Nibiru is a planet of the solar system that cannot be found on any astronomical chart, nor can it be viewed through any telescope or spotted by any form of deep space radar or other detection device. But although it cannot be detected people know it’s out there, ready to career into planet earth or at best miss it narrowly, causing death, destruction, fires, floods, ferocious winds, polar reversals and generally contributing to end times, as it has very nearly done every 3600 years from time immemorial.
How do they know this? Because the ancient Mayan’s knew of Nibiru and recorded its next transit as the very last date on their famous long calendar. The ancient Mesopotamians knew about it too, and in fact it is from their records that planet Nibiru gets its name. If the full truth were to be known major governments and scientific organizations are completely aware of Nibiru and the deadly danger it poses, but by means of a nearly airtight worldwide conspiracy have cynically hushed everything up, so as not to panic the everyday working man.
The cult of Nibiru:
Or at least, that is what a number of people apparently believe, and would like the rest of the population to believe as well. A quick 15 minutes with any decent search engine will turn up any number of websites and blogs dedicated to Nibiru and its imminent reappearance. The fact that most of these same sites and blogs also reference alien abductions, Biblical prophecies, bore holes to hell, Nostradamus, crypto zoology and the current whereabouts of Elvis might be a clue that their investigatory techniques might be, at best, flawed.
But is there at least one researcher upon whose credentials readers may rely, who embraces the Planet Nibiru hypotheses? It turns out that there is. Meet Nancy Lieder, owner of the website, “ZetaTalks” and repository of knowledge for all things Nibirunian. Ms. Lieder, whose scientific education is somewhat lacking, as is unfortunately her access to major astronomical observatories, is lucky that she has an unimpeachable source to fall back on for her knowledge of the coming apocalypse.
Ms. Lieder began to reveal the impending doom which awaits the Earth in 1993. This coincides with the first telepathic communications she received from the Zetan people, those interstellar do-gooders from one of the planets – not yet discovered by conventional astronomers – of the binary star Zeta Reticuli. This communication is greatly facilitated by the implant these alien galaxy trotters so kindly placed, according to Ms. Lieder, inside Ms. Lieder’s head.
Ms. Lieder knew that Nibiru was scheduled to blast Earth into its component atoms some time in 2003 but when this failed to happen, she revealed that she had merely been testing the government’s willingness to hide the truth. The real date, as she knew all along, is in late 2012.
How did this silliness get started?
Not with the formidable Ms. Lieder. Ms. Lieder relies heavily on the works of one Zecharia Sitchin, a writer of science fiction novels relating to ancient Mesopotamia and Sumeria. Mr. Sitchin claimed to rely in turn on Sumerian texts from thousands of years ago which reveal not only the discovery of Neptune, Uranus and Saturn but also of Nibiru, the planet with the eccentric 3600 year orbit which is hurtling in from the outermost depths of space to obliterate Earth and its inhabitants.
The Sumerian people were quite advanced, but knew next to nothing about astronomy, they never discovered and were incapable of discovering any of the outer planets let alone the non-existent Nibiru. Furthermore, Sitchin was incapable of reading the tablets and wall carvings he cites in his books, which are after all, science fiction. Sitchin recently passed away but late in life he vehemently disavowed any connection between his own work and the doomsday scenarios of Ms. Lieder.
Not all of the blame should fall on Mr. Sitchin. He in turn drew upon the compelling but completely fallacious writings of Immanuel Velikovsky, who published a best selling book, “Worlds in Collision” in 1952. Mr. Velikovsky touted his book as a revision of scientific history; unfortunately the book is notable primarily for containing neither history nor science. The central premise is that a comet, somehow ejected from the planet Jupiter 3500 years ago, passed by the Earth at close quarters and then took up its position inside earths orbit as the planet Venus. Along the way it somehow transmitted the housefly thru interstellar space to take up residence on Earth.
This is all, of course, gibberish.
What does science have to say?
Basically, a loud Bronx cheer best describes the attitude of any related scientific discipline to Nibiru, Planet X, comets of Jupiterian origin or any other doomsday planet, as written about by any of the above. Let’s look at a few of the claims.
The impact or close approach of Nibiru is less than a year away:
Where, then, is Nibiru? An earth sized or larger planetary body moving in on Earth would be visible to the naked eye at night, yet it has yet to be detected by the most sophisticated tracking devices known to man. (A pity scientists don’t have a few of those Ancient Sumerian astronomical devices) The mere presence of this body would perturb the orbits of the outer planets. They remain unperturbed. Some, Ms. Lieder for example, claim that Nibiru is a dwarf brown star, which would be many times the size of earth and therefore impossible to miss even during the daytime.
The ancient Sumerians knew about Nibiru.
The Sumerians had no knowledge of any of the outer planets, nor did they have any equipment capable of allowing them to make such discoveries. When Nibiru is used in cuneiform texts it may mean crossing place, God, or star. But it is never used to indicate a rogue planet from beyond the boundaries of the solar system.
The Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012 with the arrival of Nibiru:
The Mayan long calendar is an amazing work. Actually of Olmec origins it was adapted by several South American civilizations including the Mayans. However, it is not known what the exact intended start date for the calendar was; therefore it is not known exactly when it ends. What happens at the end of the long count is not the end of the world at least not by Mayan tradition, but simply the start of a new long count.
The doomsday tradition associated with the Mayan long count is the brainchild of Jose Arguelles, an art Professor who first made the link in 1987. Certainly, the Mayans never did, nor have any genuine Mayan scholars. But the Mayan doomsday scenario is one which, as Professor J.R.R. Tolkein said of “Lord of the Rings” has grown with the telling.
Nibiru will stop the earth’s rotation, and cause a polar shift:
A huge planetoid could indeed strike the earth, one did so 65 million years ago and rid the world of dinosaurs. It will, eventually happen again. But this catastrophe cannot cause the earths rotation to stop unless you wish to postulate an object so enormous that it pulverizes the earth completely and converts it into a new asteroid belt.
The magnetic poles can shift, this has happened many times in the history of the world, with no discernable negative effects on life. But this is not the physical cataclysm proposed by Ms. Lieder and the others; it is a shift in magnetic field. A physical transposition of the geologic poles would indeed be cataclysmic. It is also completely impossible.
The entire confusion between magnetic fields and geographic locations is simply due to bad science, where one strongly asserted impossibility is used to support another.
The government is covering it up:
When does a government miss an opportunity to scare the hell out of its citizenry in order to thrust some odious agenda or another upon it, properly disguised as a solution to the problem? And consider; there are so many governments in the world. Is it conceivable that all are in agreement on covering up the Nibiru threat? They have never unanimously agreed on anything else.
Please, rest easy:
There are many things to worry about in the course of a long life; Nibiru is not one of them. It is a hoax, sold by charlatans to the gullible. It is bad science fiction and pseudoscience disguised as ground breaking research. It is the monster in the closet, the troll under the bridge, the thing that goes bump in the night.
But it is not now and never will be a threat to the planet to Mother Earth.
