NASA Denies the Theory of Nibiru

The theory started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. Zecharia Sitchin, a fictional author who wrote about the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, claimed in several books (ie:“The Twelfth Planet” published in 1976) that he had found and translated Sumerian documents that identify the planet Nibiru, also known as Planet X, orbiting the Sun every 3,600 years. These Sumerian fables include stories of “ancient astronauts” visiting Earth from a civilization of aliens called the Anunnaki. Sitchin suggested a return of Nibiru and the Anunnaki sometime this century.

Then Nancy Lieder, a self-declared psychic who claims she channels aliens, wrote on her website Zetatalk that the inhabitants of a fictional planet around the star Zeta Reticuli warned her that the Earth was in danger from Planet X or Nibiru http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/planetx/.

This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. These two fables were linked to the end of the Mayan calendar long-count at the winter solstice in 2012 – hence the predicted doomsday date on December 21, 2012.

IRAS (the NASA Infrared Astronomy Satellite, which carried out a sky survey for 10 months in 1983) discovered many infrared sources, but none of them was Nibiru or Planet X or any other objects in the outer solar system spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/tchester/iras/no_tenth_planet_yet.html.

Briefly, IRAS cataloged 350,000 infrared sources, and initially many of these sources were unidentified (which was the point, of course, of making such a survey). All of these observations have been followed up by subsequent studies with more powerful instruments both on the ground and in space.

The rumor about a “tenth planet” erupted in 1984 after a scientific paper was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters titled “Unidentified point sources in the IRAS minisurvey”, which discussed several infrared sources with “no counterparts”. But these “mystery objects” were subsequently found to be distant galaxies, as published in 1987. No IRAS source has ever turned out to be a planet. A good discussion of this whole issue is to be found on Phil Plait’s website www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/planetx/science.html#iras. The bottom line is that NASA astronomers never discovered or announced a planet. To an astronomer, persistent claims about a planet that is “nearby” but “invisible” are just plain silly.

Regardless, many on planet Earth do believe Nibiru is indeed real and headed our way as suggested in the video below.