Sometime in 2003, a personnel manager named Nancy Lieder announced on radio that the end of the world is near. She told listeners that the most devastating earthquake will cause tidal waves to swallow villages, the ground to engulf cities, the skies to weep with the cries of dying innocents, and the atmosphere to be coated with volcanic dust that will make it “dense as dusk for decades.” The end of the world as you know it, Lieder declared, will be caused by one planetary object: Nibiru – Planet X, as people some call it. This yet-to-be seen planet will pass by the Earth’s orbit in a very deathly close encounter, causing a physical pole shift that will lead to the great catastrophe.
The name Nibiru is said to have come from a Babylonian epic about the creation of the universe. In more recent history, it was mentioned in the books written by astronaut Zechariah Sitchin, who described the elusive planet as four times the size of the Earth and as bright as a second sun. Lieder appropriated the name in her website where she disseminates information about the end of the world scenario. Her information comes from a microchip planted in her brain by extraterrestrials when she was a young girl. The end of the word didn’t happen on the predicted May 2003 date; curiously, however, there was a spectacular lunar eclipse on that exact same date, which caused the moon to turn bloody red.
To date, the NASA and other authorities on astronomy have dismissed the existence of Nibiru as mere fable. They say that if Planet X is real and heading towards the Earth, modern devices would have tracked its movements for the last 10 years. And even without the use of equipment, a planet with its supposed size and brilliance would have been already visible to the naked eye. The NASA Astrobiology Institute even published a well-indexed set of articles and features all explaining in detail how the Nibiru encounter and other end-of-the-world theories related to astronomy are false.
However, despite great efforts by the government to put an end to apocalyptic announcements pertaining to Planet X, there is still a significant number of people who believe in the huge probability of such an incident. Photos, videos and testimonials on Nibiru sightings are published in print and online, and the most serious believers have structured their lives according to or around the coming end of days. When the predicted May 2003 encounter failed to materialize, Lieder simply said that she deliberately lied about the date to fool the establishment. So, is Nibiru for real? Perhaps, the best answer would be a quote from sci-fi TV series “X-Files”: The truth is out there.
