I have written a longish page looking at the basic scientific arguments against Planet X: The Planet X Scientific Arguments in a Nutshell.

I invite comments. Comixx, I link to your FAQ as well as several other pages. With the Coast to Coast interview looming, I wanted to have a page with everything on it.

__________________
Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
http://www.badastronomy.com
badastro@badastronomy.com

Typo. I think you meant to say "not at all".

Good summary. I especially like "I am not a government disinformation agent." You'd think that the government could just fly out to PX and blow it up with their captured alien saucer, rather than just supressing everything...

Very nice page, Phil.

__________________
"Ignorance has caused more calamity than malignity" H.G. Wells

"Getting lost is part of exploring." Uniqua in "Backyardigans-Heart of the Jungle"

"Trying to wrap my head around creationist astronomy is like trying to ride a unicycle around a Moebius strip: it’s off-balance, physically impossible, full of one-sided arguments, and in the end you don’t go anywhere." Phil Plait

Phil, that was a great page Has all the information very clearly explained. I will show this to my nephew later and let him read it so he knows there is nothing to worry about. It certainly made me feel alot better about things.

Really good page, but I really hope nothing is gonna happen (I'm always consirned about this kind of stuff and i'm only 15 years old so :P)

Very Good Phil,

Oddly enough, before I opened the proof of a tenth planet, I thought to myself....If Aliens conveyed to the Summerians ,about the Planetary System we live in, then why did they not speak of the moons of the other planets also...(Obviously the Summerians could view the Earths).

But you covered it better for me When you also questioned about Saturns Rings and the fact that the Sun resembled a Star.
This along with my own personal revelation of the other moons.
Good Job.

It is truly Amazing, how many facts go unquestioned

Well done. Hopefully you can pull more people back from the brink.
I had never heard of PX until I visited this site, but it appears a great many others have not been so fortunate.

Phil, one of the things you might also want to address is claims of "extreme weather." I see this being tossed around as "proof."


Nota Bene for the rest of you guys: We are currently in the waning stages of an El Nino (remember the really BIZARRE weather years back when they finally put a name to the pattern?) http://www.usatoday.com/weather/reso...ics/wnino0.htm

Those who don't know weather patterns and who are expecting Doomsday any minute now always see the weather as a menacing indicator. However, the truth is that this year's El Nino wasn't much different than the ones in the past 50 years:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/product...enso_advisory/

The "severe snows" aren't unusual for an El Nino... the flooding certainly isn't unusual for El Nino years, and so on and so forth.

Also found a couple of other things that could be addressed:

I couldn't answer any of those (and am not sure what "increase asteroid traffic" means unless it means that we can better detect NEO-type objects.)

Another bit of nonsense that I've seen repeated involves pole shift changes:
I haven't heard of any imploding buildings. Don't know about stretching land masses.

Sounds like bad science, but I'm not sure.

(editing out a LOT of El Nino effects such as "Radical hail storms"causing great disruption and casualties, "Extreme record-breaking droughts, heavy rainstorms, (I just love the one that says "Air currents are changing as a result moving the regular weather pattern." Well, DUH!) Heavy flooding - result of warming oceans.

And then there's :
I'm not sure why green meteors are more significant. In any case, those may also be mentioned.

After years of avidly reading the website and the BABB, I wanted to make a recommendation, so I had to de-lurk and actually register. Overall, this is an excellent summary of your fine work in explaining the irrationality of the "PXP's". In your earthquake section, you might want to revise the text, though. You mention that "If Planet X is nearly here, then you'd expect to see an increase of earthquake activity over time, with 2002 having the most." But in fact, although the number of big quakes is below normal for 2002, if you look at the total, the count has in fact been on a pretty steady rise since 1997, with 2002, 2001, and 2000 being, in order, the years with the highest number of total earthquakes.

While I think that has nothing to do with a hypothetical planet swooping down on us, I could imagine a Planet X proponent saying something like, "Even in his attempt to debunk the Planet X claims, the Bad Astronomer's own website shows that earthquakes have been on the rise as we approach the Pole Shift!" :roll:

Yes, I was thinking the same thing. I think it is a point that should be addressed. Obviously the reason that the total number of measured earthquakes is on the rise is because of better detection systems. However, as can bee seen from the graph, there were actually fewer quakes of greater than 5.0 in 2002 than the previous year.

__________________
Old laser physicists never die, they just become incoherent.
These days, every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows what a photon is, but he is wrong. - Albert Einstein

Yup, nice work. I see Nancy has also created a page for the C2C audience full of her ammunition. But its just fire-crackers compared to the BA's nuclear arsenal of Kook-destroying facts!

Well, I love it A point-for-point debunking is exactly what is needed to counter this sort of thing, in my opinion. BA, you have such a no-nonsense way to stating things that it's almost poetry. And, thanks for including my FAQ in your links.

I just hope, like others have said, that this PX nonsense goes away after May, but, to use a very common phrase around here, evidence points in the other direction. There are stranger hydra heads already spouting to replace Nancy (I wonder how much nastiness she will spit in their direction as they steal her spotlight). Unfortunately, people seem to want to believe that their government lies to them, that professionals are on a secret payroll, and that alien beings talk to us from billions of miles away with no time-lag through telepathy or implants in our brains. Against that sort of mindlessness, there is no counter-argument except time...as with all cases of exploitation, it will continue until the exploited realize they are being abused and make changes within themselves, but they cannot hear it from the outside. That's why this all makes me more sad or angry than amused anymore...

Well, I've rambled enough. Thanks again BA, I love what you do here. Thanks to all my BABB friends too we all do our best to ensure knowledge replaces foolishness.

__________________
~Brad - Astropaparazzo
http://signaturedigitalimages.com

Thanks for the notes, folks. I corrected the typo. I will also look into the total number of quakes seen, but I suspect that's a detection factor, as was pointed out.

I may add to the list with time, but hopefully won't need to. :-)

From the USGS site:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/faq/myths.html#8

BTW, your new page looks and reads great Phil.

Great point, Byrd, I totally agree. This extreme weather taking place over the last couple of weeks should be addressed. Nancy will use this to promote fear, and those not familiar with the current weather pattern may be vulnerable at the moment. Let's face it; to many of these unfortunate storm victims, it does seem like the end of the world about now.

The truth, although this outbreak of extreme weather will go down as one of epic proportions, it still struggles to be included among the top 5 outbreaks of the past 100 years. It currently stands at #4. Severe outbreaks in the 90s and 70s were actually much worse, as hard as it is to imagine. Byrd's correct, the culprit is that nasty little phenomenon known as, El Nino.

Nancy will have leverage with this unless it is explained scientifically. This event is big news right now, as you can't turn on a TV, Radio, surf the internet, or in many cases, look out the window, without being made aware of it. My advice, Email an expert who can offer a definitive answer. Perhaps Greg Forbes at the Weather channel, he's one of the most noted experts on this subject.

Great effort, Phil, though I still see many loop holes left for Nancy to exploit. The Berlin Seal, for example, was basically conjectured on your part. How do we know what the Sumerians were actually referring to? They didn't call the objects, "planets," they just drew round bodies as they saw them. Sitchin called them planets. To me, you must go further than simply repeating "he's wrong," and offer something tangible to refute Mr. Sitchin. Don't lock yourself in to a debate over the translation, because if it comes down to your conjecture of the translations verses Sitchin's conjecture, well, Sitchin is the recognized expert in the field of translating Sumerian seals. Until you can offer an overwelming body of experts, with half the credentials of Sitchin, to dispute his claims, this debunking simply doesn't work.

I do believe Sitchin's wrong, but honestly, one must go further than repeating "he's wrong, he's wrong, he's wrong." Nancy still has plenty of wiggle room, unless someone offers something more tangible. Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm just playing the devil's advocate. Actually, I think we all should until May 13th, it will better prepare you for Nancy and her Zetas.

[quote="Byrd"]Also found a couple of other things that could be addressed:

While I don't see how that has anything to do with their Planet X (what with it supposedly on the OTHER side of the sun, in the inner solar system), I still wonder how this is possible. I read recently that symptoms of global warming have been seen on Pluto, despite the fact that it should be getting colder and its atmosphere freezing out. Does anyone have an explanation for this?

Heh. Isn't there still a disagreement as to which pole on Uranus is which? Sort of a judgement call because either it's "regular" (direct?) rotation with an axial inclination of slightly more than 90 degrees, or retrograde rotation and inclined a little less than 90 degrees. How would one infer a "pole-shift" without defining which pole is north (and on such a featureless planet, how would you know if it had shifted anyway?).

__________________
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

I am not an archaeologist, so instead I do simply say he's wrong, and then provide a link to Michael Heiser, who is indeed a scholar. I don't want to get into things with which I am not terribly familiar.

The weather aspect is a good one, though. Also, SarahMc, thanks for the earthquake quotation! That's perfect.

Actually, I agree with Peace_Rules, in theory.

I think you should get at least one more source about the whole Sumerian thing, and some examples of when Sitchin has been "known to misinterpret Sumerian, sometimes grossly."

I'm not trying to say that you are wrong, I believe you're right, but you have to make sure that you will be taken serioulsy. In a case such as this, the more proof you have the better, right?

__________________
Quidquid Latinae dictum sit, altum viditur.

Do tell? Post a link for us. I think Phil should know what she's arming herself with!

OK, but be warned: you are entering Kook country.

http://www.zetatalk.com/index/c2cquick.htm

If you'd care to add some links to the Enuma Elish, here's some good ones:


All the tablets, translated into modern English by N. K. Sandars (note: a retelling rather than a true word translation) but it makes the tablets more understandable to the novice:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Reso...ne/enumaA.html

The classic L.W. King translation that most use (rather than summarizing the honors given to Marduk, it translates them faithfully:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm

Leonard W. King (M.A., Litt.D, F.S.A, Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum), is considered the leading translator of the Enumma Elish and other Babylonian documents including the Code of Hammurabi and the Gates of Shalmaneser. His translations are the standard in universites. He identified Nibiru as a "throne title" and not a planet.

A classic debunking of Sitchin is here:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corr.../hafernik.html

An excellent debunking from a very scholarly point of view is here:
http://www.raphaelvishanu-world.at/cosmology.html
(the rest of that page is an excellent read!)

Ooooh! I think her toes should be held to the fire on those!!

You know, you could do a VERY simple experiment with an egg timer -- you know; one of those little timers with sand in them. Just time the egg timer and see if the timing changes (I know it will vary slightly because of the conditions).

And on the bits about the moon's appearance.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm!!! I just had a thought! A wicked, evil thought!!!

You see, one of my side professions (and something I've done for 30 years) is as astrologer (I'm an entertainer and an advisor. I don't pretend to be a woo-woo mystic.) We have tables of houses that date back quite some time that predict the moon's movement in the future and we use standard software to calculate the location of the moon.

So I checked an astrology site, one that calculates horoscopes. I checked it with MY birth chart and it correctly reports the position of the planets. I checked it against the birthdays of my husband and children and it correctly reports them.

So I did a "birthdate" for yesterday, and the calculations say that the moon is in Cancer and in late Cancer today. I also checked my PalmPilot astrology program and it reports the same thing.

Looking at an astronomy site (http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/), I see that the moon is in the sign of Cancer --exactly where the astrologers sid it should be.

Now... I happen to know (because I've done these by hand) that there's no "adjust for Planet X arrival" in the astrology software.

Both astrology and astronomy find the moon where it should be. There's no discrepancy.

Therefore, the rotation of the Earth has not slowed one bit.

That page is pretty much a word-for-word mirror of Heiser's own site. Heiser has it all in a more presentable form (IMO), as well as a dialog with Sitchin's webmaster.

This is the first time I've seen Heiser's debunking of the Berlin seal though (from the link on BA's page). So, it really isn't the Sun at all, just a normal star. The Sumerians had a special image for the Sun, and that ain't it!

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

The rotation of the Earth would not affect where the Moon is seen against the background of the stars, unless the Moon's orbit is also affected (which you'd think would happen, too, but it's not something mentioned by Nancy).

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Eeep! You're right! Dratdratdratdrat. And here it was, such a BRILLIANT plan!

Bah! Back to my Acme Science Generator Kit!

But you forget that the PTB are supposedly tweaking the clocks so we don't notice the change in days. In other words, my clock says 1700GMT right now, but Nancy says it's actually been more than 24 hours since the last 1700GMT. Therefore, the moon will have moved more than 24 hours worth and will not be where it should be at 1700GMT today. Make sense?

In other words, even if the moon's orbit is not affected, the clocks are, so the actual moon-clock relationship would not match the predicted moon-clock relationship.

__________________
SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2010 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Some of Heiser's own words in his critiques of Sitchin:

Re: elohim

"GENERALLY speaking, there are verses in the Old Testament that do speak of plural gods being real – and of being either members of God’s council (Psalm 82 is the best example) or fallen members of that council. The creation account in Genesis 1:26 ("let us make man in our image"), however, is NOT an example of plural elohim. Genesis 1:26-27
Humankind was NOT created by multiple gods in the Old Testament. It is of course true that "elohim" is MORPHOLOGICALLY plural (morphology refers to the construction or "shape" of a word). The - im ending of elohim makes the noun plural. As Psalm 82 (see above) tells us, elohim CAN be plural in the Hebrew Bible. The same psalm, though, also has elohim as a contextually clear SINGULAR (the morphologically plural word came to be used as a proper name for a singular deity)."

And yet Bibles all over the world maintain the improper plural? What?!

Maybe Heiser, as scholar, should be working to have this changed? Instead, he's on the radio circuit talking about The Facade. Not to mention the fact that he, himself, is IGNORING the "morphologically correct" usages of the term

"..(these are references to God's divine council - composed of other
elohim and angels - if you read The Facade, you'll learn about the
divine council). At this point, the issue of whether humankind was
created by ONE deity or many gods is still up in the air – but will
be clarified by the text . . ."

"IF YOU READ THE FACADE..."?!!
Well, at least Sitchin never said such a thing.

Re: Nefilim

"If Aramaic "naphal" is the correct root behind "nephilim," then the
ONLY thing this spelling can mean is "those who fell / were fallen."

Sitchin doesn't say otherwise, does he?

"My guess is that BOTH meanings work in tandem – the GIANTS..... (and those who are)"FALLEN".

So Heiser is guessing as much as Sitchin, no?

Re: Adam

"So is there any relationship between the Hebrew "Adam" and
the Sumerian adammu (red)?
Scholars are divided on this issue, mainly because the evidence is only
circumstantial, and it is unclear whether (in Hebrew or Akkadian) these words are related to dam (Hebrew) or damamum (Akkadian) - the words for "blood." My guess is that there is a relationship, and that relationship has nothing to do with blood (or genetics). As Hebrew "adam" was taken from the earth ("adamah"), so in Akkadian the earth is referred to as "adamatu" (and is RED earth - see dictionary
above). "Earth" is of course conceptually related to clay (clay = watery earth), and, in the Akkadian stories, when humankind was made of mixed clay and blood, the resulting mixture could be conceived of as RED clay (adamatu). The point to recognize, though, is that the Hebrew Bible deletes any reference to blood - the life principle being "the breath of God" (Gen. 2:7) - as is the case in Egyptian creation stories."

So Adam CAN'T mean "the earthling" as Sitchin suggests?!!

Ya know, Heiser's ideas are actually pretty cool: Interdimensional beings (aka. The Divine Counsel) controlling human endeavors throughout history...

The plural can be used by a singular individual as a sign of importance (like kings often do)...

__________________
"The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it." -George Bernard Shaw

Reasonable enough. But what I don't get is why the Bible wouldn't say:

And God said, "I will create Man in my likeness, after my image"

I mean, wouldn't THAT give MORE importance to such a statement?
Instead, the plural usage seems to indicate that "god" was addressing some sort of council, just like the Sumerian Creation Epic says the Annunaki held a council in deciding to create the earthling.