The End of the World - Again

[Paolo]

March 26th - Planet X, Planet 7x, Nibiru, the Brown Dwarf, the binary ... call it what you will.

:redbounce

It's coming out from behind the sun this Saturday. Search up Gil Broussard and Planet 7x.



Prepare. The end is here!



(Again)

[Dave (imported)]

Last time I was busy folding laundry and missed the end of the world. That's how exciting the laundry was.

It doesn't take much to excite me.

[MacTheWolf (imported)]

Speaking of the end of the world, I thought Verizon was the largest phone company. I went to pay my bill and Verizon I learned was bought out by Frontier Communications. Go figure.

[Dave (imported)]

No, Planet Nine Won't Kill Us All (UPDATED)

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | April 8, 2016 02:57pm ET

http://www.space.com/32515-planet-nine- ... ibiru.html

Don't believe the doomsday hype about the putative Planet Nine.

Yesterday (April 7), the New York Post published a video claiming that Planet Nine — a hypothesized world in the solar system's far outer reaches — could send asteroids and comets hurtling into Earth soon, with potentially devastating consequences.

"A newly discovered planet could destroy Earth as soon as this month," the New York Post said yesterday via its Twitter account, @nypost, by way of advertising the new video. [The Evidence for Planet Nine in Pictures]

There is so much wrong here. First of all, the Post's tweet, and the new 30-second video, describe Planet Nine as an officially discovered and confirmed world. This is not the case; astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, both of whom are based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, inferred the planet's existence based on the strange orbits of a half dozen small objects in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune.

Astronomers are now actively hunting for Planet Nine — which Batygin and Brown think is about 10 times more massive than Earth, and orbits about 600 times farther from the sun than our planet does — but to date, it has not been detected.

Second, we have nothing to fear from Planet Nine, even if it does exist, according to Brown.

Hey, so … fun fact? Planet Nine is not going to cause the Earth's destruction. If you read that it will, you have discovered idiotic writing!" Brown said yesterday via his Twitter account, @plutokiller. (Brown's Twitter handle references the fact that his discoveries of objects in the outer solar system helped demote Pluto to "dwarf planet" status back in 2006.) \

The New York Post's misleading video may result from a conflation of Planet Nine with other hypothesized, undiscovered objects in Earth's neck of the cosmic woods — namely, Nibiru and Nemesis.

Nibiru is a proposed large planet that conspiracy theorists have predicted will crash into and destroy Earth. Many prognostications had the cataclysm occurring in 2012, to coincide with the supposed "Mayan apocalypse." There is no evidence that Nibiru exists, or that such an impact is imminent. (Some variations of the Nibiru myth call it Planet X, but this latter moniker can also refer to a large world whose existence was first postulated by astronomer Percival Lowell in the early 20th century, to explain perceived oddities in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. So it can get a bit confusing.)

Nemesis is a small star or brown dwarf (a "failed star" that's considerably larger than a planet) hypothesized to zoom through space not far from the sun. Nemesis' gravitational pull regularly jostles the faraway comet repository known as the Oort Cloud, the idea goes, sending comets barreling toward Earth — and thus explaining the perceived cycle of mass extinctions on our planet, which seem to occur every 26 million years or so.

The Nemesis hypothesis is more scientifically respectable than the Nibiru fairy tale. Again, however, astronomers have found no solid evidence that the supposed star/brown dwarf actually exists.

The New York Post wouldn't be the first outlet to lump Planet Nine in with Planet X, Nibiru and Nemesis. On Wednesday (April 6), Brown, motivated by what he read in a different Planet Nine news story, offered the following helpful hint via Twitter: "PSA: Planet Nine is not Planet X or Nibiru or Nemesis. All theories of 'a planet out there' are not the same theory!"

In other Planet Nine news: A new modeling study suggests that, if the putative world actually exists, it's likely about 3.7 times wider than Earth and is downright frosty, with a temperature of about minus 375 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 226 degrees Celsius).

UPDATE #1: The world ended last week. You missed it. Too bad.

UPDATE #2: Pluto still isn't a planet. I'm selling crying towels if you need one.

UPDATE #3: The end of the world does not mitigate your debts. So pay the bill regardless...

[Paolo]

I was so looking forward to it, too.

Nothing like a good Apocalypse!

Instead of hunting for this useless planet that "might" exist, I personally believe we should be doing something useful with our space program - such as hauling in a white supergiant star to HEAT UP THIS FROZEN FUCKING SNOWBALL we live on!

I mean, God dammit, man, when's the next shuttle to Mercury?

[Prudence (imported)]

The funny thing about these "will destroy the Earth in a month" type articles: If there's really a large planet orbiting way out there, it would have been there since the formation of the solar system. If it was going to cause the destruction of Earth, you'd think it would have happened, oh, maybe a billion-or-so years ago...

I highly doubt that our discovering it would suddenly cause it to destroy us (I mean really, to imply that is some serious arrogance and delusion-of-grandeur).

Also, I heard (or read) that the term "Planet X" was coined because X the roman numeral for 10, and before Pluto's demotion, this would have been the 10th planet. Not sure if that is true, but it seems like it would be. Makes a lot of sense.

Don't panic.

[C&TL2745 (imported)]

One of my hubby's pet peeves is science reporters who know nothing about science. He says he's seen articles about things he's been involved in that contain gross errors. He got so irritated once about an error that he actually wrote to the newspaper about it. He got a reply that said, in essence, 'Who cares? Your a nit picker. It makes me wonder how much of what I think I know about the world is wrong because I learned about it in the news.

Sandi

[devi (imported)]

One of my hubby's pet peeves is science reporters who know nothing about science. He says he's seen articles about things he's been involved in that contain gross errors. He got so irritated once about an error that he actually wrote to the newspaper about it. He got a reply that said, in essence, 'Who cares? Your a nit picker. It makes me wonder how much of what I think I know about the world is wrong because I learned about it in the news.

Sandi

I agree. You just cannot believe everything you read nor most of what you see on over the television.

[MacTheWolf (imported)]

If it's really the end of the world, shouldn't Paolo and Kristoff pledge their undying love for Moi. The universe needs a laugh

[Paolo]

I have to say, I am getting really pissed off waiting for the Apocalypse.