Question

HERE ARE TWO RECENT QUESTIONS: When will NASA actually admit to the existence of Niburu? It is in the Bible! People all over the world have seen it and taken pictures themselves. We all know that the Summerian Astrologers were very advanced, They knew of Pluto before our astrologists did. Why does Nasa try to discredit the existance of a planet the Summerians had mapped out a long time ago? ALSO I believe that Nibiru planet exists. Why are all other planets in our solar system experiencing global warming? Why did we just setup a telescope in the most uninhabitable region of Antarctica, and what is it doing now? Why is there a giant gap in the Kuiper belt? Why is Norway building underground bunkers ready for 2011? There are two more questions; if you can find answers for these I will give you a billion dollers. What exactly did the IRAS find? Why did the IRAS leading scientist Gerry Neugebauer say 'all i can tell you is we don't know what it is'?

I receive questions like this every day, and they upset me. They suggest to me that you are falling for the big Nibiru hoax, and that you have lost your critical common sense. Also apparently you have not read the “Summary” under “Special Note” at the top of the Ask an Astrobiologist page (http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ask-an-astrobiologist/intro/nibiru-and-doomsday-2012-questions-and-answers). None of the things stated as fact in these messages is true. Nibiru is not mentioned in the Bible. There are no photos of Nibiru, just internal reflections and lens flare when a camera is pointed toward the Sun. The Sumerian astrologers did not predict either Pluto or Nibiru; that sort of fantasy comes from the books by Zecharia Sitchin, who writes fiction about the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer (e.g., The Twelfth Planet). Other planets in our solar system are not experiencing global warming, and if they were I would be more likely to attribute this to changes in the Sun rather than to an intruding planet. The NSF South Pole Telescope has nothing to do with Nibiru -- read about it in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole_Telescope). There is no gap in the Kuiper Belt. Norway is not building underground bunkers beyond their already-complete seed depository near the Arctic Circle. Finally, there is the “billion dollar” offer. I sure wish this were real. But these old stories about IRAS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRAS) were thoroughly answered by Phil Plait back in 2003, at the time of the last Nibiru scare (http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/planetx/). I will be glad to split the billion dollars with Phil. Seriously, I wonder if these two notes, and the others like them, are real. Either these folks have not bothered to read the scientific story or they are so confused that they can’t recognize the truth. It does not take a rocket scientist to notice that in spite of the predictions, Nibiru is a no-show. If it were real it would be observed by tens of thousands of astronomers all over the world. Believe me, you can’t “hide” an approaching planet.

David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
September 15, 2009