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NASA: No, Nibiru (Planet X) will not be destroying the world this month [VIDEO]

If you are planning on the Earth ending on December 21, NASA has some advice for you: Don’t.

The U.S. space agency took to the internet late last week in an attempt to dispel rumors surrounding a potentially catastrophic collision with Nibiru, also known as Planet X. Speaking in an online forum hosted by Google+, the space agency said rumors of an impending disaster were little more than unfounded conspiracy theories.

NASA scientists presented  the “Beyond 2012″ during the last week of November. The rumors stem from what some believe is the end of the Mayan calendar that occurs on December 21. The feature focused on a number of mythical scenarios, including a collision between Earth and Nibiru.

According to NASA, the dwarf planet — which does not exist — would be on display to the entire world.

“By now it would be the brightest object in the sky, after the sun and moon, and anybody could go out and see it,” said David Morrison of NASA’s Ames Research Center, referencing how the mythical planet would appear if it was on course to collide with Earth.

“Nibiru is ridiculous because it doesn’t exist — it never existed as anything other than a figment of the imagination by pseudo-scientists who don’t seem bothered by a complete lack of evidence,” astronomer Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object program office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told SPACE.com.

The latest attempt by NASA to dispel rumors related to the mythical planet comes just weeks after the space agency posted answers to a number of questions submitted by readers. The complete collection focused on the theory of impending collisions with Earth, including those involving Nibiru.

“Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims,” NASA said. “If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.”

“The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs,” the space agency added. “Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit.”

The latest attempt by NASA is likely not to be the last. The agency has yet to announce any additional plans for dispelling rumors ahead of the December date, although one thing is for certain: we will get our answer later this month.

Nibiru: The Nonexistent Planet

Linked to the close of the Mayan calendar, a variety of rumors have spread regarding ways the world could end in 2012. One popular contender is Nibiru, a supposed planet that some claim will collide with Earth at the end of the year. But despite the buzz, there is no scientific evidence supporting the alleged planet's existence.

Nibiru has been linked to NASA by various bloggers, and is also sometimes referred to or confused with Planet X, another supposed world for which there is no evidence.

Because of the Nibiru NASA connection that’s been claimed, the space agency put out a statement to say there is no Nibiru or Planet X coming to destroy Earth in 2012. What follows below is the true science and history of these supposed rogue planets, with reference to a real object, Comet Elenin, that somehow got mixed up in the whole mess.

The origins of the Nibiru myth

The story began in 1976, when Zecharia Sitchin wrote "The Twelfth Planet," a book which used Stitchin's own unique translation of Sumerian cuneiform to identify a planet, Nibiru, orbiting the sun every 3,600 years. Several years later, Nancy Lieder, a self-described psychic, announced that the aliens she claimed to channel had warned her this planet would collide with Earth in 2003. After a collision-free year, the date was moved back to 2012, where it was linked to the close of the Mayan long-count period. 

When Comet Elenin appeared in 2011, many were concerned that it was the mysterious planet in disguise, despite the fact that planets and comets both appear different under a telescope (a comet has a gas atmosphere [coma] and a tail, while a planet does not). 

Evidence for Nibiru?But instead of slamming into the Earth, the comet strayed too close to the sun and broke into pieces. The leftover fragments continued on their path to the outer solar system for the next 12,000 years, still bits of comet and not a more cohesive planet.

Proponents of the fictitious planet note that, in 1984, a scientific paper was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters which discussed several infrared sources with "no counterparts" that turned up in a survey of the sky. Such surveys are common in astronomy, and usually involve follow-ups that individually detail the more interesting sources. In the follow-up of the 1984 survey, most of the sources turned out to be distant galaxies. None were identified as planets. Both papers are available to the public.

A planet with an orbit so eccentric that it took 3,600 years to orbit the sun would create instabilities inside of the 4.5 billion year old solar system. After only a few trips, its gravity would have significantly disrupted the other planets, while feeling a responding push from those planets that would have changed its orbit significantly.

The easiest and most verifiable piece of evidence arguing against the existence of the theoretical planet can be performed by anyone - according to the information available, a planet with a 3,600 orbit that is due to impact Earth in 2012 should be available to the naked eye. Easily-performed calculations show that by April 2012, it would be brighter than the faintest stars viewed from a city, and almost as bright as Mars at its dimmest. This would make it visible to astronomers everywhere.

The most common rebuttal to this is the cry of conspiracy theory. However, there are hundreds of thousands of amateur astronomers around the world, each with their own telescope. On top of that, most of the thousands of professional astronomers are linked, not to the government, but to private universities.

David Morrison, the Senior Scientist of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, pointed out that "NASA and the government get most of their information from these outside astronomers, not the other way around."

Between the amateur and professional astronomers, there are plenty of people who would have noticed a new star in the sky.

Nothing to fear

Doomsday reports across the internet frequently incite fear, but it's interesting to note they are nothing new. People have been decrying the end of the world for hundreds of years, to no avail.

Rumors spread like wildfire on the internet, but the same technology can make it easier than ever to delve into the scientific evidence about such events.

Planet X Nibiru Nasa 2012 Doomsday

UPDATE: NASA scientists have reportedly confirmed that the planet Nibiru will collide with Earth on December 21st.

The Nibiru collision with Earth in 2012 has been predicted for a long time, but astrophysicists, cosmologists and astronomers around the world have now come to a consensus that Earth will indeed collide with the planet, which lies just outside Pluto.

Nibiru, in Babylonian Astronomy translates to “Point of Transition” or ”Planet of Crossing,”  especially of rivers, i.e. river crossings or ferry-boats, a term of the highest point of the ecliptic, i.e. the point of summer solstice, and its associated constellation. The establishment of the Nibiru point is described in tablet 5 of the Enuma Elish. Its cuneiform sign was often a cross, or various winged disc. The Sumerian culture was located in the fertile lands between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, at the southern part of today’s Iraq.

As the highest point in the paths of the planets, Nibiru was considered the seat of the summus deus who pastures the stars like sheep, in Babylon identified with Marduk. This interpretation of Marduk as the ruler of the cosmos was identified as an early monotheist tendency in Babylonian religion by Alfred Jeremias.

Natural disasters are accelerating exponentially and astronomers believe that they are being caused by Nibiru coming closer and closer to Earth.

EARTH TO COLLIDE WITH NIBIRU ON DECEMBER 21, 2012!

Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
 Answer (A):The world will not end in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.


Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
 A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012 and linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.


Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?
 A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.


Q: Is NASA predicting a "total blackout" of Earth on Dec. 23 to Dec. 25?
 A: Absolutely not. Neither NASA nor any other scientific organization is predicting such a blackout. The false reports on this issue claim that some sort of "alignment of the Universe" will cause a blackout. There is no such alignment (see next question). Some versions of this rumor cite an emergency preparedness message from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. This is simply a message encouraging people to be prepared for emergencies, recorded as part of a wider government preparedness campaign. It never mentions a blackout.
›Watch the Video


Q: Could planets align in a way that impacts Earth?
 A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. One major alignment occurred in 1962, for example, and two others happened during 1982 and 2000. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.
› More about alignment

"There apparently is a great deal of interest in celestial bodies, and their locations and trajectories at the end of the calendar year 2012. Now, I for one love a good book or movie as much as the next guy. But the stuff flying around through cyberspace, TV and the movies is not based on science. There is even a fake NASA news release out there..."
- Don Yeomans, NASA senior research scientist

Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?
 A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.


Q: What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the Earth's crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours?
 A: A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-switch to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. Scientists believe a magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia.
› More about polar shift


Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?
 A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA Near-Earth Object Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.


Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of the world ending in 2012?
 A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.
› Why you need not fear a supernova
› About super volcanoes


Q: Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012?
 A: Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history.