OF ROGUE PLANETS AND HUCKSTERS

Of all the Doomsday/Armageddon/End of Days/Apocalypse nonsense floating around the Internet and the blogosphere, the most nonsensical is the phantom planet Nibiru that is supposed to (magically) appear and crash into earth.

Well, lo and behold, hysterics and Doomsters have recently been wetting themselves over a paper presented to the American Astronomical Society by Rodney Gomes, a Brazilian astronomer. The subject of his paper is a model that demonstrating that a large planet with four times the mass of earth “may exist in the outer reaches of the solar system, thus explaining the sometimes odd orbits of objects in the Kuiper Belt, which lies beyond Neptune.”

While members of the American Astronomical Society present at the meeting were reportedly intrigued, they asked for further evidence.

First of all, in 1781, William Herschel found the seventh planet from the sun, Uranus using only a telescope. Subsequent observations demonstrated that Uranus did not follow a solar orbit as it should. Mathematical analysis on this odd orbit led to the discovery of Neptune, which has a pronounced effect on Uranus' orbit. 

Okay, no arguing that a mysterious planet might possibly be out there. However, peddling it as Nibiru, the rogue planet come to destroy earth, is needless exploitation of True Believers (idiots/morons). Such fear-mongering marks the peddler as a dyed-in-the-wool huckster and, worse, an out-and-out liar!

Happy Memorial Day!