Nibiru is the name of a celestial body of the Babylonian mythology. According to their mythology, Nibiru was a mighty celestial object associated with the God Marduk.
Nibiru means “place that crosses” or “place of transition.”
In many Babylonian texts, it is identified as planet Jupiter, although on tablet 5 of the Enûma Elish it is associated with the polar star.
In the last couple of decades, it has been proposed that Nibiru is a planet orbiting our sun beyond Neptune and which crosses the orbits of the rest of the planets.
However, despite these claims, the scientific community denies the existence of such a planet categorically and has made multiple statements in this regard.
In an article written by the Skeptical Inquirer, Morrison wrote that for astronomers, “persistent statements about a nearby but invisible planet are simply absurd.”
This hate towards ‘Nibiru’ may originate from the fact that on numerous occasions claims have been made that a rogue planet on a 3,600-year orbit is about to enter the inner solar system and visit a catastrophe upon Earth.
Some eight years later, mainstream astronomers have gotten excited about a planet they cannot see.
Remember the hot fuzz about Planet Nine?
Caltech astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin made an explosive claim in 2016:
Based on the orbital motion of objects in the Kuiper Belt — a region beyond Neptune that is home to Pluto and other icy bodies — there must be a very big something much farther out, hidden save for its subtle gravitational tugs on the rest of the solar system: An invisible planet.
After the claims were made, the scientific community kept their cool, and treated Mike Brown’s and Konstantin Batygin’s research as possible, despite improbable.
As explained by the Scientific American:
“Brown and Batygin’s best models put this mysterious object at about ten times Earth’s mass, perhaps 20 times more distant from the sun than Neptune and currently drifting through what might be a 20,000-year orbit in a patch of sky near the constellation Orion. Brown and Batygin called it Planet Nine.”
But let us not forget how some of the most important planets in our solar system were discovered: it all started out as an idea.
And interestingly, the idea that unknown planets exist far from the sun isn’t something new. In fact, such claims can be traced back to the 1800’s and encouraged the discoveries of both Pluto and Neptune.
Speaking about the ‘invisible’ planet, Batygin said:
“I try not to be religious about my results. It’s important to keep a skeptical eye.”
“But, I feel more comfortable than I did two years ago because the theory still holds up beautifully. The more we look, the more we see a solar system that makes no sense without Planet Nine.”
Scientific forums warn of a common strategy to confuse and feed the myth of the existence of this planet, consisting of relating the planet Nibiru with any comment about Planet X, Planet Nine or the dwarf planet Eris.
Many authors who are convinced that the mythological planet from the ancient Sumerians is real point towards the idea that Nibiru is already visible and/or that NASA hides the information, giving as proof an optical effect that occurs in low-quality cameras when photographing the Sun (never seen with the naked eye).
On Google, YouTube and other Social networks we find a treasure trove of information about Planet X, aka Nibiru, although without scientific references. But let us not forget that what is one day a pure myth for astronomy, can turn years later into a reality, and Brown and Batygin’s Planet Nine is proof of that.
Returning to Nibiru…
One of the typical arguments to explain the lack of visibility of the mythological planet is that: “The human eye can only see the colors that are within the spectrum of visible light, that is when the emission of light has a wavelength of 400 – 700 nm.
On the other hand, infrared light has a longer wavelength, so we need a camera that is capable of detecting infrared light, presumably that which Nibiru emits.”
However, at the same time, it is stated that Nibiru is a planet (therefore it must reflect the visible light of the Sun) and not a star that emits light.
But does it mean that even though we haven’t spotted it, it’s not there? Well, not really, I mean, look back at planet Nine and the fuzz behind it. We can’t spot it, yet there is evidence to suggest that it exists.
However, the evidence that Nibiru is real is scarce and is mostly based on ancient mythological texts and the translation of Mesopotamian texts by popular ancient astronaut theorists Zecharia Sitchin.
The Nibiru Cataclysm is a supposed disastrous collision between Earth and the massive planet, said to be home of the ancient Anunnaki.
The controversial theory first appears in 1995 when it was put forth by Nancy Lieder, founder of the website ZetaTalk.
However, the author who made Nibiru popular in modern culture was ancient astronaut writer Zecharia Sitchin and his interpretations of Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, although he denied any connection between his work and various claims of a coming apocalypse.
In Sitchin’s Book The 12th Planet, the author goes through his interpretation of ancient Mesopotamian religious texts, how a giant planet (called Nibiru or Marduk) passes by Earth every 3,600 years, allowing its sentient inhabitants to interact with humanity.
Sitchin identified these beings with the Anunnaki in Sumerian mythology and claimed that they were humanity’s first gods, the alien beings that created us.
As explained by Sitchin, Nibiru (referred to as “the twelfth planet” since as Sitchin claimed, the Sumerians’ gods-given interpretation of the Solar System counted all eight planets, plus Pluto, the Sun, and the Moon) was the home of a technologically advanced extraterrestrial race called the Anunnaki in Sumerian myth, who Sitchin states are called the Nephilim in Genesis.
Sitchin wrote that they evolved after Nibiru entered our star system, and they first came to Earth some 450,000 years ago, looking for minerals, specifically gold, which they found and mined in Africa.
Sitchin states that these “gods” were the rank-and-file workers of the colonial expedition to Earth from planet Nibiru.
By Ivan, Guest writer / Cover image
