My family thinks I have flipped totally, but I don't care, the way I see it I'm performing a service to humanity. I may not even own a telescope, but I can type 60 wpm. Bottom line, the BA wiped the floor with her, but she was so far out in LaLa Land that she didn't even notice. I want some of whatever she's smoking...

So here goes. And I think we're definitely pushing the envelope here for pHpBB.

*******************

[Brief introductions and welcome of Nancy Lieder and Phil Plait by George Noory]

GN: Let me start with you, Nancy, very quickly, to get a very brief statement from you on your thoughts again on Planet X.

Nancy: Actually I'm going to give you my thoughts on, oh, who believes in, uh, that Planet X is within our solar system and rapidly approaching--

GN: Okay, and will you be speaking as you, or the Zetas?

Nancy: As me.

GN: Okay.

Nancy: Phil has said, "The weather ain't weird, and quakes aren't increasing", and I've, uh, put a link under the Zeta Face [?] called C to C Debate, which gives some information opposite that. Anyone who thinks the weather isn't weird, uh, is not paying attention and, and, the fact that the quakes are increasing, then why is it that the live seismo, uh, site has been taken down since last Saturday where most of the seismographs are not displaying to people, um, and in fact, uh, they're dropping, uh, quakes from the database like crazy. And, if he says this about the quakes and the weather, then why should we believe him about Planet X? Clearly he has blinders on and plugs up his ears--

GN: Okay, but Nancy, you're gonna get your time to talk about him. You need to use this time to talk about why you think there's a Planet X, so don't waste your time.

Nancy: All right, and here's my final statement. Who believes that Planet X is inbound and that it's likely to cause rotation stoppage and a pole shift after May 15th? Tom Ridge of Homeland Security. With all the attempts to debunk Planet X, why on earth did he mobilize a hundred different agencies just goin' into this week, and keep 'em mobilized, um, and that's the end of my statement.

GN: Okay, as the moderator for this hour with both of you, you have, uh, not, uh, told us your convictions about Planet X yet, but I hope you will do that--

Nancy : Oh, yes. Mm-hm.

GN: --this hour. Philip Plait. Your statement about why you believe there is no Planet X.

Phil: Well, there are quite a few reasons, um, actually, the weather is not weird, there are no more quakes than usual, despite what you just, uh, heard, there is no visual evidence for this, there's no gravitational evidence for this, um, despite the fact, uh, that according to Ms. Lieder it's supposed to be here in a few days, in a week, you know, it's supposed to start sometime in the week after, starting Thursday, um, there's not been a single reputable sighting of it or photograph of it, the pictures that have been shown on the websites are all misinterpretations or fakes, um, and, and, and, can be easily shown to be, so, uh, there's no gravitational effects from this thing, we don't see it affecting the Moon, any of the planets, and, uh, uh, there's just, there's just literally zero evidence for it, and that's why I don't believe in it.

GN: Okay, Nancy, Richard C. Hoagland has said on this program, uh, last Friday that, uh, that he does not believe in Planet X, but he did say that you, Nancy Lieder, uh, sound very convincing, in that he believes that you believe that there is indeed a Planet X. Um, I want you to tell us all. Uh, since the beginning of the 1990 periods when you felt that you were getting information from the Zetas, why you keyed in on a number of things, but including Planet X. Exactly what did they tell you?

Nancy: Well, when Zetatalk started, on January 19th of 1995, in Michael Lindeman's chat group on America Online, they came right out with talkin' about the cataclysm, and talkin' about 2003, uh, this was in fact, um, the first time 2003 began getting a buzz on the Internet, uh, and, uh, it has spread like wildfire. Um, I have never found a statement that they made to be untrue. Uh, they, they, their accuracy is remarkable. Not only did they predict the current weather, and, uh, quake increase, um, increasing illness, slowing rotation where, uh, seconds a day were having to be adjusted by the Navy clock, up until about two weeks ago when they suddenly realized they were showing people what they were doing and reversed that trend, but, um, I have never found them to be accurate, and they place in the sky where they said we would see--when we would see it, how we would see it, and the exact RA and DEC, er, right, right ascension and declination which is the X and Y point in the sky has been so accurate as to be breathtaking, uh, to, and, therefore, um, this in addition to a number of personal signs, which I could never take in front of a, a jury, George, have led me to, um, ah, ah, trust what they're saying is correct and to place my life in jeopardy if it's not.

GN: Well, originally you were saying that the Planet X would be here on May 15th and a few weeks ago you corrected that by saying it's probably closer now to June first. Are you still sticking with that date?

Nancy: Absolutely, and actually, um, it has always been shortly after May 15th, 2003, and you should be in your safe location by May 15th 2003. When we got close to this date, we, uh--clarification was requested. They have always stated that rotation will be stopped for a week, and that when that happens, there will be so much stress in the crust, and so much confusion in the public, that it will be difficult to travel, uh, and, and, in fact travel may be blocked, so therefore assume that week of rotation stoppage after May 15th. They've recently come out with a statement not after June 1st will the pole shift occur. They are not giving a specific date in that two week period because the Indonesian government, the U.S. military, I mean the U.S. government, would use this to harm the populace and prevent them from leaving many large cities along the coast or where damage could be done because they wish to see the underclass and, um, and, and, what is considered undesireables by them, killed.

GN: I'll ask you one more question, Nancy, and then we'll turn to Philip for just a bit--

Nancy: --okay--

GN: --Where is Planet X as we speak?

Nancy: You can, uh, it is, um, between Orion's bow and the right flank of the Taurus bull, but the red persona because it is mostly visible in its orange light which is like a red light that bends, um, uh, and, and, this is, uh, pulling up to be to the left of, in the northern hemisphere, to the left of the sun at dawn, and to the left of the sun, um, at sunset, and. we can get into the details of that later if you wish--

GN: Um-hmm.

Nancy:--it, it was seen as a sunrise um, around May 1st, April 30th, and it was seen as a sunset around May 6th, and uh, we are just beginning to get reports of it seen in the daytime sky. I will tell you the Zetas said that a week before rotation stops, you will, some people depending on their locations et cetera and visibility, will see it, um, in the daytime sky, um, and we can get into that more later, also.

GN: All right, Philip, time to head for the hills? Whaddaya think?

Phil: I don't think so. Um, I don't, uh, I don't even know where to start with all of what I just heard. Um, it, there have not been any sightings of this thing that I've heard of except anecdotal, people have actually been saying they have seen it, um, the photographs that have been placed on, uh, the Zetatalk website are actually, um, clearly at least one of them is a, is, it's what's called a sundog, it's a, uh, it's sunlight that's being bent by ice crystals in the air and, and, uh, Ms. Lieder even has a comparison of the images to sundogs and I think it's kind of funny because one of the images that she claims is real is obviously a sundog, I mean you can compare it to the images she has right there. There are many different types of internal reflections. When you, when you point a, a camera at the sun, you get light bouncing around inside the lens--

GN: Um-hmm.

Phil:--and, and most lenses are coated, you probably heard of this, these multi-coated reflect [?], refraction lenses, all that type of stuff--

GN: Right.

Phil:--but, uh, even with that, when you're pointing it at a very bright object, a lot of light gets in and reflects around. And, the reflection depends on the rotation of the camera, where it's pointed, where the sun is, in the, in the frame, and so these, these, these lens flares, these internal reflections can bounce around, they're different in every picture and it's pretty clear that when there are multiple pictures of, of what some people are calling the second sun, it's, it's, this is supposed to be Planet X, um, it's very clear that these are internal reflections, specially since in the, uh, in the people that take more than one picture, this thing is in a different position relative to the Sun in every picture. And unless Planet X is, you know, bumpin' around like a pinball, I don't think that's really real. Um, she's also claiming that these predictions are a hundred percent accurate, uh, this isn't correct, there have been many predictions that, uh, Ms. Lieder has made in the IRC chat sessions, these, uh, Internet Relay Chat rooms, that have, that have been proven wrong over and over again. Um, and, and, I mean, they're documented in a lot of, a lot of the sites that, uh, actually tear apart the entire Planet X theory.

GN: Now, we have a number of people who continue to e-mail me who are pretty darn concerned that, uh, we've only got a few weeks left, and that is one reason why I think it is so important that after so many years of, of this expected arrival that, uh, we get this kind of dialogue between you two on, one a real scientist, one someone who believes that she's been contacted by aliens from another civilization. I'm going to sorta like sit back and, and monitor for the next couple minutes a conversation between just you two, and you two are on the phone right now, so, uh, you know, if I think it's gonna get out of hand, I'm gonna jump in, but Philip and Nancy? I'd like the two of you to talk to each other.

Nancy: All righty, and I would like to, uh, rebut some of the statements that Phil just said, he said in the images that we are claiming are real--second suns--that it bounces around depending on where it is, actually it's always on the left side at dawn and the left side at sunset, and the only thing that bounces around are my examples of, of, of, sundogs and, and lens flares which, uh, clearly turned like a dial, um, ah, in all directions. Um, second, um, ah, what you're claiming are inaccuracies are, uh, situations which were in the hands of man which as the Zetas have stated from the start of Zetatalk, there is a rule of non-interference which in the main must be followed and therefore, as with the, uh, 2000 election, where they predicted that Gore would win--he did win, he just didn't get the White House because the hands of man interfered. Uh, and so in cases like that, or Chandra Levy, where she later showed up, uh, as a dead body in a park and could have, and was likely to have been planted there, as the evidence showed, um, to, to, state that she was alive and well in Mexico six months earlier, um, is not disproving Zetatalk in that regard, because it was in the hands of man, back to you, Phil.

Phil: Oh, I would disagree pretty strongly with that, I mean, uh, uh, Chandra Levy was known to have disappeared, uh, somewhere near Rock Creek Park and her, her remains were found there sometime later, um. Also, I mean, predicting an election, I'm not gonna argue about that, um, specifically, I should go on record here as saying that I don't believe, uh, that aliens are communicating with anybody here on Earth, there's no evidence of this, um, and so, I am just coming from the angle that this is one person, uh, who is making these statements and, but, either way, if you wanna talk about the hands of man, we could talk for a few minutes about the Comet Hale-Bopp, which, um, was a, a, as most people remember, was a very bright comet, it, uh, passed by the Earth, oh, seven, eight years ago, something like that--

GN: Um-hmm.

Phil:--there were a couple of bright comets right then, actually. Um, Ms. Lieder, you, you were on, uh, sci.astro and, and the venues back then, I mean there wasn't The Web as it is now, or the IRCs or anything like that, saying that Hale-Bopp doesn't exist, and I've read the logs and I've read your website where you actually say now that, um, that the people who are predicting this were trying to distract humanity from looking at the real place of Planet X, and then once, um, the, once the, uh, orbit of Hale-Bopp was known, uh, the, the orbit, the, the, excuse me, the comet that later--wait, lemme rephrase this--that, uh, an orbit was published by astronomers, it was a fake orbit, then they searched around for a comet that was gonna come in, and then they slowly changed the fake comet orbit to match the real one, so they could say, "Hey, look, it was Hale-Bopp all the time!" But--that doesn't work. It just doesn't work. There are thousands of amateurs who used that orbital calculation to see that comet once it was originally discovered. And so there's really no way that you could sit there and change the orbital elements of the, the, the physical characteristics of an orbit, um, and, and have nobody notice. And so to claim that Hale-Bopp didn't exist, and then to turn around and say, "Oh, those sneaky astronomers, they, they changed the orbit", that's just patently incorrect.

Nancy: Okay, my turn? Um, the Hale-Bopp, the Zetas were accurate, in 1995 when it first was announced, um, they said, "What is currently being pointed to is a nova", and, uh, uh, this was in August I believe of 95, and by the fall the ESO, ah, did a, um, emissions study and found no comet emissions in what was being pointed at. Hale-Bopp supposedly outgassed far beyond any, where any comet can, then it stopped outgassing for like over a year, and then started outgassing as a normal comet, ah, when it was approaching its, um, ah, zip around the sun. Now, uh, the Zetas, in their exact words, and if you go and link, uh, click on this, yeah, within the pole shift section, um, you will find that their exact words state in, uh, I believe it was the summer of, um, 96 that they were lining, uh, uh, uh, dots across the sky up with an orbit of a real comet that had been located by the NEAT program. The NEAT program tracks I guess about a thousand different dark asteroids in the sky and finds comets well before amateurs do, they're just allowed to grab the glory, and, and so that NASA isn't being considered a big bully. But, but, um, oh, they can't see, amateurs can't see it until the outgassing starts to occur. So, ah, but the NEAT program can, and in fact the orbital elements were changed. I have a link of actual factual data, um, some thirty different links off that Hale-Bopp, um, link, that, that is, um, observatory reports, um, JPL, uh, uh, orbit, uh, changes that happened, at one point they had the, um, Comet Hale-Bopp leaping away from Jupiter as it passed, perturbing away from Jupiter, and, uh, and then when it appeared, it was no more dramatic than the comet that appeared the year before. The year before, the comet--it was some Japanese name, I'm gonna mispronounce it--Haya something--was allowed, uh, direct feed pictures from the Hubble, and it was very dramatic, and Hale-Bopp did not get released pictures from the Hubble, a very few of them, it was one of these coverup deals that NASA did--uh, does, where they give it to a private investigator, a PI, and he decides what he wants to release. Now, why, if it was the comet of the century, oh, was there that, uh, kind of, control, I don't, why don't, what, should be pointed at, so--back to you, Phil.

Phil: Well, when you talk about Hubble, um, you gotta understand, I spent ten years working on Hubble in various different, uh, venues on different cameras on Hubble, and I know quite a bit about it, and, uh, as a matter of fact, I'm not bragging, it's just, uh, uh, a fact, I worked on it for a long time. There was never a live feed--I've heard you make this claim before, you say there was, but there was never, ever a live feed on Hubble. That is literally impossible, to feed video or images directly to the ground, it has to be, um, manipulated by computers, the data has to be turned into an image, it's a very complicated process, takes some time. Um, and the, the data are not beamed down instantly, um, there were never live feed pictures of Comet Hyakutake, um, and, uh, and, uh, as a matter of fact, if you actually go on the, uh, Hubble website, where you can look up the images that it took, it actually took hundreds of images, or at least, many many dozens of images of the Comet Hale-Bopp. I, I did this some months ago--I just went in, it's just a website, anybody can do it, and, uh, you can just look and see what it's done, it's taken quite a few. Most of the data that were taken were not images, which are not that interesting. They're spectra, which are not terribly interesting to the public, because it's just a graph, and, you know, people look at a graph and go, "All right, it's a graph". Pictures are neater and so, if you don't take pictures, they don't get released. Um, I'll add that Hale-Bopp was actually discovered by amateurs, um, Alan Hale and I believe it was David Bopp, they were both amateurs, and they discovered it.

[commercial break]

GN: ...Nancy, let me ask you this--I'm gonna ask you both "reverse-type" questions--but if Planet X does not show up, I wanna get your thoughts, your reactions to all this, what are you gonna say, have the Zetas tricked you, they lied to you? What will be your, ah, your, your verbiage to me then?

Nancy: Actually, I spend no time whatsoever thinking about that, George, and the reason is, I am too busy explaining to people, ah, what to do when it does show up. Every evidence that I have is that the Zetas are correct, and, ah, I'm not worrying about my sorry *** and how it's going to be defended, um, that's not my mission. My, I already put my life in jeopardy, um--

GN: Whaddaya, what do you mean by "you put your"--

Nancy: It destroyed my life...

GN: Whaddaya mean, you put your life in jeopardy?

Nancy: Um, by that I mean, ah, everybody knows where I live, everybody knows what I've said, um, I am not instructing people as to what to do but I am providing them with information. But there's gonna be, you'd have to get in line and the line would run around the globe, you know, to beat me up if it doesn't happen, so..

GN: [chuckles]

Nancy: I don't spend my time on that, I am Joan of Arc and Mother Theresa in essence, and, and, uh, I'll worry about that if that happens but I don't think it's going to.

GN: Well, let's hope you don't end up getting burned at the stake, Nancy Lieder, if you think you're Joan of Arc.

Nancy: I guess that's pretty mild but it would be quick, wouldn't it?

GN: Philip--well, not that quick--Philip Plait, if, uh, Planet X does show up, of course, ah, we won't have much time to chat again, but, uh, your thoughts if something strange shows up.

Phil: Well, this is an interesting point because I get this question a lot because I actually go out and I fight a lot of pseudoscience, including, you know, people who think the moon landings were faked, um, regular listeners of this show may remember I was talkin' about that in the past--

GN: Um-hmm.

Phil:--and, a lot of other things, and, um, they always say, "You're closed-minded because you won't believe in this" and it's like "No, it's actually quite the opposite", I'm the one that's open-minded, I just have to see real evidence for it, and I haven't seen it for a lot of this stuff. Um, astronomers are not this, this secretive cabal of, you know, white lab-coated goateed, you know, middle-aged white men hunkering down in the basement someplace cooking up nefarious schemes to keep the public, you know, to keep their minds occupied on, on, you know, pro wrestling and beer, or something like that, that it's always made out to be. It's not like that at all. As a matter of fact, uh, uh, astronomers and scientists in general are very excited about, uh, unusual findings, um, uh, comets, asteroids, stars that blow up, anything, anything that comes as a surprise is always wonderful. I have, I have seen research scientists who find something they did not expect and instead of, you know, stomping their feet and going, "Oh--drat" or somewhat stronger words, it's, it's usually a wry smile and like "Oh--isn't this interesting".

GN: Huh.

Phil: And they have to go and they figure out what it is, and it's--the reason people become scientists, one of the reason I became a scientist, is because it's the puzzle, it's the, it's the wanting to find out, and, and the surprises that come along the way. If, if a giant planet were on its way in, and astronomers knew about it, you'd be hearing about it everywhere. There wouldn't be an astronomer on the planet who wouldn't be standing on the rooftop shouting it as loudly as they could.

GN: Is it possible, Philip, that whatever might be there could be anti-matter, something that's totally reversible from what we would expect?

Phil: Well, anti-matter and matter are similar in many ways, and of course different in many ways, but some of the similarities is that, um, if there were a ball of anti-matter, this opposite matter, floating out in space, it would look for all intents and purposes just like regular matter, it would reflect light, it would, if it were hot it would glow, just like, ah, regular matter would. And so if this thing were anti-matter, um, we'd know. As a matter of fact, if it were anti-matter plowing through the solar system, as regular matter from the sun--protons, and subatomic particles and things--as they hit this thing, it would give off a tremendous amount of light, x-rays and gamma rays, which would be extremely obvious. So, if this thing were anti-matter, it would be even brighter than anybody would claim that any planet normally would be. There's really no way to hide an object the size of a planet. If it were so close, it would be here in a couple of days.

GN: Well, let me ask you this. If--well, lemme ask Nancy first. Nancy, is it possible, what the Zetas might have communicated to you was an asteroid might show up? Something unexpected like that? I could believe something like that.

Nancy: Uh, it's, of course, anything is possible, George, including the fact that you're really an octopus and we don't know it. Um, but--

GN: You never know how many legs and tentacles I have, Nancy.

[Phil laughs]

Nancy: --Exactly. And, and, or, or, so therefore, um, but, no, uh, as, as a matter of fact, what they have predicted since the start of 1995 and the increasing weather irregularities and earthquake uptick, and the like, has been so precise, ah, nobody else was predicting this. Oh, and I, I, have to believe, it's only four times the diameter of Earth, it's out just past Mars orbit approaching us now, seen only during the day, you know, from dawn to dusk, and, uh, I do agree that it's reflecting sunlight and you can see it, it also exudes some heat and light itself, which is why it was picked up on infrared in 1983, when, ah, NASA and JPL went looking for it, oh, and BEST [?] picked up an infrared in early 2001 in the two imaging sessions we had. Regarding whether astronomers would come forward, um, they get leaned on, ah, and we had, ah, ah, well-documented instance in Vancouver, in which a, uh, vice-president of the Canadian, uh, astronomical blah blah blah, oh, admitted to Steve Habbas [?] that, that they're watching us regularly and they know about it, pretty soon, two weeks later NASA or whatever shortly thereafter, NASA's up there giving a lecture, the observatory closes down for two months for repairs, has not been opened since.

GN: All right, but, Nancy, when this--let's assume it does happen, and we have all this, ah, calamity. What then do they say? What do governments say when all this happens?

Nancy: George, how are they going to be addressed when all the phone lines are dead, the electric lines are down, bridges are down, people can't drive up and say, "Why did you lie to me?" The White House, such as, is--

GN: So, you're gonna, you're saying everything's gonna be wiped out--

Nancy: [unintelligible]...with the military defending them, you, you won't be able to approach 'em, you'll get gunned down if you try to, they're not gonna have to defend themselves.

GN: Philip Plait?

Phil: Well, um, again, it's hard to know where to start with the, the number of, of things that I just heard that were wrong.

GN: She stands by her convictions, she's not backing down.

Phil: I understand that, um, I won't either, um, the only thing that would convince me that this thing exists would be to, you know, to actually go out and see it, and again, it has not been observed. Um, Nancy's referring to the IRAS observatory, the infrared astronomical satellite which was up in the early 1980s, um, this has long been claimed to have seen a quote unquote "tenth planet" because of a Washington Post article that came out that said in the headline, you know, "NASA astronomers find tenth planet". It turns out that in the press conference, they said, "Here's a list of things that we may have seen in this imaging". One of them was a possible tenth planet, there was also gas in the galaxy, uh, infrared-emitting galaxies way off on the other side of the universe, and when they went back and, and looked with, at this particular object, with bigger telescopes, they found that it was just some gas in our own galaxy. Um, so this thing is not the tenth planet, despite all these other claims. Now, Ms. Lieder also mentioned observatory shutting down. Now, let's think about this for a second, okay? Um, why would an observatory shut down? To keep the astronomers there from talking, to keep the public from seeing this? There are hundreds of observatories in this country. Um, I live near, uh, the Chabot observatory and science center, there's Morrison planetarium, there are amateur astronomers, there's all sorts of people out there, um, who, who should be able to have seen this thing. Ms. Lieder predicted years ago--YEARS ago--that this thing would be one of the brightest objects in the sky, way back then. Those magnitude predictions have changed over and over again, and, uh, now, ah, in, in, as a matter of fact, um, a couple of weeks ago, when I called in, when Ms. Lieder was on your show--

GN: Right.

Phil: --I called in and you said, "Let's have a debate", um, and I hesitated at first because I was thinking two things. One was I wanted to check my schedule and make sure I was available in May, 'cause I travel a lot, but the other thing was that, um, you know, why, why wait two weeks to have this debate? Um, a planet that's on its way to the Earth would be visible for years, YEARS. We can detect, um, Pluto, which is a dinky little ball of ice, and it's, it's, you know, three billion miles away, and now, you know, Ms. Lieder would have us believe that there's a planet four times the size of the Earth, that's over 30,000 miles across, and it's not even a hundred million miles away, and, and, you know, we can barely see it now. And, and some people are seeing it and some people aren't. It just, it just defies all logic, it doesn't make any sense.

GN: Lemme read something to both of you, get your reactions to this, it was on every major media outlet, ah, some time ago. Um, and I'll read just a paragraph of it. "If scientists detect a killer asteroid, shortly before it slams into Earth, should the public be informed? One researcher, Jeffrey Sumner, of the Rand Corporation, which is a Santa Monica, California-based think tank, believes the best answer, in some cases, is no." So here we have, Philip and Nancy, this individual, a researcher saying his recommendation obviously is, don't say anything. Nancy, what are your thoughts on that?

Nancy: Just one quick statement in rebuttal to Phil. Please read the Zetas' statements on the brightest object in the sky, they didn't say that, read that --

GN: Well, let's come back to that, let's come back to that, let's come back to that before we lose the thought of that question I just asked you...

Nancy: [unintelligible]--Oh, I'm not gonna lose it, but please connect with the, and, and, Phil is also reporting human understanding of how fast things move, not what the Zetas said. So, um, as, in regard to your coverup, yeah, absolutely, I think the, the goodhearted people in the government that are being told, "We can't say anything", and I'll believe there's tremendous arguments in, in smoke-filled rooms, are being told, "We can't cause panic, we're not really sure this is gonna happen, think of the panic and all the dead bodies and little children trammeled, if we announce something that doesn't happen, bank failures, so we gotta hold off." Well, ah, but they're, the real reason for a coverup because they could tell you that something might happen, not that it's going to but that it might, and they'll keep you informed, they're informed, the real reason is, they don't want your messy panic, they are gonna take care of themselves, they're gonna emerge with the stores that they've stocked up, but they don't want, they, uh, the average person, the taxpayer, they don't give a hoot about 'em, the people in charge don't care, and that's why they commandeered the White House as they did. Now over to you.

GN: --Philip, this, this researcher kind of scares me a little bit by his comments.

Phil: Um, don't be scared. You know, I, I, when, when you brought this up, I kind of sat here and wondered if, if Ms. Lieder was gonna run with it and extrapolate this to all astronomers. Sumner's not an astronomer, okay? Here's a guy who works for the Rand Corporation, which is a think tank, and they, they were charged with, you know, coming up with these, these potential scenarios for asteroid impact--

GN: Um-hmm.

Phil: -- and so this one guy stands up and says, "Maybe we shouldn't tell people because, um, if this asteroid hits, it may cause less damage than it would be to tell everybody and have them panic."

GN: Um-hmm.

Phil: And what happened was, and this was a thing of beauty, um, is that astronomers roundly said that this was completely wrong, that the best thing to always do is to get information out. This is what the astronomers actually said, not, not some guy in a think tank. He was, uh, not every--and of course some people did agree with him, but all the people I talked to, and a lot of people who do asteroid impact research, said "no way". As a matter of fact, um, and this, this is another thing that kills me, because of people who think that astronomers are so secretive, um, ever try to shut an astronomer up? Ever try to shut me up? You know, I love talking about this stuff, and, um, if, if, you know, if somebody discovers an asteroid, and I, and I know several people who do, like Jim Scotti, he, and, and, and, you know, Eleanor Helin, and some other people like that, they go out and they, they look for asteroids. When they find 'em, and they get a potential one, they look it up against known asteroids, and if it's a new one, hey, they send in a, an e-mail to a, uh, thing called the Minor Planet Center, which records the characteristics of the orbit, and then other people go and discover it. This is--er, excuse me, they observe it--this is what happened in, uh, with 1997 XF11, which was this asteroid which was thought might hit the Earth, it turns out, we were never really in any danger from it.

GN: You would be surprised, though, if an asteroid was spotted relatively close, but undetected previously?

Phil: Yeah, it turns out that these things are rather tough to find. When they're near the earth, they're moving relatively quickly. They can be coming from near the sun, which makes them difficult to detect. They're also, you gotta remember, asteroids are not that big. Even a big one might be a couple of miles across. And they're made of very dark material, and so, unless they're very close, they're not really bright enough to see right now. On the other hand, a planet, like Jupiter right now, if you were to go out right now and it's clear out, uh, well, maybe not right now, it's almost midnight my time, but, uh, right after sunset you'll see that an object that is tens of thousands of miles across, even when it's hundreds of millions of miles away, is tremendously bright. You know, and asteroids aren't, and so they're hard to detect, sometimes comets don't get very bright, and they're hard to detect. Planets are another story altogether.

GN: Nancy, I would like to, uh, talk to the Zetas for a moment, may I?

Nancy: [unintelligible]

GN: Why did you select Nancy Lieder to convey this message of Planet X?

Nancy: Uh, this is Zetatalk. Because we could rely on her at this point in time. Uh, after years of, of intense pressure, um, ah, trying to gut her, ah, from every angle that affects a human being, um, to, ah, give up, walk away, um, close down her psyche, alter her message, um, make mistakes, uh, we could rely on her not to do that, uh, she, when she refers to herself as Joan of Arc and Mother Theresa, these are terms given to her, ah, by others, but this is how she functions. Um, and, uh, as, as a pure messenger of the truth who will not be intimidated, which is a point we have made all along about Nancy, end of Zetatalk.

GN: Philip Plait, this is a great opportunity for you to talk to an alien. Go ahead and ask a question.

Phil: Um, I'm not really gonna, gonna do that, I think, um, I, I honestly don't think that there are aliens that she's channeling and I'm not terribly interested in, in indulging in this.

GN: Okay.

Phil: I'd rather talk about the facts, and what we can see, what we can measure, what we can observe. And I think that, that's what we need to stick to here.

GN: All right. Well, we're--

Nancy: Hey, George? I have a question for Phil. He got to ask me about Hale-Bopp.

GN: Sure, you may ask a question.

Phil: Sure.

Nancy: Yeah, Phil, how do you explain frozen, ah, mammoths bodies up in Wrangell Island, in the, and the, northern Finland, with green grass and buttercups in their stomachs and teeth and the like, ah, radiodated back to be approximately 34 to 38 hundred last deaths and more like, ah, 12, uh, pardon me, ah, yeah, hundred, and 12 thousand, how did they get green grass up there in Wrangell Island and, and northern Finland, uh, where, where it doesn't grow, and what happened, um, in, in the climate then, you claim on your website we haven't had any evidence of past geological changes.

Phil: Well, I'm not an archeologist or a paleontologist, so I'm not that familiar with this. I have heard about this claim that, um, mammoths were found frozen, flash frozen as if--um, I dunno, was it, was it mammoths or was it, um, mastodons?--

GN: Mastodons. I think it was Siberia.

Nancy: [unintelligible]

Phil: --But, um, but, either, either way, um, from what I have read, this is an Urban Legend that has expanded way out of proportion. I am not an expert in this, I do know that in some of the, uh, the Yahoo chat groups, in, er, the, the, the news servers, these, these sort of bulletin board like, uh, websites, um, there have been people talking about this back and forth, um, and uh, this was said, it was, the way I read it, is that they were not discovered with like, uh, tropical plants found in their bellies and that they weren't flash frozen, they actually just died for some reason. But to be honest, um, that's not my field, and if I'm not in my field, when I'm not comfortable with it, then there's not much I can say about it. Um, there are all sorts of things that, that can be talked about here, um, but if it's not something that I have experience in, then I, I, honestly, I can't answer it.

GN: Nancy--

Phil: It doesn't mean that what, it doesn't mean that she's right or wrong, it just means I can't answer it.

GN: Nancy, I will give you a final opportunity for your own summation here, go ahead.

Nancy: Yes, actually, this is run very much by scientists who are probably aghast at listening to you. This is like NASA or the Hubble, uh, very much a scientific operation, um, and, those, uh, big elephants ate, they eat a lot of hay and a lot of grass, and what they're doing up in the polar circles of, frozen like that, so that they're, they're, uh, preserved, um, what do they do, thunder north hundreds of miles or thousands and drop dead, uh, so that here again, Phil is saying the weather isn't weird, we're not having quake increases and, ah, it's, it's an Urban Legend that, that, uh, they, they, um, ate, uh, green grass or something similar, well, they ate something, Phil, they didn't eat snow, and that's the end.

GN: One--

Nancy: And back to you.

GN: One more time, Nancy, to back down on the date?

Nancy: Oh, no.

GN: You're not. All right, very good. Phil, thirty seconds.

Phil: Um, I wanna say that, uh, I was just told by the folks on one of the IRC rooms that talk dot origins, er, excuse me, talkorigins dot org, has a Frequently Asked Question list about the woolly mammoths and completely debunks all of these claims. Um, I won't go into any more detail about that because there's not enough time. Um, uh, to end this debate I would say that, um, I think that, uh, basically, almost everything that I have read on the Zetatalk site, uh, is wrong, and I find it interesting actually, it's kind of funny, ironic, I'm, I'm amused by the fact that it's been down all day, uh, when Ms. Lieder makes claims about the seismograph, seismographic sites down suspiciously when her own site's been down all day, I just find that ironic, um, I'm sure there's innnocent reasons for both.

GN: Well, we, we probably could have jammed her, too.

[end of debate portion]

*******

I'm hoping someone checks me on some of the spellings of people's names and stuff, be happy to Edit Post and fix 'em.


Editing typos.
Editing typos again.
Editing more typos.