Having read a few of the posts concerning the book "Return of Planet X" I would say that the critiques of this book exude fear and the unwillingness to perhaps come to terms with the fact that our earth could very well go through some drastic changes and could very well fall to pieces. As a matter of fact there is excellent Science and astronomy in this book. Facts are a stubborn thing and it is unfortunate that there are many who refuse to accept the Truth. There is a thing called common sense, logic and a combination of much circumstantial evidence which can help in finding the Truth. The other Option is seeing is believing!!! Yes there are those who can say they have heard the end of the world story many times in the past and they are still here!! This in no way means that the world will not end in some future time. I believe that there is much evidence to support the fact that 2012 will be significant to our earth..in fact, the Book "The Return of Planet X" will be shown to have much validity, and one would be wise to TAKE HEED of the words and message therein!!!

Elijah

Hi, Elijah888.

Read the FAQ, especially the Rules, and be ready to be piled upon by the regulars.

For starters, why do you say that the critiques of this book exude fear?

__________________
Join the Illuminati

(Taken from the book's Editorial Reviews)

So pretty much from the review, "X" was last seen "Roughly 3,459 years ago" and will be back in 2009 to scout the earth, and then again in 2012 to bring "time" as we know it...To an end.. And these are stubborn facts we're overlooking?

And I'm also kind of curious how the mayans could see what modern day astronomers can not see.


(And shouldn't this be moved to CT? )

I guess it should. Planet X is CT as much as any CT could be.

OP reported...

__________________
"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916
our animal welfare board and organisation

Ah, that sounded kind of rude, didn't meant to make it sound like that :P

OK, here's the facts. If something like that was hanging around our solar system, we would've seen it years ago. For the record, we haven't.

Also, if something like that made a pass some 3600 years ago, it would've leveled everything, and I do mean everything. For the record, numerous structures from that era (or before) are still standing - the Pyramids and the Great Wall of China to name two striking examples.

I say you should stop chasing phantoms and start thinking about real threats to Earth from above.

- Maha "X-ceptionally mad about this" Vailo

__________________
When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx

The Warp Point, my new geek culture blog.

Thanks for the excerpts Exirus.

The Gregorian calendar "inexplicably" ends on 31 December 2007. But I went to the store and bought a 2008 calendar, which luckily starts up the very next day.

@Elijah888 - As explained many times around this forum, the Mayan calendar no more ends than ours did on 31 December 1999. If you would like to actually discuss why you think otherwise, please let us know why you have come to believe this.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

So that would give the author what, a maximum of two documented instances from civilized times? I could find way more than that about dragons, unicorns or something similarly imaginary.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

How many 2012 topics does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

At least this many:

2003 no, 2012 si
2012
Pole shift / Planetary alignment 2012?
2012 alignment question
about the Mayan 2012 item
2012 Debunking?
Possible asteroid impact in 2012?
2012 asteroid?
We don't have to worry about 2012!
More on 2012 from India Daily
2012 Completion of conspiracy?
Here's what's REALLY going to happen in 2012...
crop circles, Planet X and 2012
Planet X, crop circles and 2012 cataclysma
According to the Mayans, what will happen on 23rd Dec. 2012?
More 2012 Nonsense
NEO 2012?
Dangerous NEO in 2012?
Christmas 2012
2012 mayan calender end of world
Regarding the supposed polar shift/new ice age in 2012
New 2012 threat?
2012 look at this thing on the sun
Russian Expert Predicts Global Cooling from 2012
Pole shift idea origins
Dec 20 2012
2012 Stuff
Horizon Project-New End of World Scare?
Date: December 21st 2012
Earth passing thru Galactic center in 2012 - didn't that already happen?
2012: What do you think well happen (if anything)
So what will we see in 2012?
Galactic Tsunami?
Plane of the ecliptic of the galaxy?
Earth's Magnetic Field & 2012
2012?
Any truth to this?
How can the sun be aligned with Galactic centre?
the whole 2012 poles flip nonsense
Planet X Official Advertisement
What year are we in
Quick question about the sun
Galactic Alignment
Books of 2012! -
2007 = 2012
Return of Planet X By Rand
Don Alejandro - Mayan Elder.

__________________
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

None, the Mayans didn't have light bulbs.
Ten, as in Planet X.
Only one, but they could only do it every 3600 years.
Want to learn how the coming of the new age in 2012 will lead to the end of light bulbs AS WE KNOW THEM!!!!!. Then just send $23.95 to...

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Oh hey! A hit an run post about buying a book!

Bold emphasis mine...

I wonder if they are compact flourescent? I just put one in my bedroom and it doesn't work. Every other compact flourescent I've switched to works but this one :@.

On other news, aside from this looking like a hit and run, Planet X was in it's hey-day the first time I started posting here about...four years ago? I think I'm going to skip this one out. Though I may refer back if someone in the real world asks me about it...

*Runs off before he can get sucked into reading an endless list of posts.

__________________
None to speak of

LOL Swift! My $23.95 is in the mail. Hey folks, I'm new to the forums. I ran across this place attempting to find reason in a world trying desperately to re-embrace mysticism. It seems I succeeded
I look forward to reading through many more posts.

Wow, why are we wasting our time with rational astronomy when we can make real money by predicting the end of the world? Sign up now, folks, and we'll predict the end of the world for next month, which inexplicably ends after only 29 days. And if it doesn't happen, then we'll predict it for March, which inexplicably has two more days than the previous month. And if it doesn't happen then, we'll predict the following month, and so forth ad infinitum . . .

Thus we will introduce the idea of infinite series to the unsophisticated.

Speaking of series, seriously, welome, this forum features some of the best rationalists around. If you enjoy seeing purveyors of nonsense reduced to frustrated sputtering, this is the place. Have fun.

Regards, John M.

Welcome to BAUT, ematt.
Sometimes I also wonder if so many people really are so crazy, or if only the ones who have the Internet are.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Nah, there's always been lots of crazy about. Today the internet brings them all into your home.


This brings back the good ole' days of Nancy and the Reticuli. Here's a poem I wrote then:

There IS a planet called X.
It's doom for us all I expects.

If you don't know what to do
Ask and we'll give you a clue.

We take cash, credit card and checks.

No, they're stubborn fictions we're ignoring.

3,500 years ago (that's 1500 BC) there were many literate civilizations from the Indians to the Egyptians to the Chinese (to name the 3 biggies) plus the Sumerians. Now, it's just darn amazing that none of these peoples wrote about a horking big planet zooming past. Nor is it referenced in any rock art of the period. 7,000 years ago we have more pictographs (rock art) and there's nothing about big things in the sky or huge disasters.

None of the villages (and there are quite a few) show traces of wholesale disaster. 3,500 years ago, whole civilizations did not suddenly fall prey to natural disasters.

But of course, the "global flood and destruction everywhere" is far more entertaining than the truth.

Not only see, but fail to name. Niether they nor the Sumerians bothered to name any planets beyond Saturn. This holds true of other ancient civilizations (the Mayans and the Sumerians were the most sky-obsessed.)

They also failed to note the "passing of planet X (or whatever). And the calendar that famously "runs out" was not meant to be a definitive statement on the end of the world. There are engraved dates on Mayan ruins that point to dates beyond 2012.

(disclaimer: I'm an anthropologist, not an astronomer.)

Er, no. We do not have historical records from ca 1500 BC India or China, and the Sumerians were long gone as an ethnic group by then.

The civilizations we've got historical records of from this period are all in and around the Middle East, such as Egypt, Babylonia, and the Hettites.

__________________
Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
-- Richard Feynman

Most of the Rigveda was written by 1,500 BC, and Chinese astronomical records go back more then 4,000 years.

And this is the time of the megalithic/bronze age culture in Europe, which left its records in stone.
There were also city building civilisations in the New World.

__________________
Join the Illuminati

You're right, there isn't. All of these ancient cultures watched the sky a lot, but there isn't anything in their records.
Bad Archeoastronomy.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

No they weren't and no they don't. While the Rigveda hymns may date to the second millennium BC they weren't put in writing until the first (Indic writing dates to ~500 BC), and they're hardly historical records anyway. The earliest readable Chinese texts are from centuries later than 1500 BC, and they're oracle texts, not astronomical records.
So? The issue was literate civilizations.

__________________
Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
-- Richard Feynman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization

OK, got your writing, got your math, got your astronomy...

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Am I to assume you missed this part: "The earliest inscriptions in an identifiably-Maya script date back to 200–300 BC"?

__________________
Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
-- Richard Feynman

Actually, I did.

The civilizations of that time would have been the Zapotec and possibly early Olmec, both of whom kept calendars of celestial events.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

You'll find that neither Olmec nor Zapotec writing goes back to 1500 BC. Wikipedia again:

Not that this is terribly relevant to the supposed subject of the thread . Even if we had no written records from ~1500 BC - and of course we do, from the Middle East - the physical arcahaeology all these places and more shows there was no worldwide destruction at that time.

__________________
Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
-- Richard Feynman

True but irrelevant. I said calendars, not writing. Which do go back roughly that far.


An incorrect statement is an incorrect statement.

Never mind, I'll let it go. I'm one of these, I can't help it.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

True, you said calendars. I should not have assumed that because we were talking about writing, that's what you meant.

Edit: That said, could you provide a reference for Mesoamerican calendars existing as early as 1500 BC? The most helpful thing google finds me is this remark from Wikipedia:

__________________
Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.
-- Richard Feynman

...I wish I could remember where I got that. Sorry, I'm in the process of switching meds, my memory's full of holes right now.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

The Chinese have had continuous history since well before 1500 BC.

TW

Can I use this as a sig line? Please!

__________________
"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

Dorothy Parker (?)