is an American film distributor, and is a holding of 2929 Entertainment, owned by Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban. Magnolia was formed in 2001 by Bill Banowsky and Eamonn Bowles, and specializes in both foreign and independent films....
said in a press release, "As the 2012 apocalypse is upon us, it is time to prepare for a cinematic last supper."