Nibiru

Nibiru, to the Babylonians, was the celestial body associated with the god Marduk. The name is Akkadian and means 'crossing place' or 'place of transition'. In most Babylonian texts it is identified with the planet Jupiter. In Tablet 5 of the Enuma Elish it may be the pole star, which at the time was Thuban or possibly Kochab (Ursa Minor).

The term "Nibiru" comes from the Sumerian cuneiform tablets and writings dating 5,000 years old. The term Nibiru means "Planet of the crossing", and it's cuneiform sign was often a cross, or various winged disc. The Sumerian culture was located in the fertile lands between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, at the southern part of today's Iraq.

Due to its use in opposition to the phrase itebbiru "who used to cross," Landsberger and Kinnier Wilson suggest that it refers to a stationary point in the heavens.1 In a reconstruction of Tablet V of the Enûma Elish by Landsberger and Kinnier Wilson, the word ni-bi-ri (variant: ni-bi-ru and ni-bi-a-na) is translated as "pole star."1 The authors add in the footnotes that "Applied to Marduk, there is no question that in the late periods neberu is a planet, whether Jupiter or Mercury" however for the referenced translation of Tablet V, "pole star" is used.

Theory

Some authors believe that the observations of ancient astronomers provide proof that Nibiru is an actual planet or brown dwarf in our solar system. These claims are for the most part dismissed as fringe science or pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific communities of archaeology and astronomy.

According to proponents such as renowned historian, Hebrew scholar, author, speaker and archaeologist Zecharia Sitchin and Burak Eldem the Nibiru appearing in Sumerian records correctly refers to a large planetary body. Their research proposes that it possesses a highly elliptical, 3630-year orbit. Such a planet would be approximately in the same orbit as 2000 CR105.

According to these theories of Sumerian cosmology, Nibiru was the twelfth member in the solar system family of planets (which includes 10 planets, the Sun, and the Moon). Its catastrophic collision with Tiamat, a planet that was between Mars and Jupiter, would have formed the planet Earth, the asteroid belt, and the Moon.

This was the result of one of Nibiru's host satellites colliding with Tiamat, appropriately leaving half a planet, comparable to our Pangea (our current knowledge of all the continents as one land mass), and leaving deeps rifts in the crust beneath the Pacific ocean. It was until recently thought impossible for such large celestial bodies to collide due to intense magnetic force, however, this concept has been given a new life since the introduction of the Orpheus Theory, and the simulation of a collision between objects such as our own earth, and an object half it's size.

It was the home of a technologically advanced human-like alien race, the Anunnaki of Sumerian myth, who, Sitchin claims, survived and later came to Earth. Sitchin has also transcribed that their travelling to earth was the result of their failing atmosphere (having since been drawn into our solar system from its cosmic passing, the atmosphere of Nibiru was subjected to intense external stress from our sun).

They came in search of gold particles used for their reflective properties (recognized even today by Nasa who plate various objects including astronaut helmet eyeshields) to place in their atmosphere. According to Sitchin, they subsequently genetically engineered our species, originally as slave workers to work in their gold mines, by crossing their genes with those of Homo erectus.

The Anunnaki ("those who from heaven came to earth" in Sumerian) came upon evolution on earth as it had been progressing for billions of years however, they desired to create a worker who could communicate and learn from them. After a slew of failed prototypes an Anunnaki goddess engineered a perfect specimen- the Adam. This was done using 80% of the Inferior specimen and 20% of the superior Anunnaki specimen. It is only recently that we understand DNA as having a double-helix nature, The Sumerians depicted their goddess creator along with snakes in a double helix form with thin bars connecting between them in a spiral fashion. The intertwined snakes are also modern day representatives for the field of medicine.

Sitchin says some sources speak about the same planet, possibly being a brown dwarf star and still in a highly elliptic orbit around the Sun, with a perihelion passage some 3,600 years ago and assumed orbital period of about 3,600 to 3,760 years or 3,741 years.

Sitchin attributes these figures to astronomers of the Maya civilization. Many involved in research of this kind predict a return date of Nibiru passing Earth coinciding with the Winter Solstice of 2012; specifically at 11.11 UT, 21st December 12, 2012.

This also coincides with a rare alignment of the Earth, Sun and centre of the Milky Way , and is asserted to be likely to cause a pole shift. However, scientists argue that a planet with such an orbit would eventually either develop a circular orbit or fly off into space and overwhelmingly consider Sitchin's claims to be pseudoscience.

The similar orbit of 2000 CR105, however, is accepted by scientists. A brown dwarf with a period of 3,760 years would be clearly evident through infrared and gravitational observations. And it has been. In 1993 Nasa launched the IRAS telescope which picked up the faint image of a large celestial body 3 times the distance of Pluto in our own solar system. In the press conference, the two scientists one named Gerry Neugebauer said that these objects could be "almost anything, from a tenth planet in our solar system to distant galaxies".

Later much deeper images were taken, and some of the objects were found to be dense gas clouds in our own Galaxy, while others turned out to be very distant galaxies. In fact, these observations heralded the discovery of a new type of object: Ultra-luminous Infrared Galaxies (ULIRGs).

These are galaxies in which there is a burst of stars being born. The cocoons of dust in which the stars are enshrouded generates copious infrared, which is what was detected by IRAS. They published these results in the prestigious Astrophysical Journal.

Another interesting discovery also brought Nibiru into light recently. Eris, the largest known dwarf planet has been discovered on the 21st of October 2003, announced in July 2005 and officially named from 2003 UB313 to "136199 Eris" in 2006.

Originally it was considered as the tenth planet of our Solar System, but in April 2006, according to the new, more precise definition of the term "planet", it has been designated as a "dwarf planet" along with Pluto and Ceres. Eris has an orbital period of 556.7 years, and currently lies at almost its maximum possible distance from the Sun (aphelion) and will enter Pisces in 2036.