NASA Warns Nibiru or Planet X is Headed Straight for Earth-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
NASA has warned that a hulking planet known as Nibiru or Planet X is headed straight for the Earth and that a collision would have catastrophic consequences.
The Truth:
NASA hasn’t issued any warnings about Nibiru or Planet X hurtling toward Earth.
That rumor started with News 4 KTLA, a fake news website that is mocked up to look like a local TV news station but publishes fake, reader-submitted reports. The story, which appeared under the headline, “NASA Warns Disaster is Near: Nibiru is Headed Straight for Earth,” begins:
Is this the end of the world as we know it? Doomsayers have prophesied for decades about a giant, rogue planet in our solar system – dubbed Planet X or Nibiru – that has the capacity of colliding or passing near Earth, with catastrophic consequences. And of course, NASA has known about the mystery planet for years, but declined to warn us…. until now. Finally, after the announcement of “Planet Nine” in January, conspiracy theorists have proved to the skeptics that they have been right this entire time, and NASA finally has to admit its wrongs. The planet, according to Caltech researchers, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and takes about 15,000 years to make a full orbit around the sun – And it’s heading towards Earth, with a collision date of August 21, 2016. Although Caltech researchers have admitted that we are headed for doomsday. NASA continues to tiptoe around the subject.
Just like other stories published by News 4 KTLA like this one about millions of pounds of rat meat being sold as chicken wings, there’s no truth at all to this report.
Nibiru, aka Planet X and Planet 9, has caused lots of doomsday prophecies and concerns about the imminent end of the Earth. We previously investigated a doomsday rumor related to Planet X and ruled that the existence of Planet X has never been proven — and that there was no imminent threat to Earth. Click here to read about that investigation.
David Morrison, a NASA senior space scientist, posted a video in 2012 to further dispel rumors about the existence of Nibiru or Planet X, and the threat that it supposedly poses to Earth. Morrison said:
There is no credible evidence whatever about the existence of Nibiru. There are no pictures, there’s no tracking, there’s no astronomical observations … I can quite specifically say how we know that Nibiru or Planet X does not exist and does not threaten the Earth. First, if there were a planet headed in to the inner solar system that was going to come close the Earth by December 2012, it would already be by Mars. It would be bright, clearly visible to the naked eye. If it were up there, you could see it. All of us could see it … Second, if Nibiru were real and it were a plaent of substantial mass it would already be perturbing the orbits of Mars and Earth. We would be changes in those orbits due to this rogue object coming into the solar system. Astronomers monitor the orbits of Earth and Mars precisely and frequently, and there has been no change whatever….
So, reports that Nibiru or Planet X exists and/or poses a threat to the Earth are both fiction.