The second Sun

I know the universe can be a weird place sometimes, but... let's follow Carl Sagan's dictum of looking for a normal and natural explanation for things before jumping to a paranormal or supernatural one, mmmkay?

The reason this comes up is because of a discussion I saw online about the strange phenomenon of a "double Sun" -- when there appears to be a split view of the Sun (or, sometimes, a smaller "second Sun" near the main one).  The first clue that this is a completely natural (albeit odd-looking) occurrence is that it always happens when (1) the sky is hazy, and (2) when the Sun is near the horizon.  It turns out to be caused by the Sun's light refracting off particles of ice or smoke in the upper atmosphere, creating an ephemeral double image.

It is, in fact, simply an optical illusion.

A "double Sun" caused by wildfire smoke, seen from Jervis Bay National Park, New South Wales, Australia [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Doug McLean, Bushfire smoke induced Double Sun, CC BY-SA 4.0]

One of the commenters, evidently a science type, gave a measured and reasonable response explaining light refraction, and that resulted in everyone basically going, "Oh, that's cool!  An interesting atmospheric phenomenon!  Thank you for the scientific explanation!"

Ha!  I'm lying.  Of course that's not how people responded.  He was immediately shouted down by about a hundred other folks, who had "explanations" like the following.  Spelling and grammar are exactly as written, because you can only add [sic] so many times:

• It’s just more proof that the Earth is flat.  We’ve been viewing a computer CGI simulation since the late 1800s, and it has just been a matter of time before we start seeing glitches in the man’s software.

• Is it nibiru?  I've read planet x?  Is it a sun like star or what?  I'm so confused.

• It has been photographed before, from Seattle to Wisconsin.  NASA has known about the approach of Nibiru, the Destroyer, Planet X or the countless other names it is known by, including Wormwoof, which it is known by in the bible.  It is an entire star system travelling on an elliptical orbit towards our earth.  It has its own Sun (which you are seeing) and several planets that travel with it.  All the people want to know why can’t you see it.  The answer is because it’s a dead brown star that can only be seen in the infra red spectrum.  The only 2 places that have a black light telescope is in Antarctica and the Vatican.  Go figure.

• If you don’t mind, I will actually give you a serious reply, depending on what you believe in depending on what you think is possible and aside from that, depending on what frequency you operate at you’re able to see in those things, I’ve heard a lot from people who are a lot smarter than me that by 2027 the two suns will be completely visible as well as open contact.  I don’t care if I’m labeled crazy I don’t channel.

• Idk what any of this can or will mean for us here, but boys and girls I don't think the comet in our orbit, that they say should remain visible to the naked eye, but only while facing due West, and get this....only during, or immediately after the sunset will it appear near the Sun, I don't think that's what they are telling us it is.  Is this the reason all these billionaires have been building massive underground bunkers suddenly this past year?

• Trump the Antichrist is here and two suns is the beginning of the end.  In many apocalyptic and religious interpretations, the imagery of “two suns crossing in the sky” is often associated with the arrival of the Antichrist, signifying a significant and ominous event that marks the beginning of the end times, often interpreted as a sign of a false messiah or a powerful evil force emerging into the world, e.g. Trump and Musk.

• There is a second sun behind our sun but we can never see it because it stays behind the sun.  It’s gravitational balanced by the tiny black hole on the other side of our moon that we can’t see either.  Every 276 years in June the moon’s black hole and the second son have a tilting wobble and the second sun becomes visible for a few minutes in a small viewing zone across the northern hemisphere.  Behind the second sun there are a few more things that we can’t see, like second Jupiter.

A few thoughts about all that.

• What the actual fuck?

• Okay, I can see Trump as the Antichrist, given that he embodies all Seven Deadly Sins in one individual.  But somehow I don't think even his level of evil can make two Suns appear in the sky.

• If it's only visible for a few minutes every 276 years, it was pretty lucky the dude got a snapshot of it, wasn't it?

• So, Nibiru is en vogue again, eh?  Last I heard of Nibiru was about ten years ago, and I figured it had become passé, replaced by far more believable claims like targeted weather modification and 5G mind control and Jewish space lasers.

• If I've never seen a "second Sun," it's because I'm "operating on the wrong frequency?"  I didn't know humans were like radios, and came equipped with a frequency dial.  That's pretty awesome.  Maybe if mine is set right I can tune into the BBC.

• Only Antarctica and the Vatican have "black light telescopes"?  I'm trying to come up with some kind of clever response to this, but... nope, I got nothin'.

• If I ever get another pit bull, I'm gonna name him "Wormwoof."

• At the risk of repeating myself, what the actual fuck?

What astounds me about all of this is how many people seem to gravitate toward this sort of nonsense instead of looking first for a rational explanation.  It's not like the science in this case is hard to understand, or even hard to find; the website of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory posted a perfectly good explanation that shows up on the first page of a Google search for "double Sun."

But loony claims like Nibiru and dead brown stars and second Jupiters and simulation glitches are, apparently, more attractive.  Is it because it makes the universe seem weirder and cooler?  Or is it the appeal of "seeing through a coverup" by scientists or the government or whatnot?

It's always seemed to me that the scientific explanations of what we observe are plenty cool enough, and some of them -- like quantum physics -- plenty weird enough.  Why do so many people need to add extra layers of wackiness onto things?

I'll end with another quote from Carl Sagan, which I think sums things up nicely: "For me, it is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

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Sheeple update

Sometimes I have to check in on the r/conspiracy subreddit just to see what new nutty conspiracy theories are out there.  I try to make sure that I've girded my loins and stiffened my spine beforehand, because the level of complete batshit insanity demonstrated by the regular contributors really has to be seen to be believed.  On my most recent visit, I was not disappointed -- there are four truly amazing conspiracy theories there that I was unaware of, if by "amazing" you mean "ideas that you would only come up with if you have a single Milk-Dud where most of us have a brain."

First, we have astronomer Paul Cox inadvertently inducing multiple orgasms in the Planet X crowd by making a joke while analyzing a video of the transit of Mercury across the Sun.  "See that mysterious bright glow on the right side?  What do you suppose that is?" Cox asks, pointing to what is clearly a lens flare.  "Do you think it's the mysterious planet Nibiru?"  He then goes on to say, "We don't cover things up like NASA does."

Well, you don't joke about such matters, not when people like YouTube contributor "EyesOpen37" are listening.  "EyesOpen37" doesn't believe in lens flares.  Nor, apparently, in astronomers having senses of humor.  "EyesOpen37" thinks it's much more likely that a vague, diffuse glow is unequivocal evidence that a huge planet inhabited by our reptilian alien overlords is coming into the inner solar system for a visit, and NASA is desperately trying to make sure that no one finds out about it.

I'll bet Paul Cox is currently banging his forehead against the wall and wishing like hell he'd never opened his mouth.

"I wonder if these guys are using this transit of Mercury to warn us about Nibiru?" muses "EyesOpen37," in a tone of voice that indicates that the answer is obviously "yes."  And the people who posted comments on his YouTube submission agree wholeheartedly. Here's a sampling:

• Thank you so much for uploading this video!! And I'm so glad a reputable person has finally spoke out!  Paul Cox is a good person and so are you to release this info!! :)
• I hope you have this video backed up so you can keep re-posting if it gets deleted!!  WOW!!
• Want to know how it'll end?  Read Revelation 8:8 on. Repent and seek your Saviour.  God bless.
• It's controlled.  How many dead astronomers do we have to date?  Maybe a joke is the only way he can put it out there.  Bottom line....he was deliberate.

Yes, there are lots of dead astronomers. Aristarchus, Hypatia, Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Edmund Halley, Henrietta Swan Leavitt... the list goes on and on.  There's only one possible answer: they were all killed to keep them silent about the Planet Nibiru.

Speaking of dead people, our second conspiracy theory is about how Osama bin Laden is still "alive and well and living in the Bahamas."  And of course, there's nothing that lends credence to a wacko idea like saying "Edward Snowden says so."   (The only thing that's better would be saying "Nikola Tesla says so.")   According to the site Humans are Free, Snowden had the following to say about it:

I have documents showing that Bin Laden is still on the CIA’s payroll.  He is still receiving more than $100,000 a month, which are being transferred through some front businesses and organizations, directly to his Nassau bank account.  I am not certain where he is now, but in 2013, he was living quietly in his villa with five of his wives and many children.  

Osama Bin Laden was one of the CIA’s most efficient operatives for a long time.  What kind of message would it send their other operatives if they were to let the SEALs kill him?  They organized his fake death with the collaboration of the Pakistani Secret services, and he simply abandoned his cover.  

Since everyone believes he is dead, nobody’s looking for him, so it was pretty easy to disappear.  Without the beard and the military jacket, nobody recognizes him.

Of course, at the bottom of the page, we read the following disclaimer:

Note: The original source of this information has not been validated nor confirmed by any other source.

In other words, even though we're not sure if it's true, you're clearly a KoolAid-Drinkin' Sheeple if you don't believe it.

And since bin Laden is still alive, it must therefore follow that lots of other Big Bad Guys are, too.  For our third dip in the deep end of the pool, we go to the site OrionStar 3000, wherein we learn that Josef "The Angel of Death" Mengele is not only still alive, he is also the "Zodiac Killer" who killed seven people in the late 1960s in California.

Now, you might be thinking, "How can Mengele be alive?  He was born in 1911.  He'd be 109 years old by now."  But this just shows that you're not thinking outside the box.  (And by "the box" I mean "anything that makes sense.")  Here's what he looked like in 2001, when he was a mere 90 years old, in a photograph taken at a "Brotherhood of Aryan Nations/KKK/ Bush Fundraiser in Hernando, Florida.":

Which, you have to admit, is looking pretty good for a 90-year-old. Here's Mengele during World War II:

So I think can all agree that's a definitive match.

As far as how Mengele could still be so spry despite his age, we're told, "Mengele looks much younger than he really is due to years of face-lifts, anti-aging hormone injections & alleged cannibalism!"

And if that wasn't enough, we also find out the following alarming stuff:

• [SS Lieutenant Colonel] Otto Skorzeny faked Hitler's death!  Nazi Germany Really Won WWII!
• Hitler lived to be the oldest man in America until he died at the age of 114 years in 2/2004 in the Bethesda, MD Naval Hospital.
• The son of Tesla's illegal immigrant German Born accountant George H. Scherff Sr., SS Nazi spy George H. Scherff Jr. aka: US Navy Pilot: George H.W. Bush murdered his two TBF Avenger crew members by bailing out of his perfectly good airplane.  Bush became a heroin junkie to try to escape his guilty conscience.

Scarier still, this site doesn't have a disclaimer.  So it must all be true, right?

Of course right.

The last entry in our Batshit Crazy Sweepstakes was one that appeared on r/conspiracy almost simultaneously with my being sent the link by my son, who is following in his old man's footsteps in having a nose for sniffing out lunacy.  This one comes our way via the Jerusalem Post, of all places, and is about retired Israeli general Haim Eshed, who for thirty years headed the Israeli Space Security Agency.  During those three decades he appears to have spent his spare time riding on a pogo stick in a room with low ceilings, because now he's claiming that there's a "Galactic Federation" that has been in contact with governments all over the Earth, and the earthlings and the aliens have a jointly-operated base on Mars.

Apparently the Federation is largely benevolent, but they'd prefer it if the inhabitants of the Earth didn't know about them, making Eshed's tell-all a little puzzling.  In fact, Donald Trump was warned off revealing the aliens' presence by the aliens themselves.  The Federation members said they preferred to wait until humans "evolve and reach a stage where we will... understand what space and spaceships are."

I must admit that wanting to wait till humans evolve is reasonable if they've been in contact with Donald Trump.  In fact, after talking to Donald Trump, I'm a little surprised that they didn't just conclude "there's no intelligent life here" and nuke the entire planet.

Eshed's decision to flout the Federation's commands becomes more understandable when you find out that he just released a book, entitled The Universe Beyond the Horizon: Conversations with Professor Haim Eshed.  So Eshed's attitude seems to be "fuck secrecy and stern warnings by the Men In Black when there's money to be made."

So that's our fun excursion through CrazyTown for today. I hope you enjoyed it.  Myself, I'm wondering if I can get a hold of any of that anti-aging stuff they're using on Mengele.  I'm hoping I don't have to resort to cannibalism.

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

I've always had a fascination with how our brains work, part of which comes from the fact that we've only begun to understand it.  My dear friend and mentor, Dr. Rita Calvo, professor emeritus of human genetics at Cornell University, put it this way.  "If I were going into biology now, I'd study neuroscience.  We're at the point in neuroscience now that we were in genetics in 1900 -- we know it works, we can see some of how it works, but we know very little in detail and almost nothing about the underlying mechanisms involved.  The twentieth century was the century of the gene; the twenty-first will be the century of the brain."

We've made some progress in recent years toward comprehending the inner workings of the organ that allows us to comprehend anything at all.  And if, like me, you are captivated by the idea, you have to read this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation: neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett's brilliant Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain.

In laypersons' terms, Barrett explains what we currently know about how we think, feel, remember, learn, and experience the world.  It's a wonderful, surprising, and sometimes funny exploration of our own inner workings, and is sure to interest anyone who would like to know more about the mysterious, wonderful blob between our ears.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Ain't no sunshine

Because we evidently don't have enough to worry about, now we have news that a rogue dead star has entered our Solar System and is eating the Sun.

I'm not making this up, but the person who made the claim, one Dr. Claudia Albers, almost certainly is.  She once worked for the University of Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa, but resigned last July for unspecified reasons.  I suspect it must have been that her department chair found out she'd gotten her Ph.D. from Big Bob's Discount Diploma Factory, but that's just a guess.

My reason for saying this is that Dr. Albers doesn't sound like a physicist, she sounds like a complete loon.  Here are her own words regarding the imminent catastrophe:

They are old or dead stars - I never said they were planets - they are stars draining the Sun of energy.  It is likely a huge system of old dead suns that have come to the Sun and been affecting it.  They are making plasma connections with the Sun and can make the Sun go dark, the Sun is getting weaker...  

These objects are causing changes in the solar system that cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.  Earth appears to have captured one of these objects - there are crustal displacements on Earth... 

It is not a passing system, it is in orbit around the Earth.  It is a huge system of stars attracted to the Sun and that stays close to the Sun once it is in our solar system.  I recently discovered they may have gone from the Sun to planets and that may be why Jupiter went from 16 satellites to 69, it must have captured something... 

It seems that the object is here and it is not alone because there is evidence that there are many of these objects in the inner solar system and they have been coming in towards the Sun for many years.

As you might expect, she accuses NASA of covering the whole thing up.  "If there is nothing to hide," Albers says, "then give us the real time view of the Sun – if there is nothing to hide then open it up, why do you only give us little snippets with a huge delay?"  Because clearly the only possible explanation there could be for why NASA isn't opening up all of its digital images to scrutiny is that a gigantic dead star is feeding on the Sun and they don't want you to know about it.

[image courtesy of NASA/JPL]

 Of course, the above claim brought up questions as to whether this rogue star is the same as "Nibiru," the mysterious "Planet X" that has been a favorite of woo-woos for years.  Said wingnuts have claimed over and over that Nibiru is coming, and that it's going to wreak havoc on the Earth, but then it never shows up.  Just as well.  We're wreaking enough havoc down here on our own, lately.

But Albers says that no, this isn't Nibiru.  "There is no evidence this system is the same system that came through before," she said.

At that point, I gave the computer the head-tilt of puzzlement, similar to what my dog does when I give him an unreasonable and/or unintelligible command, such as to stop eating my shoe and gnaw instead on one of his 1,385 chew toys.  What does she mean, "the same system that came through before?"  I think I'd have been aware if a humongous exoplanet had suddenly swooped down and caused massive planetary-wide destruction.  It's hard to imagine missing that.

Be that as it may, Albers says that this time it's really serious, that the rogue dead star is feeding, vampire-like, on the energy from the Sun, and pretty soon the Sun will run out and go dark, which will kind of suck.  I mean, that's what happened at the end of Star Wars Episode Number Who the Hell Can Keep Track: The Force Awakens, wherein Kylo Ren et al. turned on a machine that sucked all the energy out of a star, but instead of the planet that orbited it turning immediately into a gigantic popsicle, it was still warm enough for Kylo and Rey to leap about and get into a protracted light saber battle.

So heaven knows we don't want that.  The good news is that João A. P. Rodrigues, head of the University of Witwatersrand School of Physics, was pretty unequivocal that Dr. Albers is talking out of her ass.  He didn't put it that way, of course.  "The University supports the freedom of people to hold and discuss contrarian views," Rodrigues said.  "However, insofar as the sciences are concerned the principles of the scientific method must guide the process.  Debate outside this framework constitutes bad science and the University distances itself from such practice."

Which is academic-speak for "You're talking out of your ass."

Anyhow, I'm not worried.  I figure we have more pressing matters to worry about right now, such as how to keep Donald Trump from opening the Seventh Seal of the Apocalypse.  Although I have to admit that the Sun has seemed pretty weak and cool lately.  But that may be because I live in the famed "four-season climate" of upstate New York -- "almost winter," "winter," "still winter," and "road construction."

Apocalypse later

Well, we survived the apocalypse, or at least the Nibiru-induced one that was supposed to happen two days ago.  Me, I had everything prepared.  Some necessities (coffee, chocolate, scotch), a few precautions (Tylenol, sunscreen, tinfoil hat), and a couple of jugs of water, which I figured would last me until I could figure out how to purify the skeeve out of the water from my pond.

But nothing happened.  I was disappointed.  Given the current situation with Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, I thought a massive planet swooping by and causing geological and meteorological cataclysms would actually be an improvement.

So naturally, once September 24 rolled around and we were all still here, everyone kind of turned and stared at David Meade, who was the guy who started the whole "September 23 is Doomsday" thing.  Any normal person in that situation would chuckle uncomfortably and say, "Well, fuck it all, I was wrong.  What a goober I am."

But David Meade is not, in any sense of the word, normal.  He said that the problem was, when he said that Nibiru was going to destroy the Earth on September 23, we'd misunderstood him.

What he actually meant was "October 21."

I kid you not.  Instead of retreating in disarray and hiding his face in embarrassment for the next three years, Meade is saying the problem was... us.  He was clear as cut crystal.  A few weeks ago he said, and this is a direct quote, "It is very strange indeed that both the Great Sign of Revelation 12 and the Great Pyramid of Giza both point us to one precise moment in time – September 20 to 23, 2017."

So it was our fault that we didn't realize that by "September 20 to 23," what he meant was "October 21."

I mean, how stupid of us, right?  It's like one of my students from a few years ago, who when asked why he hadn't turned in a major project, said, "When you said yesterday that it was due tomorrow, I didn't think you meant, like, tomorrow."

That kid has a definite future in the field of apocalypse prediction.

[image courtesy of NASA and the Wikimedia Commons]

Meade was equally precise.  He said, "I don’t know when the Rapture will happen. I expect nothing to happen in September," which I think we can all agree is pretty much the same as saying, "I expect the world to be destroyed in September."

In October, on the other hand, we are definitely screwed.  "The most recent astronomical cryptography of the imminent judgments approaching begins in the week of October 21, 2017," Meade said.  "The End of Days, in my opinion (and remember we see ‘through a glass darkly’), will begin in the latter part of October of 2017...  It is possible at the end of October we may be about to enter into the seven-year Tribulation period, to be followed by a Millennium of peace."

In this context, "seeing through a glass darkly" is apparently synonymous with "talking out of your ass."

On the other hand, I have to say that the Millennium of Peace sounds kinda nice, especially given the ongoing dick-measuring contest between Rocket Man and Cheeto Boy.  So once again, I'm in the position of hoping that Meade is right, although given his previous track record, I'm not really holding my breath.

Plus, October 21 is five days before my 57th birthday, and it seems unfair that the world will end before I have a chance to get any presents.  I mean, I know everyone isn't gonna die when the apocalypse comes, but I figure that with all the chaos that will ensue, people will have other priorities besides baking me a cake.

So that kind of sucks.  Oh, well, I guess it has to happen at some point, and being that No One Knoweth The Hour With The Possible Exception Of David Meade, it may as well be October 21.  At least I'll have my supply of coffee, chocolate, and scotch ready, in case he's right.

The return of Nibiru

The world is going to end again.

This is what, two dozen times that the world has ended?  I've lost count, honestly.  But a success rate of 0.00% isn't the least bit discouraging to the Apocalyptoids.  If anything, it encourages them.  Their history of failed predictions means that the next one has to be correct.  This time, they think, this time Lucy won't pull the football away when we try to kick it.

The latest prediction from the End-of-the-World cadre was described over at the site Mysterious Universe, which has that name because Bullshit Universe doesn't have quite the same gravitas.  I'm pleased that from his tone, the author of the page at least seemed to realize that he was telling us nonsense, although it bears mention that other recent Mysterious Universe articles have been "My Very Own Hyperdimensional Resonator" and "Green UFOs Appear in South Africa and Spain."

So right off the bat, we're talking about a source that may not be all that reliable.  But being that this is what we do, here at Skeptophilia, I forged ahead.

The end of the world this time is going to be because the Yellowstone Supervolcano is going to erupt.  But what you probably don't know is that (1) it's going to erupt because of the infamous planet Nibiru, and (2) all of this serious shit is coming down on September 23, 2017.  Yes, as in this coming Saturday.  So we don't have long to prepare, not that there's much we could do about it anyhow.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The main proponent of this idea is one David Meade, who has said that Nibiru is not in orbit around the Sun.  No, that would be ridiculous.  Nibiru is actually in orbit around the Sun's invisible binary twin, and therefore is zooming toward us at incredible speed -- a speed, Meade says, that will "'take it from not visible in any telescope' to 'holy crap, there it is' in only a few days."

Which, of course, brings up the question of how Meade knows about it, if it's not yet visible in any telescope.

Oh, that's because of the masking effects of the Earth's atmosphere, Meade says.  If we only had a telescope that was above the Earth's atmosphere, we'd see Nibiru approaching.

Which, of course, we do. The Hubble.  But we haven't let little things like factual accuracy bug us before, so why start now?

Anyhow, when Nibiru gets close enough, the Yellowstone Supervolcano will go "boom."  Which will, according to Meade, "split the United States in half."  There will be tsunamis (yes, I know, the Yellowstone Supervolcano is nowhere near the ocean.  Stop asking questions), earthquakes, and high winds, and worst of all, the entire electrical grid will go down.

"This will allow our enemies to take advantage of us," Meade says.  Which honestly seems like it would be the least of our concerns at that point.

Of course, there's no theory crazy enough that someone can't add to it in such a way as to make it way crazier.  In this case, the someone is William Tapley, who has been something of a frequent flier here at Skeptophilia, most recently because of claiming that Donald and Melania Trump are members of the Illuminati, and that a Budweiser commercial aired during the Superbowl that featured a cute puppy was a coded Satanic message that the world was going to end.

Which of course, it didn't.  As usual.

Anyhow, Tapley, who calls himself the "Third Eagle of the Apocalypse" (what happened to Eagles #1 and #2, I have no idea), is really excited about this whole September 23 thing, although he's not really too keen on Nibiru.  Tapley says that the End Is Nigh because on the 23rd, both the Moon and the Sun will be in the constellation Virgo, which clearly is a reference to Revelation chapter 12, in which we hear about "a woman clothed with the Sun, with the Moon under her feet and a crown of seven stars on her head."

So the only possible answer is that the Tribulation, Rapture, the Second Coming of Christ, and so on are about to happen.

But even Tapley isn't all.  There's Antonio Mattatelli, "one of the most famous exorcists in Italy," who says that recent floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes are a sign of the start of the End Times, because apparently that stuff has never happened before.

Anyhow, there you have it.  A consensus of three experts that once again, the world is ending.  I don't know about you, but I am sick unto death of having these predictions of apocalypse, and then nothing happens.  If this time we get to September 24, and there have been no Apocalyptic Horsepersons, no Scarlet Whore of Babylon, no Antichrist, no Beast With Seven Heads, and (most of all) no Rivers Running Red With The Blood Of Unbelievers, I'm gonna be pissed.

So go ahead.  Come at me, bro.  Let's see what you got.

I dare you.

Storm warning

I swear, the conspiracy theorists are getting faster these days.

In the past, it seemed like they'd at least wait until the dust settled from the latest catastrophe before claiming that it was (1) a hoax, (2) set up by the government as a "false flag," (3) engineered by the Illuminati, or (4) all of the above.  But now, thanks to the internet, we can conclusively state that light is the fastest thing in nature, but bullshit comes in at a close second.

This all comes up because we're already beginning to hear loony theories about Hurricane Matthew, which pummeled Haiti and Cuba, slammed the Bahamas, and is currently ripping its way up the Florida coast (with a potential afterwards for making a weird loop out in the Atlantic and hitting Florida for a second time).  Certainly its track has been odd -- I can't remember ever seeing a hurricane in the southern Caribbean make a ninety-degree right-hand turn the way this one did.

But there's a lot we don't know about steering currents, the prevailing winds that move storms around.  We're getting far better at predicting them -- which is why our ability to forecast storm tracks has improved dramatically in the past thirty years -- but it's still far from an exact science.

Hurricane Matthew on October 4, 2016 [image courtesy of NASA]

All of which leaves open a gap for the nutjobs to crawl through.

First, we have online media commentator Matt Drudge, who never misses an opportunity to use human suffering to hammer home his ultra-right-wing views, claiming that the people at NOAA are overplaying the severity of the hurricane to "make an exaggerated point on climate."  The ironic thing about this is that given the fact that we just had our umpteenth-in-a-row month of record-setting heat, I'd say the climate is making the point for itself.  But silly things like facts don't discourage Drudge, who is already saying Matthew is "a fizzle" and is not going to live up to the forecasters' dire predictions.

Then Rush Limbaugh jumped into the fray, claiming that not only is Matthew not going to live up to the expectations, but that hurricanes in general are a liberal conspiracy.  "It’s in the interest of the left to have destructive hurricanes because then they can blame it on climate change, which they can desperately continue trying to sell," he said on his radio show this week.

So apparently all the left has to do is to make up stuff, and it becomes real.  I bet the Democrats are going to be tickled that they have this much magical power.  All they have to do is wave a wand and say "Hurricanus manifestum!" and lo and behold, we have a storm.

Maybe they should try "Anncoulteria shutthefuckuppibus" and see what happens.  I know I'm willing to try it.

But I digress.

Anyhow, just because Drudge is an asshole and Limbaugh is a moron is not to say that Matthew hasn't been an odd storm.  Not only has it taken a weird path, as I mentioned earlier, but it strengthened really quickly, blowing up to category 4 only a day after it took its northward turn.  So it will come as no surprise that we're already hearing about how the odd features of Matthew are because it's...

*cue scary music*

... not an ordinary hurricane.

This alarming news comes from one Dr. Ethan Trowbridge, who is called a "leading climatologist" over at the website Someone's Bones despite his pronouncements making me wonder if he's been doing sit-ups underneath parked cars.  Trowbridge, who appears to be unclear on the process of hurricane formation, attributes Matthew's ferocity to the close approach of the planet Nibiru (I bet you thought we were done with the Nibiru horseshit.  Ha, fooled you, didn't I?).  According to Trowbridge, some bizarre and hitherto-unknown physics is allowing the mysterious tenth planet to stir up hurricanes:

Nibiru is producing latent heat on our planet.  And this has a positive correlation on weather patterns currently being experienced on Earth.  There are a lot of things the public is not being told, that can influence this storm’s trajectory. Many things factor into this... 

Nibiru is annihilating Arctic sea ice, and its proximity to our inner solar system is pulverizing and altering atmospheric conditions across the globe.  Greenland, for example, has lost much of its polar ice, causing the region to darken; the consequences allow solar radiation—from both the sun and Nibiru—to permeate the atmosphere, warm the Earth’s oceans, and destabilize the planet’s crust. 

These are dangerous times.  What happens in the Arctic impacts the world.  This is known as the ‘carbolic effect,’ a concept the USGS and its affiliates keep hidden from the public.  Greenland has reached its carbolic point, and now Nibiru’s presence is influencing weather all over the planet. Hurricane Matthew is the latest example, and Nibiru is the cause.

The author of the article tells us that Dr. Trowbridge is "now in exile," which I suppose is nicer than saying "was laughed out of the scientific establishment."

As if this wasn't bad enough, we then find out from an entirely different wackmobile that Hurricane Matthew is a "weaponized storm" meant to blast America for "rejecting globalist, totalitarian rule." The proponent of this theory (if I can dignify it with that term) is one Steven Quayle, who goes on to tell us that HAARP is involved (of course), the whole idea was dreamed up by the Illuminati (of course), and the fact of its being named "Matthew" is significant because of the "Biblical associations... and obvious prophetic implications."

Which makes perfect sense, given the well-known biblical books the "Gospel of Katrina" and the "Letter of St. Wilma to the Louisianians."

And this isn't even taking into account the fact that HAARP closed two years ago, and even if it was still operational and could do what Quayle claims it can do, it only seems to be able to generate hurricanes in areas that always get hit by hurricanes anyway.

Now if HAARP could generate a category-5 hurricane in, say, North Dakota, I'd be impressed.  But south Florida?  Not so much.

So the damn thing is still out there churning, and already the loonies are trying to tie it into their warped worldview.  Which, I suppose, shouldn't be surprising.  In any case, enough about the lunatic fringe; I'll just end with a wish for all of those in harm's way from this storm to remain safe -- whatever its ultimate cause was.

Apocalypse whenever

I have an update for those of you who are worried about when the world is going to end, or civilization is going to fall, which honestly would happen anyhow if the world ended.

This update comes from sources that conveniently ignore the fact that previous predictions of the world's end have had a 100% failure rate.  Every time we're told that an asteroid is going to end it all, or the Rapture is going to happen, or the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons are going to run roughshod over the populace, what happens is...

... nothing.  Civilization, or what passes for it these days, just keeps bumbling along as usual.  There are no death comets, no killer plagues, no Second Comings of Deities.  All of which I find reassuring but at the same time vaguely disappointing, because I live in the middle of rural upstate New York and we could really use some excitement around here most days.

Of course, a batting average of zero isn't enough to discourage these folks.  This time it's gonna happen, cross our hearts and hope to die in horrible agony when the Earth explodes.

First, we have the Nibiru cadre, who have been predicting the arrival of Nibiru for decades, kind of like what happened in Waiting for Guffman but not nearly as funny.  This time, though, we can say for sure that Nibiru is approaching because there's going to be a "Blood Moon" (better known to those of us who aren't insane as a lunar eclipse).  Yes, I know that lunar eclipses happen every year, but this one is different.  Don't ask me how.

According to an article in Express, the fabled tenth planet is due to arrive any time now, and has been captured in a video.  Not a NASA video, mind you.  A video taken by an anonymous YouTube subscriber, which as we all know is a highly reliable source of scientific research.

"And now," writes the author of the article, Jon Austin, "conspiracy theorists have somehow tied it in with the infamous blood moon events of a year ago that appears [sic] to be happening again."

What?  Those events of last year wherein nothing happened?  Ah, yes, I remember thinking at the time, "Heaven help us all if this happens again!  Scariest non-events I've ever seen!"

According to this bizarre view of how the world in general, and astronomy in particular, works, the "blood moons" aren't caused by the Earth's shadow.  Nope.  The Nibiroonies have "now tried to tie together the two myths and even claim it is the shadow of Nibiru causing the blood moons."

Because it's not like if there was a planet near enough, and big enough, to cast a giant shadow over the moon, NASA would notice it, or anything.

Then we have the revelation that Obama and his evil henchmen are planning a scheme to destroy America and take down other major world governments along with it.  According to the site What Does It Mean?, the president and his collaborators have a Cunning Plan to unleash upon us, despite the fact that the guy only has five months left in office, so if he really has been intending to destroy the United States, he's gotten off to an awfully slow start.

But no, the article says, he's palling up with Hillary Clinton, who apparently rivals Obama himself for being the embodiment of pure evil.  And they've teamed up with the people who run Google for a conspiracy trifecta to accomplish the following:

1.) [D]isabling of advertisements on all websites critical of the Obama-Clinton regime, including the globally popular Antiwar.com, in order to destroy them.

2.) Deleting Donald Trump from the search list of candidates running for the US presidency. 

3.) Developing and employing a filter so that the name Donald Trump won’t even show up on anyone’s computer device or smart phone.

4.) Hiding in their search results information relating to Hillary Clinton’s health and the massive numbers of suspicions deaths associated with her.

5.) Being supported in their hiding Hillary Clinton health information by the New York Times, with one of their insiders admitting what they’re doing.

Myself, I would be thrilled if something would prevent my ever having to look at a photograph of Donald Trump again.  If that's what the conspiracy's about, I'm all for it.

And as evidence for all of this, they cite...

... InfoWars.  Yes, Alex Jones, who despite having a screw loose is still considered by some to have inside information about the plots that are running rampant in our government, but which never seem to accomplish a damn thing.

It's sort of like the "Obama's coming for your guns" thing you hear all the time from the far-right.  I mean, dude had eight years to take all our guns, and as a nation we're still as heavily armed as ever.  And the contentions that Obama's a radical Muslim.  Really?  He drinks beer, eats bacon, doesn't fast during Ramadan, and supports LGBT rights.  If the guy is a Muslim, he's the worst Muslim ever.

Last, we've got the weird coincidence of three separate lightning strikes that killed hundreds of reindeer (in Norway) and cattle (in the US), and which is said to be HAARP gearing up for a major strike on the populated places of the earth.  Add this to the fact that there's a hurricane in Florida as we speak, because that's not common or anything.  HAARP has done all this as a sort of test run, and next thing we know, there'll be earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, and the works, and civilization will have no other choice besides giving up and collapsing.

What's funniest about all of this is that just last week, the University of Alaska - Fairbanks, which now owns HAARP, had an open house last week wherein they invited anyone with questions or suspicions to stop by for a tour of the place so they can see what it actually does, which is to study high-altitude atmospheric phenomena.  I coulda told them this strategy wouldn't work; if you demonstrate conclusively to the conspiracy theorists that HAARP was a harmless scientific study facility, they will either (1) tell you that the real HAARP had been moved elsewhere, or (2) that you are only saying this because you are under the influence of a mind-control beam, which is one of the things HAARP is supposedly able to do.  So you can't win.  These are people who think a lack of evidence is evidence.

Anyhow, there you have it.  Three ways in which we will almost certainly not be meeting the fall of civilization as we know it.  It's kind of anticlimactic, really.  We're moving into autumn, here in the northeast.  School's starting, the days are getting shorter, and we soon will be battening down the hatches for cold weather.  Myself, I think an apocalypse would be a nice change of pace.  I'm not in favor of wholesale destruction, mind you, but a minor catastrophe or two would go a long way toward alleviating the monotony.

Death planet approaching

A couple of days ago, I looked at the fascination we have with things that are dangerous -- tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, supernovas.  Today we are going to consider the fact that this fascination is apparently strong enough that if there are no horrible natural disasters forthcoming, people feel the need to make one up.

This comes up because of a link sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia wherein we find out that in South America, they have their own version of Nibiru, the fabled tenth planet (or ninth, if you agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson and leave Pluto out of the mix) that visits the inner Solar System every so often, sowing chaos and destruction.  Sort of like the way your least favorite relatives come to visit, bringing along their horribly-behaved children, resulting in a thousand-dollar bill from the plumber just to get the toy cars unstuck from the u-bend in the toilet and the wads of LaffyTaffy out of the bathroom faucet.

Turns out that the South American version of Nibiru is called "Hercolubus."  And over at a site called the Alcione Association, we find out that Hercolubus is on its way, and boy, are we in for it:

Hercolubus, a planet so called by the sages of antiquity, is a gigantic world, 5 or 6 times bigger than Jupiter. In the past it put an end to the Atlantean civilisation and it is approaching Earth again. 

The impending approach of this heavenly body to our solar system will happen soon, so that everybody will be able to see.  It will bring about great upheaval in all corners of our planet.

Well, we wouldn't want any corner to feel left out, so I suppose that's fair enough.

In its present encounter, the progressive approach of Hercolubus will bring about all type of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tidal waves, which will become more and more frequent and intense until total devastation comes about.  When Hercolubus moves near the Earth, its gigantic gravitational force will attract the molten magma towards the Earth’s surface so that earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions will increase in number and will reach unheard-of magnitudes.

What strikes me about all of this is that these people really don't understand how gravity works.  Do they think that the gravitational pull on liquids is stronger than on solids, for some reason?  It reminds me of the explanation Tom Weller gave in his phenomenal spoof of middle school science textbooks, Science Made Stupid (and if you haven't read this, go immediately to this site and read it, but don't try and drink anything while doing so or you'll be buying a new computer).   He explains the tides thusly:

We sometimes speak of the tides causing the oceans to rise or fall. Of course, this is a fallacy.  Actually, it is the land that rises and falls. 

As the Earth rotates, the moon's gravitational attraction is greatest first on one side, then the other.  Land masses, being rigid, are pulled up or down accordingly.  Oceans, being liquid, are free to flow back to their normal level.

We then find out that "Hercolubus" is going to cause the pole to shift.  We can already see it starting, because the ice caps are melting, or something.  Because clearly the ice melting at the poles will affect the magnetism of the core of the Earth, which will in turn cause the whole planet to turn turtle, kind of like a kayak capsizing.

The reality is scary-looking enough.  [image courtesy of NASA]

So how are we going to escape all of this bad stuff?  Apparently, what we all need to do is to learn how to do astral projection:

Along the course of history, different people with Awakened Consciousness have told about such cosmic phenomenon.  A very clear and current example is the little book entitled ‘Hercolubus or Red Planet’ written by V.M. Rabolu, the great Colombian researcher in esotericism. T hat book can be qualified as a ‘document about the future written with full consciousness’. 

Based on his direct and conscious experience, its author, V.M. Rabolu, teaches us in his book the systems to eliminate our psychological defects and the techniques for astral projection as the only existing formulas to face the forthcoming times.

So I guess the idea is that when "Hercolubus" comes and everything on Earth kinda goes south, we can just astral project ourselves right the hell out of here.  Although that does bring up one problem; isn't the idea of astral projection that your soul goes away somewhere, and your body gets left behind?  It'd be a little inconvenient if your soul goes for a vacation on, say, Neptune, and comes back to find that your body has been obliterated by all the molten magma being pulled around by Hercolubus's crazy strong gravity.

You can see how that would kind of be a bummer.

Anyhow, here's one more thing for all of us to worry about.  The whole Nibiru thing seems to have calmed down some, especially now that 2012 has come and gone without the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse showing up.  But Hercolubus seems to run on its own timetable, so I guess we're not out of the woods yet.  My advice is to work on "eliminating your psychological defects."  Then, even if V. M. Rabolu is wrong about Hercolubus and the Earth flipping over and everything, at least you'll be less defective, which sounds like a good thing.

Polygons on Pluto

When NASA's New Horizons probe made a flyby of Pluto last summer, it sent back remarkably detailed photographs of this strange frozen dwarf planet, so distant that even one of the fastest man-made vehicles took nine years to get there.  Naturally, it's taken scientists a while to explain what the photographs contained, given our prior lack of knowledge of Pluto's composition.

One of the most curious features noticed were more-or-less straight-sided "polygons" in a region called "Sputnik Planum."  There's no doubting that the pattern is peculiar:

[image courtesy of NASA/JPL]

And of course, all it takes is "peculiar observation" added to "scientists haven't explained this yet" to send the woo-woos of the world off into a dizzying spiral of completely loony speculation.

Here are a few suggestions as to what the "polygons" might be:

• the rubble-strewn walls of an ancient alien city
• a secret base on Pluto designed (possibly with alien help) by NASA.  If you buy this one, then New Horizons was not a research mission, but was going to reestablish contact with people who are already there
• evidence that Pluto is actually the fabled planet Nibiru
• the encampments of a hostile force from another solar system

Apropos of the last one, it didn't take long for someone to remember that Pluto has been identified as the site of H. P. Lovecraft's world "Yuggoth," home to sentient fungus-beings who are able to switch personalities with human beings and keep our consciousness stored in what amount to high-tech tin cans.

So okay.  Let's start with the fact that H. P. Lovecraft's story "The Whisperer in Darkness" is labeled "fiction."  As far as the rest of the hypotheses (I hate to dignify them with that name), allow me simply to say that if I were looking for a place to build a base, Pluto would not be my first choice.  For one thing, I hate cold weather, and Pluto's average surface temperature is -229 C.  Plus, it doesn't appear to have much of an atmosphere, and I kind of like going outside without putting on a space suit.

Additionally, we just got word a couple of days ago from actual scientists (i.e. people who prefer evidence and logic than talking out of their asses) that they now have a good working explanation for the polygons.  Planetary astronomers Andrew J. Dombard and Sean O'Hara of the University of Illinois have proposed that the pattern can be explained by vigorous convection -- what we are seeing are the tops of Rayleigh--Bénard convection cells, which occur when a fluid is heated from below.  (This is what causes the pattern you observe if you carefully add cream to hot coffee without stirring.)

"Evidence suggests this could be a roiling sea of volatile nitrogen ice," Purdue planetary scientist Jay Melosh explained.  "Imagine oatmeal boiling on the stove; it doesn't produce one bubble for the entire pot as the heated oatmeal rises to the surface and the cooler oatmeal is pushed down into the depths, this happens in small sections across the pot, creating a quilted pattern on the surface similar to what we see on Pluto.  Of course, on Pluto this is not a fast process; the overturn within each unit happens at a rate of maybe two centimeters per year."

So once again, we have a cool explanation of an odd natural pattern, without any recourse to aliens, conspiracies, Nibiru, or Yuggoth.  All of which reminds me of the wonderful quote from Tim Minchin: "Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be... not magic."

Sheeple update

Sometimes I have to check in on the r/conspiracy subreddit just to see what new nutty conspiracy theories are out there.  I try to make sure that I've girded my loins and stiffened my spine beforehand, because the level of complete batshit insanity demonstrated by the regular contributors really has to be seen to be believed.  On my most recent visit, I was not disappointed -- there are not one, nor two, but three truly amazing new conspiracy theories, if by "amazing" you mean "ideas that you would only come up with if you have a single Cheeto where most of us have a brain."

First, we have astronomer Paul Cox inducing multiple orgasms in the Planet X crowd by making a joke while analyzing a video of the recent transit of Mercury across the Sun.  "See that mysterious bright glow on the right side?  What do you suppose that is?" Cox asks, pointing to what is clearly a lens flare.  "Do you think it's the mysterious planet Nibiru?"  He then goes on to say, "We don't cover things up like NASA does."

Well, you don't joke about such matters, not when people like YouTube contributor "EyesOpen37" are listening.  "EyesOpen37" doesn't believe in lens flares.  "EyesOpen37" thinks it's much more likely that a vague, diffuse glow is unequivocal evidence that a huge planet inhabited by our reptilian alien overlords is coming into the inner solar system for a visit, and NASA is desperately trying to make sure that no one finds out about it.

"I wonder if these guys are using this transit of Mercury to warn us about Nibiru?" muses "EyesOpen37," in a tone of voice that indicates that the answer is obviously "yes."  And the people who posted comments on his YouTube submission agree wholeheartedly.  Here's a sampling:

• Thank you so much for uploading this video!!  And I'm so glad a reputable person has finally spoke out!  Paul Cox is a good person and so are you to release this info!! :)
• I hope you have this video backed up so you can keep re-posting if it gets deleted!!  WOW!!
• Want to know how it'll end?  Read Revelation 8:8 on.  Repent and seek your Saviour.  God bless.
• It's controlled.  How many dead astronomers do we have to date?  Maybe a joke is the only way he can put it out there. Bottom line....he was deliberate.

Yes, there are lots of dead astronomers.  Aristarchus, Hypatia, Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Edmund Halley... the list goes on and on.  There's only one possible answer -- they were all killed to keep them silent about the Planet Nibiru.

Speaking of dead people, our second conspiracy theory is about how Osama bin Laden is still "alive and well and living in the Bahamas."  And of course, there's nothing that lends credence to a wacko idea like saying "Edward Snowden says so."  (The only thing that's better would be saying "Nikola Tesla says so.")  According to the site Humans are Free, Snowden had the following to say about it:

I have documents showing that Bin Laden is still on the CIA’s payroll.  He is still receiving more than $100,000 a month, which are being transferred through some front businesses and organizations, directly to his Nassau bank account. I am not certain where he is now, but in 2013, he was living quietly in his villa with five of his wives and many children. 

Osama Bin Laden was one of the CIA’s most efficient operatives for a long time.  What kind of message would it send their other operatives if they were to let the SEALs kill him?  They organized his fake death with the collaboration of the Pakistani Secret services, and he simply abandoned his cover. 

Since everyone believes he is dead, nobody’s looking for him, so it was pretty easy to disappear.  Without the beard and the military jacket, nobody recognizes him.

Of course, at the bottom of the page, we read the following disclaimer:

Note: The original source of this information has not been validated nor confirmed by any other source.

In other words, even though we're not sure if it's true, you're clearly a KoolAid-Drinkin' Sheeple if you don't believe it.

And since bin Laden is still alive, it must therefore follow that lots of other Big Bad Guys are, too.  For our last dip in the deep end of the pool, we go to the site OrionStar 3000, wherein we learn that Josef  "The Angel of Death" Mengele is not only still alive, he is also the "Zodiac Killer"  who killed seven people in the late 1960s in California.

Now, you might be thinking, "How can Mengele be alive?  He was born in 1911.  He'd be 105 years old by now."  But this just shows that you're not thinking outside the box.  (And by "the box" I mean "anything that makes sense.")  Here's what he looked like in 2001, when he was a mere 90 years old, in a photograph taken at a "Brotherhood of Aryan Nations/KKK/ Bush Fundraiser in Hernando, Florida.":

Which, you have to admit, is pretty good for a 105-year-old.  Here's Mengele during World War II:

So I think we have a definitive match.

As far as how Mengele could still be so spry despite his age, we're told, "Mengele looks much younger than he really is due to years of face-lifts, anti-aging hormone injections & alleged cannibalism!"

And if that wasn't enough, we also find out the following alarming stuff:

• [SS Lieutenant Colonel] Otto Skorzeny faked Hitler's death!  Nazi Germany Really Won WWII!
• Hitler lived to be the oldest man in America until he died at the age of 114 years in 2/2004 in the Bethesda, MD Naval Hospital.
• The son of Tesla's illegal immigrant German Born accountant George H. Scherff Sr., SS Nazi spy George H. Scherff Jr. aka: US Navy Pilot: George H.W. Bush murdered his two TBF Avenger crew members by bailing out of his perfectly good airplane.  Bush became a heroin junkie to try to escape his guilty conscience.

Scarier still, this site doesn't have a disclaimer.  So it must all be true, right?

Of course right.

So that's our fun excursion through CrazyTown for today.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Myself, I'm wondering if I can get a hold of any of that anti-aging stuff.  I'm hoping I don't have to resort to cannibalism.

The new ninth planet

Sometimes I react differently to scientific discoveries than ordinary people do.

A few days ago, I read a press release from Caltech with some exciting news for astronomy buffs -- the discovery of good evidence of a ninth planet (a real ninth planet, sorry, Pluto) out in the Kuiper Belt, the region in the far reaches of the Solar System that was thought to be populated mostly with comets.

The planet has yet to be sighted, but the two researchers who found evidence of its existence, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, say their argument based in celestial mechanics is sound.  They got the idea when they discovered that six different distant objects with highly elliptical orbits all had their ellipses oriented the same way -- a highly unlikely arrangement to occur by chance, as the alignment of elliptical orbits precesses over time.

"It's almost like having six hands on a clock all moving at different rates, and when you happen to look up, they're all in exactly the same place,"  Brown said.  "The odds of having that happen are something like 1 in 100.  But on top of that, the orbits of the six objects are also all tilted in the same way -- pointing about 30 degrees downward in the same direction relative to the plane of the eight known planets. The probability of that happening is about 0.007 percent.  Basically it shouldn't happen randomly.  So we thought something else must be shaping these orbits."

So basically, they proposed that a new (and as yet, unnamed) ninth planet is locking those objects into their orbits.  Using that as their starting point, they ran a simulation -- and it matched the known objects' orbits perfectly.  "We plotted up the positions of those objects and their orbits, and they matched the simulations exactly," said Brown. "When we found that, my jaw sort of hit the floor."

Artist's conception of the new ninth planet.  The little yellow dot in the lower right is what the Sun would look like from out there.

Cool, no?  Which makes my reaction even weirder, because when I read this, instead of being excited by the new discovery, I did a facepalm and said, "Oh, dear lord, no.  This is going to bring all of the Nibiroonies howling out of their well-deserved obscurity."

If you are fortunate enough not to know about Nibiru, allow me to inform you that it is the fabled ninth planet that is the home of the Annunaki, better known as our Alien Overlords.  Nibiru supposedly only visits the inner solar system every few thousand years or so, which explains why you see so few Annunaki around these days despite the fact that our distant ancestors apparently knew all about them.

Evidently the "it's a myth" explanation never occurs to these people.

So you can see why I immediately thought, upon reading the Caltech press release, that the wingnuts who believe in Nibiru would latch onto this like a leech on a swimmer's ankle.  And sure enough, over at Area51.org, we had an article appear yesterday with the headline, "Did Caltech Researchers Just Find Planet X (Nibiru)?" 

Here's an excerpt:

A giant planet in a highly elongated orbit—that’s exactly what the fabled Planet X was supposed to be. Nibiru, as the ancient Sumerians called it, home of a race of aliens, the Anunnaki, that came here and genetically modified our ancestors. The planet described in these texts is giant, and only comes near Earth about every 3,600 years because of its, well, bizarre, highly elongated orbit... This hidden history, which is explained in detail in the books of Zecharia Sitchin, has been dismissed by skeptics in one simple stroke: where, pray tell, is this giant extra planet? 

It appears as though Caltech has just answered that question... 

Scientists have previously found evidence for a missing planet in the solar system, but this new finding is more substantial—and it’s the first time researchers have suggested that the planet is “giant”, just as foretold thousands of years ago.

Yes, well, that's all very nice, but there are just a few problems with all this.

First, Batygin and Brown's research indicates that the new planet is really far from the Sun.  It appears to have an average orbital distance of 600 AU -- one AU being the distance from the Earth to the Sun.  (By comparison, poor demoted Pluto has an average orbital distance of 39 AU.)  On closest approach, "Nibiru" might come 200 AU from the Sun -- which still puts it five time further out than Pluto is.

Second, the new planet is estimated to have an orbital period of 15,000 years, not 3,600, as the estimable Mr. Sitchin claims.  So even if it did come into the inner Solar System (which it doesn't), it would only be at 15,000 year intervals, which seems kind of inconvenient if you are acting as planetary overlords.  "You guys play nice!  If not, there'll be hell to pay!  We'll be back to check in... um... fifteen millennia."

As if that wasn't enough, we have the fact that third, the planet is estimated to be the size of Neptune, making it a gas giant with no solid surface.  Any Annunaki who were comfortable out there -- on an ice-cold planet, probably made largely of ammonia and methane, in perpetual darkness -- wouldn't do so well here on clement, solid Earth.

Oh, wait!  The Annunaki are super-powerful and magical!  Never mind.

So anyway.  These people never let little things like "facts" stand in their way, so I'm pretty sure that all of this will make exactly zero difference to the Nibiroonies.  Once you've accepted "no evidence except for a lot of self-contradictory ancient texts" as your basis of understanding, you really don't have much in the way of solid ground to stand on.

But at least you might now understand my reaction.  No insult intended to Batygin and Brown, who have done stellar work (*rimshot*), but given the woo-woos I contend with here on Skeptophilia on a daily basis, you can see why I greeted the Caltech press release with less than wild shouts of acclamation.

Stargates in my inbox

I get the weirdest emails sometimes.

I suppose it comes with the territory, given some of the stuff I blog about.  The problem is, not knowing anything about perhaps 80% of the people who email me with responses or comments, I often can't tell if the person was serious or not.

This leaves me in the awkward position of not being able to determine if an individual who has my email address is insane.  Take, for example, the email I got yesterday, from someone who signed it only as "A Devoted Reader:"

Dear Skeptophilia: 

Sometimes I like what you write but sometimes it just makes me mad.  Because I think you are determined not to see whats [sic] right under your nose.  I'm not calling it paranormal because that makes it sound made-up, infact [sic] it's science it's just science we humans don't know anything about.  That doesn't mean it's not real and there could be other civilizations that have that information and might be willing to share it with us if we would pull our heads out of the sand. 

Here are two websites that will hopefully make you think.  Keep an open mind when you read them and stop thinking that skeptic means a person who disbelieves everything and makes fun of what they don't understand. 

A Devoted Reader

The two websites turned out to be called "Saddam or Stargate?  What is Task Force 20's Main Objective?" and "2014 War for Men's Souls."   And I was going to say that these two websites read like a script for a movie on the Syfy channel, but that isn't entirely correct, because movies on the Syfy channel at least have to have some kind of plot.

Whereas these two websites make the random ravings of Alex Jones sound like a pinnacle of rationality.  Here are a couple of selections from "Saddam or Stargate?":

Imagine this scenario.  The U.S. government obtains intelligence that hidden somewhere in central Iraq is an actual stargate, placed there by the Anunnaki 'gods' of ancient Sumeria...  In this scenario, when Nibiru is closest to Earth, the Anunnaki will "take the opportunity to travel to Earth through that same stargate and will set up their encampment in Iraq." 

With time running out, President Bush invades Iraq.  American scientists raid the (Iraqi national) museum and close the stargate, thus frustrating the grandiose ambitions of the self-styled reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar, Saddam Hussein, and making the world safe for the New World Order. 

Is this the sequel to the movie Stargate?  Is it a new episode of the TV series?  Is it a new Star Trek movie?  No, it is none of these.  According to Dr. Michael Salla, it is probably exactly what happened!

Probably exactly!  Spoken like a true scientist, Dr. Salla.  "We're probably almost kind of exactly sort of sure.  Maybe."

How do we know all of this for kind of definitely certain?  Our evidence includes seeing a soldier with wacky sunglasses in Baghdad:

As a U.S. soldier peered out of a passing tank, a young engineering student and a retired accountant contemplated one of the more common questions on the streets of Baghdad: Did the soldier's wraparound sunglasses give him X-ray vision? 

"With those sunglasses, he can definitely see through women's clothes," said the engineering student, Samer Hamid.  "It makes me angry. We are afraid to take our families out on the street."

So soldier with funny sunglasses = x-ray vision = being able to see what we look like naked = Saddam Hussein was in contact with aliens who gave him a magic stargate.

I can't see any flaw in the argument there, can you?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But that website reads like a treatise on formal logic when compared to the other one.  A brief passage will suffice:

Some orbs appear to be the manifestation of the human soul after we die; only visible to ultraviolet and infrared non-filtered cameras.  To days [sic] cameras pick them up because it is much cheaper to manufacture them without such filters.  This is why both UFOs (who the ancients said were “spirit” gods who could take human form-cloaked in the UV and IR) and ghosts can be captured by today’s technology, when not visible to the human eye.  The ancient Mesopotamia bible spoke of both spirits and the soul.  Nearly every ancient civilization makes reference to the soul; Egypt built a technological civilization around them.  They were quite obviously doing something with high voltage; Tesla coils and particle accelerators, to harness and launch the soul.  From the Zoroastrians, to Mesopotamia, even the Maya and pre-Columbians, all had this knowledge.

So there you are, then.  And I don't know about you, but having my soul launched by a particle accelerator seems like a cool idea.  I'd go for that as a sendoff when I die, except that I'd pretty much already decided that I want a Viking funeral.  Lay my body out on my canoe, set it on fire, and shove it out into my pond, and then all of my friends and family throw a huge party with lots of alcohol and music and debauchery.  More fun than your typical church funeral, don't you think?

But I digress.

I live in hope that the people who send me these emails aren't serious, but I fear that this one was.  It seemed awfully... sincere.  And to A Devoted Reader, a personal message:  I tried to keep my mind open, I honestly did.  But I still don't believe in stargates and Annunaki and spirit orbs and so on.  I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool if this stuff existed; hell, I'd love it if Bigfoot and aliens and so on were real.  But I'm just not seeing it.

So thanks for the emails, and do keep them coming, even though some of them make me a little worried that you people might know where I live.  Toward that end, allow me to mention, offhand and in-passing-like, that I recently moved to a small uncharted island off the coast of Mauritania.  The view is lovely, and it even has wifi.  Drop by to visit any time.

ISON is Wormwood! Or Nibiru! Or not!

My younger son, who shares my interest in investigating wacky beliefs, sent me a perplexing email a couple of days ago.

"Look up 'wormwood,'" is all it said.

I responded, "Wormwood like the plant?  Wormwood like the junior devil in C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters?"

He came back with, "Wormwood like the comet."

So I obligingly did a Google search for "wormwood comet," and found out something that would be funny if the people who believed it weren't so sincere: there is apparently a growing number of ultra-Christian types who believe that Comet ISON is the "falling star" mentioned in Revelation 8:10-11:

Then the third angel sounded: And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.  The name of the star is Wormwood.  A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter.

ISON isn't a star, of course, but taking the bible literally doesn't apparently stop people from taking it metaphorically when it's convenient.

(Photograph courtesy of the European Southern Observatory and the Wikimedia Commons)

Take a look, for example, at this site, which mixes so many different kinds of crazy that it's hard to know where to begin -- biblical literalism, astrology, the magical significance of names, conspiracy theories, theosophy, and what appears to be completely original batshittery.  As an example of the latter, take a look at this paragraph:

Biblically, Joseph (Israel) is at the Altar (Initiated); Gentiles are on the Porch (Un-initiated). I cannot stress enough Stay on the Porch!! The Mark of this Beast is real! The Hopi aka Welsh Gypsies continuing the Solar Cult of ancient Egypt correctly forecasted the arrival of White Men, Railroads, Interstate Highways and Jet Travel complete with Chemtrails described as Spider Webs; their prediction at Prophecy Rock will in all likelihood, come true as well! 

Besides that entirely incomprehensible paragraph, the site contains pages and pages of stuff that all leads us to one conclusion: ISON is Wormwood, and in a week or so we're all gonna die in horrible agony as part of the long-ago-foretold plan of the God of Love and Mercy.

Now, you might say that this website is just the work of one crazy person, which could well be true -- but stuff like this is popping up all over the internet.  Some people disagree, though, which should be reassuring.  On the site Escape All These Things: End Times Prophecies Made Plain, we are told that we are told that ISON can't be Wormwood because Wormwood is the "third trumpet" and the first and second trumpets haven't sounded yet, because we probably would have noticed if a third of the world's plants had been burned up and a great mountain had fallen into the sea.

On the downside, though, is the possibility that ISON could be the Planet Nibiru, a mythical planet that is best known for conspicuously failing to show every other time it was supposed to.  In one of the best examples of pretzel logic I've ever seen, take a look at this page from the bizarre site Before It's News, wherein we find out that all of the other non-appearances of Nibiru were because the Illuminati wanted to play a game of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" to get us to let down our guard:

A few of those people could not live with the knowledge that millions of their fellow human beings were going to die in the future without even an opportunity to know what they were facing. There were a few who felt that the public had a right to know what was coming in order to make whatever preparations were possible. So from time to time there have been “leaks” of information. Little by little more and more information has been “leaked” until the whole grim picture has come together. In fact there were so many “leaks” of information about Planet X that some “brilliant insider” [Sic!] came up with the idea of planting disinformation designed to discredit the whole subject in the eyes of the public. So in 2001, 2002, and 2003 there was all kinds of information about Planet X being deliberately “leaked” to the public. Much of the information being released at that time claimed that the coming of Planet X would occur in May of 2003, and the public should prepare themselves for imminent destruction. On the one hand “official” sources were denying the whole story, while on the other hand equally “official” sources were steadily “leaking” disinformation to the public. Their SCAM worked like a charm. When Planet X DID NOT show up in May of 2003, most people labeled the whole subject of Planet X a hoax and began ridiculing anyone who would even bring up the subject.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone come right out and say, "You should believe us because we have a record of being 100% wrong in the past" before.

Anyhow, I just wish everyone would stop freaking out every time something interesting happens in the world of astronomy.  ISON has the potential to put on a great show during the first week of December, and I, for one, would love it if it did.  Weather permitting -- always a dicey thing in my cloudy, snowy part of the country -- I'll be out there looking for it on the morning of December 3 through 6.

Even if it means that I have to "get off the porch."