Planet X Search

[Gamma986]

Is there any news about the hunt for this planet Do the astronomers still search for planet X, or did they give up

[admin]

From Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy web site, on the subject of Planet X. "Doomsayers seem to pop up every few years. Last time, it was the alignment of the planets that somehow managed not to destroy the Earth in May 2000. Now, we have Planet X. A few people are claiming that a heretofore unknown planet in our solar system is on a very long, elliptical orbit. In May 2003, it will pass close enough to the Earth to affect it in some way, causing it to flip over (what many call a "pole shift") and spur many other huge disasters. The end result will be the deaths of many billions of people. There are a large number of web pages, chat rooms and books about Planet X and its horrible effects on the Earth. So the question is, does this planet exist, and will it come by in May 2003 and cause all this horror No, and no.

Read more below... Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Planet X
Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions: Planet X

[skywalker]

After Uranus was discovered, astronomers saw deviations in its orbit that could be caused by the gravity of another large planet. Using those deviations as a guide, Neptune was discovered soon after.

There were still some deviations in the orbits of both Uranus and Neptune, however, so there was a search for a 9th planet.

This search found Pluto, which is too small to have much of an effect on the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. There have been several surveys of the sky for additional large outer planets in both visible and infrared wavelengths, and the searches turned up nothing.

Because of this, the general conclusion is that there is not another large planet in the outer solar system.

[Kes]

This Planet X, Nibiru, Nemesis thing has been around so long it is beginning to smell like moldy cheese.

The perputrators of these things take a small amount of pseudo science, mix in a huge amount of hookum, a bit of gullability and pronounce doom to the world on the net. "You too can get my survival guide for $29.95". And that is the main course of these things.

A certain elderly lady named Nancy Lieder has just about ruined herself with prognostications from the "Zeta's" concerning this Planet X thing. Go to her site "Zeta Talk" sometime for an interesting ride. The "Photos" of this thing are just very very bad photography and overactive imagination.

In case she didn't notice 2003 came and went fairly peacably by Earth standards.