The planet Nibiru, four times the size of Earth on a 3,600 year orbit of the Sun will imminently enter the inner solar system and destroy our planet on December 21 of this year, coinciding with the end of the Mayan Calendar.  This news, if you believe it, is being shielded from the general public to prevent hysteria and, just perhaps, allow a small group of scientists, world leaders, and wealthy, influential individuals to complete their secret preparations to flee this planet as in the 1951 sci-fi classic film When Worlds Collide.

 

The origin of this story begins in the mid-20^th Century when Azerbaijani-born American scholar Zecharia Sitchin, while studying Mesopotamian iconography and symbology, discovers startling information about a 12^th planet beyond Neptune.  The planet, named Nibiru, follows a long, elliptical orbit through the inner solar system to the outer reaches of the Sun’s gravitational pull.  According to Sitchin in his book The 12^th Planet, Nibiru collided with another planet located between Mars and Jupiter and associated with the goddess Tiamat in the Babylonian creation story.  The planet split in two.  On the next pass of Nibiru, it struck the one half of the debris forming the solar system’s asteroid belt and one of its moons hit and deflected the other half into a new orbit, creating the planet, Earth.

 

During other of the planet’s passes of Earth, according to Sitchin, its inhabitants have interacted with humans, influencing social and cultural development.  He has identified these interplanetary visitors as the Annunaki of ancient Sumerian myth, among our planet’s first gods.  Sitchin, who died in 2010, projected that Nibiru’s next pass of the Earth would occur in approximately 2900 AD, but speculated that the Annunaki might return earlier via spacecraft between the years 2090 and 2370 AD.

 

To learn Nibiru’s connection to the Mayan Calendar, one has to fast forward to the mid-90’s when Nancy Lieder, a Wisconsin woman, launches the website ZetaTalk.  Claiming to have been contacted by gray extraterrestrials called Zetas who implanted a communications device in her brain when she was a child, Lieder indicated that she had information from the Zetas that a planet that she originally referred to as Planet X that was four times Earth’s size would pass very close on May 27, 2003 causing the Earth’s rotation to cease for exactly 5.9 terrestrial days, the destabilization and physical shift of the planet’s poles, and the disruption of the magnetic core and displacement of the Earth’s crust; thereby, ending civilization as we know it.

 

When May 27, 2003 passed without incident, Lieder indicated that her original claim was a “white lie” to fool those in power and ameliorate the possibility of any potential imposition of martial law in advance of the cataclysm.  Conspiracy theorists and doomsday prognosticators both online and off, however, have since associated Lieder’s Planet X with Nibiru and speculate that Nibiru’s appearance will coincide with the end of the current cycle in the long count in the Mayan Calendar, signaling the end of time.

 

Will Nibiru make an appearance on December 21 of this year, or ever?  Will the world end on December 21, 2012?  Stay tuned…

 

 

It’s 2012 and if you take to heart what conspiracy theorists, doomsayers, and religious groups are saying, the world is going to end on December 21 of this year.  We need to get to work uncovering some of those Cold War bomb shelters, but we may have to do some remodeling; we’re going to need to install electricity so we can charge our iPhones and watch satellite while we’re down there.  But really, what’s this whole apocalyptic/end of the world/second coming of Christ business about?

The Mayans are famous for their mathematical and astrological accomplishments, but perhaps what they are most famous for is their complex and precise calendar system.  This system was designed by the Mayans not only to keep track of time, but to predict future astronomical events.  The Mayans made several calendars, but the Long Count calendar was different from the rest in that it was longer than 52 years, so it was capable of predicting more recent astronomical events accurately.  Due to its accuracy, the mystery of why the Long Count calendar ends has been the source for aforementioned groups’ claims of an impending, Mayan-predicted, world-changing event.  The theories behind the Mayan calendar stem from the fact that the Long Count calendar ends on December 21, 2012; many took this to mean that this was the Mayans’ prediction of the end of the world. 

In reality, the Mayans never made an end-of-the-world prediction; nowhere in their texts is it said that December 21, 2012 will be the day the world ends.  Generally speaking, we all believe that time is linear.  When event A happens, it’s done with and we move on to experience event B, never returning to event A again.  The Mayans, on the other hand, believed that time was cyclical.  Put very simply, they believed that events A through Z would take place and that once the final event took place, e.g. event Z, that time would start over again and humans would experience events A through Z again, starting with event A.  Because the Mayans believed that time was cyclical, the ending of the Long Count calendar did not mean that the world was ending to them; what it meant was that that time had met the beginning of the cycle again.

Really what happened is that people have taken a miniscule detail, i.e. that the Long Calendar ends, and put words into the Mayans’ mouths.  People, including an ABC news article, all claim that the Mayans predicted an event where “a solar shift, a Venus transit and violent earthquakes” take place.  However a scholarly search results in no evidence that the Mayans ever made such an ambiguous prediction of an event like that, much less a specific date for the end of the world.

So the question is, when December 21^st comes around, what will you do?  Will you be hiding in your bomb shelter with your canned meat, iPad, and your personal injury attorney’s number on speed dial?  Or will you be doing something truly scary: Braving the treacherous, last-minute holiday crowds at your local mall?

Amber Paley is a guest post and article writer bringing to us what the Mayan calendar and end-of-the-world hoopla is all about.  As a writer, Amber spends much of her professional life writing about nursing home abuse.