A silly made up planet. No science behind it, lots of misunderstandings. For instance they often refer to the anomalies in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune - something that was explained in 1993, so that's 23 years out of date.
Planet X is a real possibility. It's a generic name, first invented by Percival Lowell in 1905, and now used generally to refer to a planet that you hypothesize to exist but haven't found yet. The very fact it is called planet X therefore means it hasn't been discovered yet. Been many different planet Xs, each in turn ruled out.
Nemesis is the name of a star that was hypothesized to bring more comets than usual into the inner solar system every 26 million years. Searches showed that it doesn't exist.
Then Tyche was a new name for "Nemesis's good sister" - no longer hypothesized to bring comets into the inner solar system because it would be in a near circular orbit. It too was shown not to exist.
They now think there might be a planet about the size of Mars or Earth orbiting around 50 au or so away from Earth to explain the Kuiper Cliff drop off of numbers of dwarf planets when you'd expect an increase. A bit like Saturn's rings shepherding moons. This is still on the cards as a possible extra planet - but would orbit permanently in a circular orbit again well beyond Pluto.
They've mixed these ideas up, reduced the length of the 26 million years of Nemesis to 3600 years, turned it into a planet, made it into a planet that comes into the inner solar system inside of Earth's orbit, then they also add the absurd idea that it can hide behind the sun, to explain why astronomers haven't found it yet. They think it can hide behind the sun for years on end, and then suddenly come out and hit Earth within a month or two.
If you go to their websites and videos, you also find out that many of them think that NASA has been monitoring this for a long time and won't tell anyone else because it would make us scared, and that there is a collaboration of world governments internationally to keep us all from getting upset by this coming disaster. They also think that Nibiru is an entire solar system orbiting a star called Nemesis, and that there are intelligent creatures who evolved on Nibiru who are able to interbreed with humans when they are close to Earth.
They think that Nibiru is visible in the daytime sky if you video the sun. That sometimes (but not always) you can spot it as a bright spot next to the sun. Which in some photos is as big as the sun - they think that's not the planet itself but more like a comet tail around it - and sometimes is really tiny. And yet - all the astronomers who could observe this thing, they think, are in a conspiracy of silence or paid off by governments not to report it.
It's all LOL silly. But if you don't have a background in astronomy then it is easy, apparently, to think this is all valid stuff.
David Morrison reports that when he was doing his "ask an astrobiologist" column for NASA he would spend an hour every day answering emails about Nibiru and related apocalyptic topics from members of the public who were genuinely very scared about it. Some even suicidal.
I just recently did a couple of articles on it - the most recent: "Imaginary Bullshit Planet" Nibiru - Lens Flares, Sun Mirages, Hoaxes & Just Plain Silly
And I've also been getting many comments from the general public who are very scared that this is going to kill them all this December - or March. Asking over and over - is it real, are you scared of it, are you paid by the government to hide it, how do you know it isn't real, why is it only you saying this (because the debunking sites are so way down the search results that apparently for many of them, my article is the first one they've seen that debunks it) and so on.
It keeps coming around with different dates - previous dates for Nibiru to bring an end to human life on Earth were in 2012 (where for some reason they associated this Sumerian god as they say it is, with a Mayan calender), and in 2003, and some dates in between.
Search on Amazon and you'll find numerous books about it.
Amazon.com: Nibiru: Books and if you imagine coming to it not knowing anything about astronomy - it would seem a unanimous opinion that this planet exists - because every single book on the first page and probably for several pages, says it exists.
To try to do my little bit to counter it, I've made my own kindle book
which is also available to read for free as my science20 blog post. "Imaginary Bullshit Planet" Nibiru - Lens Flares, Sun Mirages, Hoaxes & Just Plain Silly
Not sure how much it is going to help - because it is also available for free, probably won't get many amazon sales, so not likely to move high up their search result ranking which is by the numbers of sales and reviews I imagine - but at least it means there's one quite substantial debunking book there for them to come across which some may find.
It's got a lot of good and fun science in it. About the real search for planet X, the Kuiper belt, sun mirages and lens flares, the state of play of the asteroid search, the search for Vulcan in the late C19 and the present day search for vulcanoids, and many more topics.
My idea is that the best way to counteract this nonsense is to get in a lot of interesting fun astronomy and get them a bit interested in real astronomy - with any astronomical background at all, they'd be able to see for themselves that it is LOL silly.
I have had one sale of the Amazon kindle book so far. So someone there found it useful :). Well or could be just someone reading it for fun, don't know.
The other thing one can do is to make a youtube video. But Nibiru debunking videos are liable to be cut and made into evidence for a Nibiru hiding conspiracy, and also just don't get liked as much as the ones that say it's really going to happen or something - they are way down in the search results for Nibiru on youtube..
Still David Morrison did do a couple of videos and I'm sure they must have helped many people.
If you care about this, please sign my petition: Let's End Dramatized Reporting of "Doomsday" Stories - The Vulnerable Get Suicidal
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