Planet X, 2012 And The End Of The World

There has been a lot of coverage of a certain Planet X (also known as Nibiru) in the press lately. The planet apparently passes through our solar system every 3,600 years leaving death and destruction in its wake.

Planet X was first spotted by astronomers in the early 1980s and has been tracked by infrared observatories ever since. It is a planet which takes 3,600 years to complete one full rotation of our sun.

If Niribu enters our solar system, there would be a catastrophic effect on the planet. The poles could shift, extreme natural disasters could increase and the sun might be blotted out by the dust left by the planet for some 40 years, killing most life forms on Earth.

Assuming the planet is actually due to enter our solar system in 2012, the last time Niribu was here was circa 1588 BC.

If we look back 3,600 years into Earth's history, there are a number of events which could be linked to the passing of Nibiru. According to the World Book Encyclopaedia, an unknown civilisation living in the Indus Valley (West Pakistan) mysteriously vanished at around 1500 BC.

A quick look at Encarta tells us that the first dynasty of Babylon ended in 1595 and that the Cycladic settlement on the island of Thera was destroyed by a massive volcanic eruption around 100 years earlier.

M.I. Farley, author of Early Greece also noticed a total catastrophe all over Crete in 1400.

The list goes on depending where you look on the internet. But how much of it is actually true, and just how worried should we be? Is it about time we spent all our savings and partied like it's 1999 or should we continue as normal?

Let's face it, Planet X isn't the first time we have be warned of an oncoming apocalypse. December 31, 1999 was the last time we were expecting the world to end with the arrival of the Millennium Bug. Quite how a computer malfunction in dates would end the world, I am not entirely sure, but we survived it and lived to fight another day anyway.

French apothecary and reputed seer, Nostradamus published a series of prophecies which have also become world famous. Predictions of Napoleon, Hitler and the 9/11 attacks have all been credited to the seer.

There have always been predictions of doomsday - it's merely human nature. Even the Bible, one of the oldest and best selling books of all time predicts the end of days:

"From a far away land they came, from the end point of Heaven do the Lord and his weapons of wrath come to destroy the whole Earth." Isaiah 13:1.

But what of this latest threat? As already stated, the planet was first discovered in the early 1980s. 1983 to be precise, by NASA's Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). Shortly afterwards, The Washington Post ran a front page article entitled Mystery Heavenly Body Discovered.

Inevitably, this started a huge furore in the media. NASA scientists couldn't determine what this body was. Was it was a planet, a comet or a distant galaxy?

And this was where the 2012 end of days theories began. With a lack of categorical evidence telling us what this so-called heavenly body actually was, conspiracy theorists jumped on the chance to scare us all to our wit's end.

Some people have taken this news to the extreme. Patrick Geryl, a 53-year-old American has been gathering supplies for some time now, in preparation for the catastrophe.

"You have to understand," says Geryl, "there will be nothing. Nothing left. We will have to start an entire civilisation from scratch."

His fears of doomsday have only been strengthened by the fact that the Mayan Long Count Calendar ends on 21 December of the same year. Apparently, at the end of every cycle in this calendar, catastrophe strikes, and 2012 sees the end of the fifth and final cycle.

There is a lot of uncertainty in this 2012 myth, but one thing is painfully clear. Do a Google search for the words planet x and 2012 and be prepared for a number of sites warning us that the end is nigh. The trouble is, most of these sites are made by religious sects trying to convert you to whichever God they champion.