Scientist from NASA has sought to dispel hysterical rumors that claim an imaginary traveling planet known as Nibiru will create Armageddon and destroy the Earth in 2012.
"You have to be pretty dumb not to realize that Nibiru is a no-show," said David Morrison of NASA, who was quoted by the Washington Post.
Morrison explained that a speculative 2012 doomsday scenario represented little more than a "convergence" of New Age mysticism and Hollywood opportunism.
Indeed, author Zecharia Sitchin has penned a series of books describing an enigmatic planet known as Nibiru, which was apparently visible to no one else but the ancient Sumerians. Sitchin hypothesizes that a previous collision between the mysterious Nibiru and another, unnamed planet created both Earth and the asteroid belt.
This threatening planet on a 3600-year orbit was discovered by the ancient Mesopotamians, who named it Nibiru, and it was known also to the Mayans, who associated it with the end of their calendar 'long count' in December 2012. They claim that the completion of a time cycle known as Baktun 13 heralds the end of the world as we know it. However, Mayans believe that the Baktun 14 cycle will begin immediately after the conclusion of Baktun 13.
Morrison calls this sort of thing "cosmophobia." His efforts to head off 2012 paranoia is ironic in a sense: He's been a pioneer in the study of near-Earth objects that might potentially pose a hazard to the planet. In recent years, astronomers have mapped all the asteroids near Earth that are two miles in diameter or larger, Morrison said. Nothing seen so far poses an imminent threat to Earth.
Although Earth is unlikely to meet an untimely demise in 2012, the planet does remain vulnerable to future interstellar collisions.
One near-Earth asteroid, named Apophis, will pass near Earth in 2029 and again in 2036 and 2068, but recent calculations of its orbit show that it won't get closer to the planet than about 18,000 miles. And Apophis isn't really that big - about the length of about 2 1/2 football fields.
"It would basically take out a small state," Morrison said.
Via - TgDaily
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