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Nibiru or Planet X
What Is Nibiru?
Scientists have, time and again, completely rejected
the baseless claims made about “Planet X” and “Nibiru”
Vishal Thakur
Nibiru
is claimed by some to be a massive planetary object on a collision course with
Earth.
It’s
passing date keeps being updated, pushing it back into the mainstream news
every couple of years.
It
has been tied to various myths, including the Mayan apocalyptic date of
December 21, 2012.
Doomsday
scenarios have always been exciting fodder for fear-mongering and sensationalism.
Declaring
a certain point in time in the future as the date of the complete annihilation
of humanity on Earth, an event that will usher in the apocalypse, has come
throughout history in countless ways.
Devastation
through natural disasters, rebellion from intelligent robots, and annihilation
through nuclear warfare are just some of the ways that the fear of catastrophe
and the extinction of the human race has been spread to the masses.
One
of the most fascinating ways the end times have been predicted is through the
Nibiru cataclysm.
In
the 1990s, this catastrophic event was predicted to occur sometime in the early
21st century through the collision of Earth with a large planetary object
called Nibiru, or Planet X.
This
myth has since evolved in many strange ways, getting lumped in with the Mayan
prophecy of the world ending in 2012, while some estimate its return to Earth
will be in 2900 AD.
All
the talk about Nibiru can safely be dismissed as pseudoscience and myth-making,
but let’s open this Pandora’s Box of the absurd and understand its
significance, or at least why it has intrigued so many minds!
Nancy
Lieder and the origins of Nibiru
For
our first plunge into the absurd, we’ll start with the claim by a Wisconsin
woman named Nancy Lieder.
The
Nibiru myth originated from her, as she claimed that she had been contacted by
gray extraterrestrials called the Zetans.
According
to her, these gray ET’s implanted a device in her brain for communication. She
founded Zetatalk in 1995, which was a website to spread her ideas.
In
1997, the Hale-Bopp Comet perihelion was around the corner, long awaited by
people to glimpse.
Lieder
totally rejected the claim of seeing the comet, claiming that she had spoken to
Zetans about it. She said this comet did not exist and was, in fact, a fraud.
She
claimed that Hale-Bopp was a distant star and in no way was it near the earth.
Instead,
she claimed that this was merely a story to distract the masses from the
looming arrival of another planetary object, called “Planet X”, which would
collide with Earth and annihilate civilization.
Lieder
came to public attention through these wild claims.
However,
as pseudoscientific claims go, the Hale-Bopp’s perihelion did occur and was one
of the longest and brightest observed comets in the last century.
Lieder
redacted her statements from her website, but they can still be seen in the
Google Archive.
She
described Planet X as being four times bigger than Earth and said that its
closest approach to earth would be on May 27, 2003.
This,
according to her, would end Earth’s rotation for exactly 5.9 days.
Earth’s
poles would destabilize in a pole shift (a physical shift, instead of a
geometric one) due to the magnetic attraction caused between Earth’s core and
the magnetism of Planet X.
So,
the day of the event came and went, but there was no sight of “Nibiru”
(shocking).
She
later said that her claim was a “white lie, to fool the establishment”,
explaining that she didn’t disclose the true date on the pretext of not wanting
to give too much time to the people in power to declare martial law and hold
people in cities during the event, which would lead to their deaths.
Other
mentions of Nibiru
Nancy
Lieder didn’t refer to this cataclysm as Nibiru in her claims; she just called
it Planet X.
However,
it came to be associated with Zecharia Sitchin’s book The 12th Planet; in the
book, there is a planet of an ancient astronaut proponent called Nibiru.
Zecharia
Sitchin interpreted Mesopotamian religious texts as referencing a giant planet
(Nibiru or Marduk) that passes Earth every 3600 years, becoming a way for the
sentient inhabitants of the two planets to interact, although this
interpretation contradicts the conclusions made by all credited scholars of
Mesopotamian texts.
Lieder
made the connection between her Planet X and Nibiru, stating, “Planet X does
exist, and it is the 12th Planet, one and the same” on her site in 1996.
Sitchin
denied all connections between his work and Lieder’s Planet X. He published a
book called The End of Days in 2007, partly in response to Lieder’s claims.
The
book sets the time for the last contact with Nibiru and Earth at 556 BC and,
according to Sitchin, the planet passes every 3600 years, which would set the
date of the return for Nibiru at AD 2900.
The
Mayan Calendar and the world end in 2012
Many
people jumped on Lieder’s bandwagon, adding fodder to the already preposterous
claims.
As
Lieder hadn’t set a date for the cataclysmic event, people came up with their
own theories about when Nibiru would pass Earth.
The
Mayan Calendar marks the end of a cycle (b’ak’tun) on December 21, 2012, a date
that has come to be associated with the apocalyptic end of the world.
Many
people have cited this date as the nearing of Nibiru and several authors have
published books that connect the encounter to 2012.
The
date is, of course, far gone, but several websites are still claiming that
Nibiru is en route to Earth.
Nibiru’s
Revival in 2017
The
cataclysmic claims re-entered the mainstream media when David Meade, a
“Christian Numerologist” and conspiracy theorist, tied the return of Nibiru to
various passages in the Bible.
He
postulated that there were secret numerological codes in the passages that
provided the exact date for the arrival of Nibiru.
He
also tied his predictions to the Giza Pyramids and its geometry. He set the
date for the event to be in October 2017, but later adjusted it to September
23, 2017.
Meade’s
claims have been completely disregarded by his fellow Christians, who call his
theories and claims rubbish.
As
the fateful day passed, Meade revised the date to October 5, 2017. There were
also other claims of Nibiru’s imminent contact with Earth.
Terral
Croft, an apocalyptic writer, predicted that it would happen on November 19,
2017, which earned a lot of coverage from the media.
Conclusion
Scientists
have, time and again, completely rejected the baseless claims made about
“Planet X” and “Nibiru”. They reason that, if such an event was about to
happen, the huge object would be visible from Earth.
David
Morrison, a NASA scientist, explains that if a flyby had happened before (as
Sitchin claims), the Earth would not still be in the orbit of the sun, as the
massive passing planet would have de-orbited Earth, essentially turning it into
a moon.
It
is safe to say that Nibiru isn’t real and there won’t be a flyby. We humans
certainly have a penchant for telling stories and creating myths, but
sometimes, things just get out of hand.
Vishal is an
Architect and a design aficionado. He likes making trippy patterns in his
computer. Fascinated by technology’s role in humanity’s evolution, he is
constantly thinking about how the future of our species would turn out –
sometimes at the peril of what’s currently going on around him.
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