Is our Solar System a Binary Star System?

Additional excerpt from:

This is from another page in the website regarding the GP-8 probe, the "Gravity Probe" designed to test whether or not the mass of the Earth indeed warps space-time:

[link to www.binaryresearchinstitute.org]

In order to find the relativistic effect, the GP-B team assumed they only had to cancel out two signals or unwanted motions. First, was the motion of the spacecraft in a polar orbit around the earth. This motion resulted in an aberration between the telescope and the guide star of about 5.1856 arc seconds per orbit. Since that orbit took place every 91 minutes it was an easy signal to spot and remove. The second was the earth’s orbit around the sun, which results in an aberration of 20.4958 arc seconds per year (relative to the guide star). Only one and a half of these orbits took place during the 17 month experiment period so it was harder to find, but it is a motion so well known, that it was also easy to confirm and cancel out. It was assumed that there were no other meaningful celestial motions to cancel, so if the equipment worked right, the only signal left would be the relativistic effect.

There was however another assumption made that now appears to be a potentially huge mistake. That is that the solar system only moves about .005 arc seconds per year. This assumes that the only motion of the solar system is once around the galaxy approximately every 240 million years. The thinking was that this aberration is so small it would not affect the outcome of the experiment. But after netting out the spacecraft and earth orbit motions the remaining signal was far larger than anyone expected. In fact, it is so large it either means there is some unforeseen problem with the gyros or that our sun is part of a binary star system.

Yes, that’s right, if the data is correct our solar system is curving through space (carrying the earth and spacecraft with it of course) so rapidly that the only way to explain it is if our sun is gravitationally bound to another nearby star. When I met with the GP-B team at Stanford last fall they were still in the early process of analyzing the data but openly discussed the idea of an unknown companion to our sun, including the possibility of a not too distant blackhole.

Last Edited by Dream Killer on 12/23/2009 10:25 AM

this is interesting work, good job OP and everyone else contributing!

On a tangential point, here is more information on the link between the Chandler wobble and the Sumatra EQ:

Immediately after the Sumatra quake, rumors began to circulate that the massive energy release -- in addition to triggering the catastrophic tsunami, which has now claimed over 150,000 lives -- had also directly affected the Earth's spin!

Richard Gross and Benjamin Fong Chao, of JPL and the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, within a few days presented a series of calculations (but not actual measurements), indicating that the Earth likely "spun faster by 3 microseconds (3 millionths of a second), and tilted over by about an inch ..." as a result of the magnitude 9 Sumatra quake.

But, as we have seen from Gribbin and Plagemann, even in 1974 significant evidence existed (going back to the observations of anomalously increased seismic activity, in the wake of the 1959 solar event) that it is the other ways around; sudden changes in Earth's rotation (caused by solar flares) also trigger increased earthquake activity!

In line with this key observation, leading Indian seismologist Dr. J. G. Negi, quoted in the Times of India January 10th -- three weeks after the Sumatra Event -- revealed that Earth rotational observations made between October 15 and November 30, by the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS), had recorded early signals of an increase in something called "the Chandler Wobble." The Chandler Wobble (below) is a tiny (about 40 foot), periodic "nodding" of the rotational axis of the Earth, normally occurring in a period of about 14 months -- a bit like the minute wobbling of a spinning top.

Negi revealed that:

"...during this period [leading up to the Sumatra quake], the wobble deviation from the expected position for this [seasonal] period was approximately 0.75 degrees, which is significant."

These wobble deviations were [soon] followed by a [major] earthquake in the southern hemisphere near Macquarie Trench near New Zealand, on December 23, with a magnitude of 8.1. The earthquakes above magnitude 8 are called "great earthquakes" -- and occur [only] once a year on average. But on December 26, only three days later, the northern hemisphere experienced [the tragic] quake of 9.0 magnitude [off] northern Sumatra.

"... The wobble of the earth's rotation clearly anticipated these two events," Negi said. He recalled that there is a revolutionary theory, which was given in 1967 by L. Mansinha and D. L. E. Smiley, two scientists from Canada, which says that wobbles are co-seismic with great earthquakes.

In the case of the recent events in December, 2004, Negi said, "The big question is whether earth got jolted after these two [major] earthquakes, or did the prior jolting of the planet, as was shown in the increased wobble, build up pressure to cause great earthquakes in both hemispheres ... within three days [emphasis added]."

From:

[link to www.enterprisemission.com]

Last Edited by Dream Killer on 12/23/2009 11:20 AM

Courtesy of the SOHO observatory. It is definitely showing the sun being perturbated by SOME kind of force...

From last week of November, 2009, remember, this is when we're getting closer to the third node ring event from whatever it is that is approaching us...

[link to i446.photobucket.com]

Companion Observation of same event from different camera/satellite....

[link to i446.photobucket.com]

No doubt SOMETHING is going on...

Anyone with further information on this?

PLEASE POST

Still waiting if anyone can explain these two image links...


[link to i446.photobucket.com]

[link to i446.photobucket.com]

Probably not.

There certainly isn't any serious evidence to suggest it is.


Not that ol' chestnut again.
Why is it that woowoos never follow up on science stories once they found something vaguely similar too what they were looking for.
Neugebauer has repeatedly and publicly stated that the object was at intergalactic distance.


That's NOT what that means.
It means what it says.
A star that is part of a multiple system has a 100% probability to be part of of a multiple system.
A single star has a 100% probability to be single.

The guesstimated ratio between those two types is 1 to 2.
A randomly picked star therefor has a one in three chance of being part of a multiple system.
Sol however is not a randomly picked star. It is the most in depth studied star by far.


Because NASA isn't the only organisation in the world with access to large telescopes and computers.


The "researchers" of the Binary Research Institute are NEVER named.
The BRI is basically a guy with a website trying to make a buck.


Solar flare.


Planet.

Last Edited by Halcyon Dayz, FCD on 12/28/2009 01:42 PM

[link to i446.photobucket.com]

Planet.


Right.... "Planets" ALWAYS cause the sun to cease in it's rotation and jump around arbitrarily...

Is that the reason for the BEER MUG as your "avatar?"

As a follow up to the guy with the beer mug avatar...


[link to i446.photobucket.com]

Solar flare.


Again, how can a "solar flare" cause the sun's rotation to STOP!?!? And THEN just jump around arbitrarily? Did you even bother to look at the images, or the thread leading up to them?

Are you daft?

The Sun is observed 24/7 by Earth-based observatories.
It didn't stop rotating or jump around.

If that is what you think these videos show, then the parsimonious explanation is of course that the videos are flawed.

Anyhow, the notion that your magical invisible planet/brown dwarf/star could briefly stop the rotation of the Sun is preposterous.
It would quite literally require an Act of God.

MAYBE. We might see soon.

Not true Einstein.

i think 100's of comets with no tails or whatever they are hitting the Sun from the 8 and 4 O'clock positions are evidence in support of that.

the Moon is in earth's tractor beam so it can happen to a Moon.

could it happen to a sun by a larger sun?

your arrogance is showing.

acts of god happen all the time, einstein.

Reminds me of FZ: "A mind is like a parachute...it doesn't work if it isn't open."

The Moon doesn't jump around either.
And what the heck is a "tractor beam"?
Trekno-babble isn't science.


No.


Your ignorance is showing.


When is the last time the Eiffel Tower suddenly teleported to the top of Mount Fuji?

(Proper names should be capitalised. And trying to use the name of a great scientist as an insult betrays your anti-science attitude.)


Open minds without a bug screen get dirty.

So you imply a closed mind is 'clean'?

Halcyon Dayz, FCD is a friend of Duncan I see.

that explains everything.

ROFMAO

Clean but barren.

Best is a free-thinking but critical mind.
After all at least 90% of everything is crap.



Ad homs are the refuge of the clue- and fact-less.

The only thing that matters are the facts.
Got any?

Back to the issue after these red herrings, OPs "theory" is pseudo-scientific newage BS, not supported by a single shred of evidence.
I flies in the face of common sense and what we know of reality.

Is that you, Snakey?

$10 says this goblin thinks 1) jet fuel burns hot enough to turn a sky scraper into dust in 10 seconds in mid-air and leave no pancake pile and 2) that comets are dirty snowballs.

go on the record govbot. i say you are a a fraud on all counts.

no snake is too stupid. i bet he is duncan wearing a dress

Who's he?



And once more the guilt-by-association ad hom attack.

If you can't proof you are right, don't expect people to believe you are right.

Smearing the opposition still doesn't proof you are right.

It only shows you got no evidence and a lousy personality.

Show me the facts. Convince me.
If you can't even convince a reasonably intelligent skeptic, how are ever going to convince the masses?

Or is this all just a game, and you don't really care about the truth.

Since the goblin did not answer, we know his positions.

convince you of what? I commented on your arrogance. you make definitive statements about shit you dont know about. you have not proven anything.

i bet this goblin is actually duncan. i know it

yes

You're the twoofer thought police? How open minded.

Since my base position is always the null hypothesis, I don't take positions until there is sufficient evidence.
As any rational person should do.

And I'm an elf. Honest.*


Look who's talking.
You expect people to swallow OP's idiotic BS just because he says it's true.
How gullible do you think people are?
Sane, rational people require evidence.


Not my place.
OP makes the extraordinary claim. It's up to him to provide evidence.
The only thing I do is puncture his bubbles of fancy to see how substantial they really are.
So far I've found nothing.


You can't know that.
Yet another woo making statements of fact without evidence.
Don't you see that that is why nobody takes you serious?
(And f'r cryin' out loud, learn to use the SHIFT-key. Such laziness is disrespectful of your readers.)


*Or maybe not. Can you proof I'm not?

I guess the detractors suppose the perturbations are caused by what? The detractor imbibing too much of what his avatar is holding?

The proof lies in the data... Did you even bother to peruse the technical data in support of this posted earlier in this blog?

It's easy to throw stones at something you don't even research I suppose, why don't you go back and review the tech data CLEARLY posted earlier in this debate and get back with us. Failing that.... Find another thread to go bash...

For those detractors, and their probable lack of diligent research pertaining to the content of this thread, I resubmit the following:





Last Edited by Dream Killer on 12/29/2009 12:10 AM

[link to astrobiology.nasa.gov]

Stories about the fictional planet Nibiru and predictions of doomsday in December 2012 have blossomed on the Internet. There are now (June 2009) more than 175 books listed on Amazon.com dealing with the 2012 doomsday. As this hoax spreads, many more disaster scenarios are being suggested. “Ask an Astrobiologist” has received nearly a thousand questions about Nibiru and 2012, with more than 200 answers posted.

Many new questions are similar to those already answered. Following is a list of the most popular “Twenty Questions” organized in a logical succession and answered in some detail.

In addition to my responses, there are some other good resources

* NASA home page story 2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won’t End?

* Neil de Grassse Tyson posted a nice video clip on the Nibiru-2012 issue.

* Wikipedia has several useful entries. Start with Nibiru Collision, then look at Nibiru Mythology and Nibiru Sitchin). Also informative is the entry for 2012 doomsday predictions.

* For a detailed description of the origin of the Planet X / Nibiru cult see the discussion by Phil Plait on his Badastronomy website.

David Morrison,
NAI Senior Scientist
June 1, 2009

1. What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in December 2012?

The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. Zecharia Sitchin, who writes fiction about the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, claimed in several books (e.g., The Twelfth Planet, published in 1976) that he has found and translated Sumerian documents that identify the planet Nibiru, orbiting the Sun every 3600 years. These Sumerian fables include stories of “ancient astronauts” visiting Earth from a civilization of aliens called the Anunnaki. Then Nancy Lieder, a self-declared psychic who claims she is channeling 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. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Only recently have these two fables been linked to the end of the Mayan long-count at the winter solstice in 2012 – hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.

2. The Sumerians were the first great civilization, and they made many accurate astronomical predictions, including the existence of the planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. So why should we not believe their predictions about Nibiru?

Nibiru is a name in Babylonian astrology sometimes associated with the god Marduk. Nibiru appears as a minor character in the Babylonian creation poem Enuma Elish as recorded in the library of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria (668-627 BCE). Sumer flourished much earlier, from about the 23rd century to the 17th century BCE. The claims that Nibiru is a planet and was known to the Sumerians are contradicted by scholars who (unlike Zecharia Sitchin) study and translate the written records of ancient Mesopotamia. Sumer was indeed a great civilization, important for the development of agriculture, water management, urban life, and especially writing. However, they left very few records dealing with astronomy. Certainly they did not know about the existence of Uranus, Neptune or Pluto. They also had no understanding that the planets orbited the Sun, an idea that first developed in ancient Greece two millennia after the end of Sumer. Claims that Sumerians had a sophisticated astronomy, or that they even had a god named Nibiru, are the product of Sitchin’s imagination.

3. How can you deny the existence of Nibiru when NASA discovered it in 1983 and the story appeared in leading newspapers? At that time you called it Planet X, and later it was named Xena or Eris.

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. There is a good discussion from Caltech to be found at (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 (except one, which was a wisp of “infrared cirrus”), 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 Nibiru is a myth, with no basis in fact. To an astronomer, persistent claims about a planet that is “nearby” but “invisible” are just plain silly.

4. Maybe we should be asking about Planet X or Eris, not Nibiru. Why does NASA keep secret the orbit of Eris?

“Planet X” is an oxymoron when applied to a real object. The term has been used by astronomers over the past century for a possible or suspected object. Once the object is found, it is given a real name, as was done with Pluto and Eris, both of which were at some time referred to as Planet X. If a new object turns out to be not real, or not a planet, then you won’t hear about it again. If it is real, it is not called Planet X.

Eris is one of several dwarf planets recently found by astronomers in the outer solar system, all of them on normal orbits that will never bring them near Earth. Like Pluto, Eris is smaller than our Moon. It is very far away, and its orbit never brings it closer than about 4 billion miles. There is no secret about Eris and its orbit, as you can easily verify by googling it or looking it up in Wikipedia.

5. Do you deny that NASA built a South Pole Telescope (SPT) to track Nibiru? Why else would they build a telescope at the South Pole?

There is a telescope at the South Pole, but it was not built by NASA and not used to study Nibiru. The South Pole Telescope was supported by the National Science Foundation, and it is a radio telescope, not an optical instrument. It cannot take images or photos. You can look it up on Wikipedia. The Antarctic is a great place for astronomical infrared and short-wave-radio observations, and it also has the advantage that objects can be observed continuously without the interference of the day-night cycle.

I should add that it is impossible to imagine a geometry in which an object can be seen only from the South Pole. Even if it were due south of the Earth, it could be seen from the entire southern hemisphere.

6. There are many photos and videos of Nibiru on the Internet. Isn’t that proof that it exists?

The great majority of the photos and videos on the Internet are of some feature near the Sun (apparently supporting the claim that Nibiru has been hiding behind the Sun for the past several years.) These are actually false images of the Sun caused by internal reflections in the lens, often called lens flare. You can identify them easily by the fact that they appear diametrically opposite the real solar image, as if reflected across the center of the image. This is especially obvious in videos, where as the camera moves, the false image dances about always exactly opposite the real image. Similar lens flare is a source of many UFO photos taken at night with strong light sources such as streetlights in the frame. I am surprised that people don’t recognize this common photo artifact. I am also amazed that these photos showing something nearly as large and bright as the Sun (a “second sun”) are accepted together with claims made on some of the same websites that Nibiru is too faint to be seen or photographed except with large telescopes.

One widely reported telescopic photo (www.greatdreams.com/nibiru-possible.jpg) shows two views of an expanding gas cloud far beyond the solar system, which is not moving; you can see this from the fact that the stars are the same in both pictures. A sharp-eyed reader of this website identified these photos as a gas shell around the star V838 Mon. Wikipedia has a nice write-up and a beautiful photo of it from Hubble. Another high school student was initially impressed by posted images of a red blob that were said to be of Nibiru. Then he worked out in his Photoshop class how to make just such pictures starting from scratch.
One video posted in summer 2008 on Youtube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDKtkWIx00A) shows a guy standing in his kitchen claiming that one of the objects discovered by a NASA x-ray telescope is Nibiru. What is his evidence? That since this false-color x-ray image released by NASA is blue, this must really be a nearby planet with an ocean. This would be hilarious if it were not used to frighten people.

7. Can you explain the fact that the area at (5h 53m 27s, -6 10’ 58”) has been blackened out in Google Sky and Microsoft Telescope? People suggest that these have been blackened out because those are the co-ordinates where Nibiru is located at present.

Several people have asked me about this blank rectangle in Orion in Google Sky, which is a presentation of images from the Sloan Digital Survey. This can’t be a “hiding place” for Nibiru, since it is a part of the sky that could be seen from almost everywhere on the Earth in the winter of 2007-08 when much of the talk about Nibiru began. That would contradict the claims that Nibiru was hiding behind the Sun or that it could be seen only from the southern hemisphere. But I too was curious about this blank rectangle, so I asked a friend who is a senior scientist at Google. He replied that he “found out that the missing data is due to a processing error in the image stitching program we use to display the Sloan survey images. The team assures me that in the next run through, this will be fixed!”

8. If the government knew about Nibiru, wouldn’t they keep it a secret to avoid panic? Isn’t it the government’s job to keep the population at ease?

There are many objectives of government, but they do not include keeping the population at ease. My experience is that sometimes parts of the government do just the opposite, as in the frequent references to various terrorist threats or warnings about driving accidents on long holiday weekends, which are no more dangerous than any other time. There is a long history of associating bad things with political opponents (older readers will remember the “missile gap” in the 1960 election, younger ones will note the many current references to who is or is not keeping the U.S. safe from terrorists). Further, social scientists have pointed out that many of our concepts of public panic are the product of Hollywood, while in the real world people have a good record of helping each other in a time of danger. I think everyone also recognizes that keeping bad news secret usually backfires, making the issue even worse when the facts finally come out. And in the case of Nibiru, these facts would come out very soon indeed.

Even if they wanted to, the government could not keep Nibiru a secret. If it were real, it would be tracked by thousands of astronomers, amateurs as well a professional. These astronomers are spread all over the world. I know the astronomy community, and these scientists would not keep a secret even if ordered to. You just can’t hide a planet on its way to the inner solar system!

9. Why does the Mayan calendar say the world will end in 2012? I have heard that they have been pretty accurate in the past with other planetary predictions. How can you be sure you know more than they did?

Calendars exist for keeping track of the passage of time, not for predicting the future. The Mayan astronomers were clever, and they developed a very complex calendar. Ancient calendars are interesting to historians, but of they cannot match the ability we have today to keep track of time, or the precision of the calendars currently in use. The main point, however, is that calendars, whether contemporary or ancient, cannot predict the future of our planet or warn of things to happen on a specific date such as 2012.

I note that my desk calendar ends much sooner, on December 31 2009, but I do not interpret this as a prediction of Armageddon. It is just the beginning of a new year.

10. 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? Does this have something to do to do with our solar system dipping beneath the galactic equator?

A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. It has never happened and never will. 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-shift 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. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway. But they falsely claim that a magnetic reversal is coming soon (in 2012) and that this is the same as, or will trigger, a reversal of rotational poles. The bottom line is: (a) Rotation direction and magnetic polarity are not related. (b) There is no reason to expect a reversal of magnetic polarity any time soon, or to anticipate any bad effects on life when it does eventually happen. © A sudden shift in rotational pole with disastrous consequences is impossible. Also, none of this has anything to do with the galactic equator or any of the other nonsense about alignments that appears on many of the conspiracy theory websites.

11. When most of the planets align in 2012 and planet Earth is in the center of the Milky Way, what will the effects of this be on planet Earth? Could it cause a pole shift, and if so what could we expect?

There is no planet alignment in 2012 or any other time in the next several decades. As to the Earth being in the center of the Milky Way, I don’t know what this phrase means. If you are referring to the Milky Way Galaxy, we are rather far toward the edge of this spiral galaxy, some 30,000 light years from the center. We circle the galactic center in a period of 225-250 million years, always keeping approximately the same distance. Concerning a pole shift, I also don’t know what this means. If it means some sudden change in the position of the pole (that is, the rotation axis of the Earth), then that is impossible, as noted in the answer to Question 10. What many websites do discuss is the alignment of the Earth and Sun with the center of the Milky Way in the constellation of Sagittarius. This happens every December, with no bad consequences, and there is no reason to expect 2012 to be different from any other year.

12. When the sun and the Earth line up on the galactic plane at the same time with the black whole being in the center couldn’t that cause something to happen, due to the fact that the black hole has such a strong gravitational pull.

There is a giant black hole in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, and like any concentration of mass it exerts gravitational force on the rest of the Galaxy. However, the galactic center is very far away, approximately 30,000 light years, so it has negligible effects on the solar system or the Earth. There are no special forces from the galactic plane or the galactic center. The only important force that acts on the Earth is the gravitation of the Sun and Moon. As far as the influence of the galactic plane, there is nothing special about this location. The last time the Earth was in the galactic plane was several million years ago. Claims that we are about to cross the galactic plane are untrue.

13. I am scared about the fact that the Earth will enter the Dark Rift in the Milky Way. What will this do? Will the Earth be swallowed up?

The “dark rift” is a popular name for the broad and diffuse dust clouds in the
inner arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, which block our view of the galactic center. The entire “galactic alignment” scare is pretty crazy. Late in December the Sun is always approximately in the direction of the center of
the Galaxy as seen from the Earth, but so what? Apparently the con-men who are trying to scare you have decided to use these meaningless phrases about “alignments” and the “dark rift” and “photon belt” precisely because they are not understood by the public. It is too bad, but there is no law against lying on the Internet or anywhere else except in a court of law. As far as the safety of the Earth is concerned, the important threats are from global warming and loss of biological diversity, and perhaps someday from collision with an asteroid or comet, not the pseudoscientific claims about 2012.

14. I have heard that the Earth’s magnetic field will flip in 2012 just when the strongest level of solar storms in history is predicted to take place. Will this kill us or destroy our civilization?

Near solar maximum (which happens every 11 years approximately), there are many more solar flares and coronal mass ejections than near solar minimum. Flares and mass ejections are no danger for humans or other life on Earth. They could endanger astronauts in deep space or on the Moon, and this is something that NASA must learn to deal with, but it is not a problem for you or me. Large outbursts can interrupt radio transmission, cause bright displays of the aurora (Northern and Southern Lights), and damage the electronics of some satellites in space. Today many satellites are designed to deal with this possibility, for example by switching off some of their more delicate circuits and going into a “safe” mode for a few hours. In extreme cases solar activity can also disrupt electrical transmissions on the ground, possibly leading to electrical blackouts, but this is rare.

The last solar maximum occurred in 2001, so the next one was predicted for around 2012, 11 years later. However, the most recent solar minimum was unusual, with a period of a couple of years with almost no sunspots or other indications of solar activity, so scientists now guess that the next maximum will be delayed, perhaps to 2013. However, the details of the solar cycle remain basically unpredictable.

You are correct that the Earth’s magnetic field protects us by creating a large region in space, called the Earth’s magnetosphere, within which most of the material ejected from the Sun is captured or deflected, but there is no reason to expect a reversal of magnetic polarity any time soon. These magnetic reversals happen only once in 400,000 years on average.

15. I am confused about a report on the Fox News website that in 2012 a “Powerful Solar Storm Could Shut Down U.S. for Months”. They referred to a report from the National Academy of Sciences that was commissioned and paid for by NASA. If nothing is going to happen as a result of the event in 2012, why would NASA allow such nonsense to be reported?

NASA is pleased with the National Research Council report on heliophysics. As you note, this report includes a worst-case analysis of what could happen today if there were a repetition of the biggest solar storm ever recorded (in 1859). The problem is the way such information can be used out of context. There is no reason to expect such a large solar storm in the near future, certainly not in 2012 specifically. Your reference to “the event in 2012” illustrates this problem. There is no prediction of an “event in 2012”. We don’t even know if the next solar maximum will take place in that year. The whole 2012 disaster scenario is a hoax, fueled by ads for the Hollywood science-fiction disaster film “2012”. I can only hope that most people are able to distinguish Hollywood film plots from reality.

16. All my school friends are telling me that we are all going to die in the year 2012 due to a meteor hitting earth. Is this true?

Your friends are wrong. 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 NEO Program Office website (neo.jpl.nasa.gov), so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

17. If Nibiru is a hoax, why doesn’t NASA issue a denial? How can you permit these stores to circulate and frighten people? Why doesn’t the U.S. government do something about it!

If you go to the NASA home page, nasa.gov, you will see many stories that expose the Nibiru-2012 hoax. Try searching nasa.com under “Nibiru” or “2012”. There is not much more that NASA can do. These hoaxes have nothing to do with NASA and are not based on NASA data, so we as an agency are not directly involved. But scientists, both within NASA and outside, recognize that this hoax with its effort to frighten people is a distraction from more important science concerns, such as global warming and loss of biological diversity. We live in a country where there is freedom of speech, and that includes freedom to lie. You should be glad there are no censors. But if you will just use common sense I am sure you can recognize the lies. As we approach 2012, the lies will be come even more obvious.

18. Can you prove to me that Nibiru is a hoax? There are so many reports that something terrible will happen in 2012. I need proof because the government and NASA are keeping so much from us.

It is not logical to ask for proof that the 2012 doomsday is a hoax. Your questions should be to the doomsday advocates to prove that what they are saying is true, not to NASA to prove it is false. If someone claimed on the Internet that there were 50-foot tall purple elephants walking through Cleveland, would anyone expect NASA to prove this wrong? The burden of proof falls on those who make wild claims. Remember the often-quoted comment from Carl Sagan that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary levels of evidence if they are to be believed.

However, I think that astronomers have reached the point where we can offer extremely strong arguments that Nibiru does not exist. A large planet (or a brown dwarf) in our solar system would have been known to astronomers for many years, both indirectly from its gravitational perturbations on other objects and by direct detection in the infrared. The NASA Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) carried out the first all-sky survey in 1983, and several subsequent surveys would also have seen Nibiru if it were there. Further, if a large mass passed through the inner solar system every 3600 years, we would see its disruptive effects on the orbits of the inner planets, and we don’t.

You don’t need to take my word for it. Just use common sense. Have you seen Nibiru? In 2008 many websites said it would be visible to the naked eye in spring 2009. If a large planet or brown dwarf were headed for the inner solar system in 2012, it would already be tracked by hundreds of thousands of astronomers, professional and amateur, all over the world. Do you know any amateur astronomers who are watching it? Have you seen any photos or discussion of it in the big popular astronomy magazines like Sky & Telescope? Just think about it. No one could hide Nibiru if it existed.

19. What about the scary ads for the new film 2012? They tell us to look at these Internet sites to verify the doomsday threat.

The pseudoscientific claims about Nibiru and a doomsday in 2012, together with distrust of the government, are being amplified by publicity for the new film from Columbia Pictures titled 2012, to be released in November 2009. The film’s trailer, appearing in theaters and on their website , shows a tidal wave breaking over the Himalayas, with only the following words: “How would the governments of our planet prepare 6 billion people for the end of the world? [long pause] They wouldn’t. [long pause] Find out the Truth. Google search 2012”.

The film publicity includes creation of a faux scientific website (www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org/) for “The Institute for Human Continuity”, which is entirely fictitious. According to this website, the IHC is dedicated to scientific research and public preparedness. Its mission is the survival of mankind. The website explains that the Institute was founded 1978 by international leaders of government, business, and science. They say that in 2004, IHC scientists confirmed with 94% certainty that the world would be destroyed in 2012. This website encourages people to register for a lottery to select those who will be saved; a colleague submitted the name of her cat, which was accepted. I learned from Wikipedia that creating this sort of fake website is a new advertising technique called “Viral Marketing”, by analogy with computer viruses.

20. Is it possible that the influx of questions you describe is part of some kind of campaign for a book or movie, in the hopes that the volume of denials is taken as more “evidence” that there is a conspiracy?

I ask myself the same questions every day, as the volume of mail I receive about Nibiru (along with various alignments and pole shifts) keeps increasing — now more than 20 per week. Clearly there is money to be made from people’s fear about an approaching doomsday. Some of this hype is apparently advertising for the science fiction disaster movie 2012 (see Question 19). Many websites are selling books and tapes about Nibiru or even “survival kits”. It is all very sad, that with so many real issues (such as global warming and financial collapse) people are being taken in by these lies.

In the final chapter of a new astronomy book (The Hunt for Planet X) by Govert Shilling, he writes: “There is plenty to do for the debunkers – the archaeologists and astronomers who take a long and skeptical look at the tidal wave of Nibiru nonsense and explain with scientific precision what is wrong with this cosmic fairy-tale. They will have their work cut out in the next few years. And on December 22, 2012 there will be a new pseudoscientific cock-and-bull story doing the rounds and the whole circus will start all over again. Because no matter how many new celestial bodies are found in our solar system, there will always be a need for a mysterious Planet X.