As you lie at home, being little more than a vaguely sentient hangover, the prospect of another planet hurtling into the earth, obliterating all life as we know it, may seem appealing. If you are one of the people who put any credence in these rumours that we are all going to die today due to a rogue planet crashing into our own, then you frankly ceased having any real life long ago.
Well, unfortunately for you, if your own common sense didn't put an end to your fears around the possibility of this happening then NASA have picked up the slack and confirmed it for you. Your existence, in all its misery glory is set to continue.
There had been rumours circulating, started by David Meade, a Christian numerologist, that a rogue planet, known as 'Planet X' or 'Nibiru' would pass by, or collidewith earth, possibly destroying everything we know and hold dear. One can't help but feel that the word 'possibly' is really carrying an awful lot of weight in that sentence.
NASA have gone ahead and put out a statement about this. This presumably took some time out of an actual NASA employee's day to put together, which is the only true piece of tragedy from this whole ridiculous story.
“Various people are ‘predicting’ that world will end on September 23 when another planet collides with Earth,”
“The planet in question, Nibiru, doesn't exist, so there will be no collision. The story of Nibiru has been around for years (as has the 'days of darkness' tale) and is periodically recycled into new apocalyptic fables.”
“Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth … astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist.
“Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.”
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Unfortunately it seems you will have to struggle through that hangover with no possibility of some cataclysmic respite.
Frankly, this year of all years it seems that if we were concerned about the world ending we should be looking far closer to home for the real reasons...
