No not at all. This is a claim by people who are as daft as a brush as they say. The idea of Nibiru is so daft that no-one with any astronomical background will give it any thought at all. It’s an impossible orbit. If there ever was a planet in such an orbit then it wouldn’t have lasted for as long as a million years so it either hit another planet or the Sun or was ejected from the solar system or similar. It would be long gone, well over four billion years ago. So no-one will take this seriously. Many with an astronomical background have probably never heard of it - I hadn’t until about a year ago. It would never get published in any astronomical news source or journal as it is just total BS one nonsense idea on top of another.
They often elaborate the story by saying that Robert Harrington discovered planet X in 1983 and was murdered by NASA or by the government, in order to hide his discovery from the general public.
Robert Harrington, photograph from his obituary Bob Harrington Obituary - he was not murdered. He died of throat cancer six months AFTER his theory of an extra planet beyond Neptune was disproved by Myles Standish using data from the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune.
The truth is that Robert Harrington did indeed hypothesize a planet X beyond Neptune. His paper is here: THE LOCATION OF PLANET X.
This is not Nibiru. It could hardly be more different. It’s just a normal planet orbiting way beyond Neptune.
As you will see at the end, on page 1478, he suggested a possible planet with, as one example, a semi-major axis 101.2 AU and eccentricity 0.411 which makes its perihelion 59.607 by this Ellipse Calculator, so the closest to the Sun it would get is one and a half times the distance to Pluto. He made this prediction on the basis of anomalies in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.
However, six months before his death, Myles Standish used new data from the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune. As a result the mass of Neptune was revised downwards by 0.5%. The data he had been using to hypothesize planet X depended on a more massive Neptune and when you redo the calculations with Neptune a bit lighter,the need for planet X vanishes. See Planet X - no dynamical evidence in the optical observations
Myles Standish’s article was published after Robert Harrington’s death, but submitted long before it and Robert Harrington would have known that his theory was disproved when he died.
And we know for sure that he was not murdered. He died of cancer of the throat. His obituary is here: Bob Harrington Obituary - that’s the more detailed obituary from his observatory. The NY times obituary is here, just says he died of cancer: Robert Harrington, 50, Astronomer in Capital
For a list of the daft things the Nibiru people say that immediately reveals that they know nothing about astronomy see my Nibiru Bullshit Tester - How to check if they know anything about astronomy
But basically if you see an article about a planet called Nibiru and it’s not debunking it, you can be certain that it is total BS. It’s not even wrong or disputed. It’s nonsense.
One example I often use is that it’s like someone who claims to be an authority on sport who then goes on to say that Usain Bolt is a top seeded tennis player and won Wimbledon in 2008. The rational response is not to doubt your understanding of Usain Bolt but to just cross them off your list of people who know anything about sport. It’s the same for Nibiru and Astronomy.
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