Exposing PseudoAstronomy

April 17, 2013

Podcast #71 – The Fake Story of Planet X, Part 6 – Andy Lloyd’s “Dark Star”


A dark star could save
Sitchen’s Anunnaki claim
But problems it has.

When I upload the RSS feed for the podcast, I have to provide both a “subtitle” (short description) and “description.” I use the “description” from my 3-4 sentence summary I post for every episode. I never know what to put for the other. I’ve decided to start posting haikus related to the episode.

Anywho, this episode is yet another in the Planet X saga. It covers Andy Lloyd’s idea, which is an offshoot of Zecharia Sitchin’s Anunnaki-hosting planet Nibiru from his interpretation of Sumerian tablets. Andy’s major change is to stick the planet around a brown dwarf star. In the episode, I do actual math and show why what he proposes is impossible.

There’s also a puzzler (yay!), new news item, and two announcements. The episode is also a bit longer than normal, coming in at a bit over 37 minutes.

Regarding the second of two announcements — Brian Dunning, the guy who does the Skeptoid podcast, has pled guilty to wire fraud. Based on this material, he is likely facing jail time. I greatly admire his skeptical work and think that clearly still stands on its own, and this does not diminish what he has done for our community.

December 10, 2012

2012 Mayan Doomsday: One Post to (Almost) Rule Them All


Introduction

This post is headed up exactly 11 days before the winter (in the northern hemisphere) solstice of 2012, assuming I got the time zones correct.

You know … THAT day. The one “everyone” is saying – or at least “everyone” is saying that the Mayans said – that the world is going to end. Or we’re all going to become higher vibrational spiritual beings. Or Planet X will swing by. Or some such other stuff.

In other words, only 11 more days people can suckle the milk from the teat of a meme that has frightened people, bilked them from money, made them see a pretty bad movie, and various other things.

If you’re just finding this blog through an internet search and don’t follow me regularly, perhaps you can tell that I clearly put zero stock in such things. In fact, the main purpose of this post is to create a “master” post for the majority of my 2012-related posts and podcasts. I’ve been known to suckle a bit myself, and there’s no harm in doing another post that’s just a bunch of links … it’s a public service, ¿ya know? to have ‘em all in one place.

After all, the majority of people coming to my blog these days are coming here due to searches for 2012-related doomsday stuff.

The Posts and Podcasts

The main blog posts:

I have also written a few posts that are tangentially related to the 2012 subject:

And my podcast episodes so far on 2012 and Planet X:

And podcasts on which I have been interviewed on 2012:

Other Sites

Why would you be going to other sites?

Well, if you must, I highly recommend 2012 Hoax.org.

Regrets

My one main regret is not doing my planned eBook on the subject. It was going to be free, but I just never got around to writing it. Even just as a compilation of blog posts. :(

I suppose my other main regret is that I have yet to do a post or podcast episode on the sun and 2012. The podcast episode will be coming out in 5-6 days, though … so, still have time, and it’ll come out.

Saving Face – Help Me Look?

All that said, there are lots of people who have made several explatives’-worth of money on 2012 stuff. I have to think that some of them are going to try to save face and back-pedal and make excuses.

If you find any, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! You can do this very easily by posting a comment in the Comments section below this post. I want to do a podcast episode on it early in 2012 (like February-ish).

End Stretch

So far, I really haven’t seen too much escalation of this stuff now that we’re less than two weeks away. Supposedly some people in Russia are worried, but I don’t know if that’s just the press making a big deal out of a few people.

Even Coast to Coast AM hasn’t really ramped stuff up — I almost expected that the producers would be having a 2012′er or Planet X’er on several times a week, but that hasn’t happened. Looking at their schedule for this week, Dec. 9-12 (what’s posted), we have Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the fiscal cliff, some mob-JFK show, and the “Watchers” and a cosmic battle with L.A. Marzulli. Only the last one is remotely 2012-ish. Perhaps “not with a bang but a whimper” is apropos.

Oh, and NASA’s come out with their “nothing’s going to happen” stuff, but the people who believe that “something” in 2012 is going to happen are rarely going to believe anything that NASA or any other part of any government says. It’s perhaps unfortunate, but that’s the case.

So that’s that for now. See ya on December 22.

Edited to Add (11/12/2012): Apparently now, even the Vatican is getting in on this, saying nottin’s happenin’. Which makes sense, considering that their holy book contains text that states no human (fairly sure it says “man,” but I’m generalizing here) will know the day nor the hour of the end stuff it talks about. Well, and the Maya, to them, are pagans so nothing they do should be taken seriously since the Vatican has a monopoly on spirituality, or some such thing.

November 1, 2012

Podcast Episode 54: The Fake Story of Planet X, Part 5 (IRAS Discovery in 1983)


The year was 1983, and just five months before a plucky young astro/geophysicist was born, NASA launched the InfraRed Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). Over the next 10 months, the satellite observed nearly the entire sky in wavelengths of light never before measured for astronomy, and it found over a quarter-million objects. Late in 1983, an announcement was made about a potential discovery of a planet on the outskirts of our solar system, but this was quickly covered up.

Was this the real and true discovery of Planet X? Is NASA trying to hide this, even though the news reports from the time still exist and all the IRAS data are publicly available?

Listen in to this ~27-minute episode to find out!

This episode also saw the return of New News, Q&A, Feedback, a Puzzler, and it even had an Announcement or two!

The next episode will be my interview with Dr. Brian Hynek who will be discussing astrobiology, how we search for life, and why Mars is supposedly so important. If you happen to read this before November 3, feel free to use the Comments section to suggest potential questions you’re interested in that I can ask him.

September 16, 2012

Podcast Episode #51: The Fake Story of Planet X, Part 4 (Nancy Lieder)


Episode 2 of 2 for September is now posted, another in the series on the Fake Story of Planet X, this time the the saga of Nancy Lieder from 2003.

Yes, it’s an older case by over a decade, and very, very few people still take Nancy and her ZetaTalk site seriously.

But, I think it’s important for the sake of “complete” coverage of the Planet X phenomenon, of which she has been a major part. I also think that it’s informative of what’s going on today with doomsday ideas related to Planet X and 2012: The same crap that she spouted back then for the pole shift she said would happen in 2003, people are still using today for 2012.

Other segments: Feedback, Puzzler, Announcements.

July 8, 2012

Podcast Episode 43: The Fake Story of Planet X, Part 3


In this episode, I return to the 2012 / Planet X mythos with another installment (at least 5 total are planned) about “The Fake Story of Planet X.” This particular one is a conspiracy claim where folks think that Planet X is coming from the south pole which is why we can’t see it. Except that the government knows about it so built a telescope down there to observe it.

This episode also includes a bit of new news, Q&A, a puzzler (yay!), and a single announcement. Since I’m writing next week’s episode today and need to record it today/tomorrow, I am holding off on Feedback likely until July 24. Note that the solution to this episode’s puzzler will be discussed in the July 24 one so that people have enough time to participate in the puzzler (hint hint, nudge nudge).

May 15, 2012

Planet X: Birthdays Are a Time to Think About Planet X


Introduction

I just completed another round ’bout the Sun on Monday and spent the day sleeping in, eating doughnuts, and playing computer games. But, to those in the know, birthdays are a time to pause and reflect upon one of the more crazy Planet X ideas out there.

Lifetimes

The lifespan of a fruit fly is about 1/12th of a year. The lifespan of a dog or cat is around 15-20ish years. The lifespan of a human is around 75ish years, though that has varied considerably over the past few hundred years and varies today based on gender, socioeconomic status, country, etc. … but we’ll go with 75 as a nice, round number. The lifespan of a bristlecone pine is in the thousands of years.

Implicit in that paragraph is that “year” means “Earth year,” or roughly 365.24219 days. That must mean if we lived on another planet, we’d live for more or less time ’cause the year’s different right?

Anunaki and Planet X

As I said at the beginning, this is one of the more crazy claims. I can’t recall a guest specifically stating this as fact on Coast to Coast AM except to say specifically that the aliens (Anunaki) who supposedly came to Earth under Zecharia Sitchen’s ideas of Planet X (Nibiru) to make a slave race to mine gold (us!) lived for tens of thousands of years. They state that with fact.

But while a guest may not have gone the next step, I have often heard the host, George Noory, state unequivocally that the reason these aliens lived longer is because Nibiru has a 3600-(Earth)-year-long orbit … so they live 75 of their years, which is 270,000 of our years! So a fruit fly from Nibiru should live, instead of one Earth month, 300 Earth years!

Um … WHAT?!

Noory’s said some head-bangers in the past, some real doozies. But this one definitely ranks up there. If there’s a biologist out there, feel free to correct me, but I’m pretty sure that how long it takes Earth to go around the sun has absolutely nothing to do with how long something lives. You can look at the diversity of lifespans of different things on Earth to see that.

From my few biology classes over a decade ago (without saying what birthday I had on Monday …), we die because our cells can no longer maintain themselves and reproduce effectively/successfully. I think this has something to do with telomeres, but I’m sure people like Ray Kurzwell have a few other reasons why things die.

But suffice to say, it’s not because it take a certain length of time for us to go around the sun.

Final Thoughts

Um … to summarize: No, I would not be celebrating 3600 times as many Earth birthdays if I lived on the mythical planet Nibiru.

March 26, 2012

Podcast Episode 28: The Fake Story of Planet X, Part 2 (Gilbert Eriksen’s Wormwood)


In yet another belated episode, here’s Part 2 of the fake story of Planet X, brought to you by Gilbert Eriksen as opposed to Zecharia Sitchen. That is all.

February 18, 2012

Podcast Episode 23: The Fake Story of Planet X, Zecharia Sitchen, Part 1


Ah, modern medicine. As in antibiotics from the pharmaceutical industry (which is NOT an easy word to spell – thank you Google auto-complete!). As in not prayer, therapeutic touch, vitamin mega-doses, yoga, meditating, acupuncture, chi manipulation, homeopathy, exorcisms, magnets, nor any of that other crap. Good ol’-fashioned tested, repeatable, proven drugs.

This episode is late, though back-dated, because I did not get better, I got worse, in my sore throat. To the point of having a fever and noticing white splotches towards the back of my mouth, so I went to the doctor for the first time in almost 8 years, and the first time in over 15 due to an illness (my mom made me get a checkup when I turned 21). I’m surprised that it took so long, but I guess I’ve been lucky to be generally healthy; but when a sore throat lingers for 2 weeks and gets worse and is accompanied by increasing fatigue and fever and chills and white spots in your mouth, I figured it was a good idea to see a doctor. After a day.5 of antibiotics, I’m already feeling much better, though of course I will take my full prescribed 5-day course, and hopefully that’ll be the end of this.

Anywho, the topic of the podcast for (ahem) two days ago is the Fake Story of Planet X. In other words, all that stuff you hear about Planet X being Nibiru, Zecharia Sitchen’s ideas, brown dwarf stars, a 3600-year-long orbit, it approaching from the sun or the south pole so we can’t see it except for the gummament … all that stuff, and why it’s hooey.

The puzzler this time – because I couldn’t think of something else – is more straight-forward math, and it contains two parts — a main question and then a bonus.

I think I’m going to start soliciting puzzlers from people: The next odd-quarter episode, due out March 1 when I’ll be flying to DC, is going to be about the Magnetic Pole Shift. If you can think of a good (decent, half-decent, or passable) puzzler related to that, please e-mail me.

December 26, 2011

New Interview of Me on “Point of Inquiry” Podcast


Quick post to let you know that Karen Stollznow interviewed me for the December 26th episode – last of 2011 – of Point of Inquiry podcast. The subject matter was a summary of the 2012 phenomenon and associated phenomena, and it was appropriately titled, “The End of the World as We Know It.” It’s very, very roughly a 42.62-minute podcast, about the length of my own (so less detail on each subject). Enjoy!

And for reference, I figure it’s time to update my list of 2012 posts so far:

I have also written a few posts that are tangentially related to the 2012 subject:

And my podcast episodes so far on 2012:

December 1, 2011

Podcast Episode 13: The True Story of Planet X

Filed under: astronomy,planet x,podcast — Stuart Robbins @ 1:30 am
Tags: , , , , ,

This podcast episode is a bit of a copy of my 3-year-old blog post on the topic, but it revises the subject a bit and serves as an introduction to my Intro to 2012 month (December 2011).

This month will feature four podcasts. The first is on the history of the term Planet X, and is this episode. The second will be an interview with a really truly live Mayan scholar and should come out December 8. Third will be about galactic alignments, coming out December 16. Finally, one will come out on December 21 about what the sky looks like on December 21 … 2012.

I expect all of these to be shorter than the ~40-minute episodes that have been the norm since October. For example, this one is only about 20 minutes. The interview will probably be closer to a half hour, though. It’s someone else talking and it’s not scripted.

There will be a lot of 2012 episodes coming out over the next 13 months. Many of them I have talked about on this blog before for the simple fact that I have written this blog for over three years and done the podcast for only four months.

In another bit of podcast news, the Q&A section is almost DOA. I’ve had two so far in regular episodes, and no one has asked a question for Q&A since the last. I have no problem with making it an irregular segment except then it kinda has the feeling of I’m someone’s go-to guy for that rare case they have a question (Jeff …). So, I’m soliciting questions for that.

Also, now that you know something of the topics coming up this month, if you happen to have a puzzler to suggest for the Dec. 16 episode, feel free to send it in. Coming up with these suckers is hard and help won’t be ignored.

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