Conspiracy Theory: Planet X/Niburu

[Cephius]

It needs to be 2013 already so people would stfu about the end of the world, etc.

No, they'll just come up with a new doomsday year to use, and the cycle will continue.

Yeah but at least they'll stfu about how the Mayans predicted this 289082375937 years ago.

Like Cephius said, I doubt a giant fireball would be as close as 4 years from impact and we wouldn't notice the "2nd sun" becoming closer and closer. And if its true, good riddance I say.. humans suck anyways.

They're saying it's hidden by a black hole/worm hole.

LOL yeah, there's totally a black hole right in our solar system! If you know anything about how black holes work, you would know that if one existed even REMOTELY close to our solar system, it would consume everything in its gravitational pull and destroy anything and everything including our sun and dear old Earth. Not to mention they are anything but invisible, many of our telescopes have captured light being sucked into one (creating the "black hole" image) and the radiation they emit is also easy to see. Read closely: Not. Possible.

Also, wormholes are theoretical events that connect two points in space (theoretical physicists make the analogy that wormholes "bend" space to connect two points), they have nothing to do with stars and could certainly not "hide a dwarf" star. SCIENCE BITCHES, IT WORKS

[Dolmen]

As an Astronomy major, my official response is:

lol.

First, reference this image:
http://www.maya12-21-2012.com/orbitjj3.gif

The planets do not orbit in a perfect circle (think more of an oval where the Sun is not located in the center). If you're going to use diagrams, at least use correct diagrams, especially when it's a conspiracy theory.

[Woozie]

It needs to be 2013 already so people would stfu about the end of the world, etc.

No, they'll just come up with a new doomsday year to use, and the cycle will continue.

Yeah but at least they'll stfu about how the Mayans predicted this 289082375937 years ago.

Like Cephius said, I doubt a giant fireball would be as close as 4 years from impact and we wouldn't notice the "2nd sun" becoming closer and closer. And if its true, good riddance I say.. humans suck anyways.

They're saying it's hidden by a black hole/worm hole.

A black hole couldn't hide it. If there was a black hole eclipsing the star, then we'd be in a triple star system (because the black hole would be orbiting with us and the dwarf). Also, graviational effects of the black hole and the dwarf would have been noticable to us LONG ago. Due to the fact that all three bodies would be revolving about a common center of mass, any eclipse would be short lived, and thus, we would have seen the dwarf thousands of years ago.

Also, if we were in a multiple star system, the dynamics of our solar system would be much different than they are unless the other two bodies were extremely small in mass compared to the sun. However, in order for a black hole to form, the mass left over after a dying star blows off its outer layers would have to be like 2.3 solar masses (the absolute lowest estimate I ever heard was 1.5), which contradicts the fact that they must be much ligher than the sun.

And if somehow we did end up with a black hole that was much smaller than the sun (in terms of mass), it's event horizon would litterally be only a few kilometers long. That would make the black holes' size smaller than the earths moon. A black hole of that size couldn't eclipse an entire star (unless the black hole was right in front of our faces. It would litterally have to be much closer to the earth than the moon itself just to cause a total eclipse for a certain percentage of our population, and at no point could it eclipse the star from the entire planet).

[Xiona]

sounds like they took that theory off one a few scientist are trying to test where our sun is a binary star system with its partner on an extremely eliptical path. that sun could be a very dim star and when its orbit reaches its closest with the sun it disrupts the asteroids orbits in sending one or more directly at earth.

they attribute it to an apparent death clock in the fossil records

[Saga]

just for my own curiosity, how do black holes function? scientifically? is it just a mass with an incredibly strong gravitational pull? what are they actually and how do they work?

[Cephius]

just for my own curiosity, how do black holes function? scientifically? is it just a mass with an incredibly strong gravitational pull? what are they actually and how do they work?

They're essentially a star that has collapsed into itself, forming an insanely small, dense object. Einstein theorized that something with such dense amount of mass in such a small area would have such a huge gravitational force that nothing, not even light, could escape it once it got close enough. The amount of power/speed/force needed to escape the pull of a black hole becomes infinite, and everything gets pulled inside it. You don't actually see the black hole, you see the light, radiation, space particles and everything else that's getting pulled into it.

That's it in a nutshell, there are tons more info on black holes and how they interact with the universe, but to my knowledge that's pretty much it in layman's terms

[Woozie]

just for my own curiosity, how do black holes function? scientifically? is it just a mass with an incredibly strong gravitational pull? what are they actually and how do they work?

A black hole is the name we give to any mass that has an "event horizon" i.e., a point in which light can't escape. It doesn't have to have an incredibly strong gravitational pull. In fact, something less massive than you or me could become a black hole under the right conditions, and our gravitational pulls are very negligible.

The easiest non-mathematical way I can think of to explain it is to say that light (and matter) attempts to minimize a certain function we call the "lagrangian". In a physical sense, the light is trying to minimize it's path when it's traveling. To do this, it travels in a "geodesic", which is the shortest distance between two points. As you know, in normal (Euclidean) geometry, a geodesic is a straight line. However, gravity changes the geometry of space. The more massive something is, the more pronounced this effect is. Also, if you get a given amount of mass and spread it out over space, it's effect is less noticable on the geometry than the same amount of mass in a more compact for. The more compact the mass is, the more extreme it's effect is on the geometry of space in its near vacinity (and what it's "near vacinity"). A black hole warps the geometry of space so much that every geodesic that's a certain distance away leads to the center of the black hole. This distance is called the "event horizon". Any object within the event horizon will be subject to this extreme gravitational condition and will therefore be overpowered by gravity and forced into the black hole.

All matter within a black hole is compressed to an infinitely small region of space known as the "singularity".

The lighter an object is, the more it has to be compressed before it becomes dense enough to form a black hole. An object as light as a feather could become a black hole if it was possible to compress it to an extremely fine point. It's gravity would be no stronger than that of a normal feather and it's event horizon would be incredibly small. A black hole as massive as the sun would still have an infinitely small singularity, but it's event horizon would be a few kilometers. A supermassive black hole would have an event horizon a few times larger than the radius of the sun.

Realistically, we can't expect any force in the universe to create black holes this way except gravity. Since gravity is so weak, it takes a LOT of mass before the gravity is strong enough to produce a black hole. Because of this, steller black holes (not to be confused with the micro black holes of quantum theory, which are much ligher but formed differently) are only formed when the mass is at least a few solar masses.

[Dolmen]

just for my own curiosity, how do black holes function? scientifically? is it just a mass with an incredibly strong gravitational pull? what are they actually and how do they work?

Basically, a star's surface tries to collapse in on itself. To keep the system in check, pressure is produced from the fusion of Hydrogen in the core of the star. Once the star burns through the Hydrogen, then the Helium, and then tries to fuse carbon, it goes boom and the surface wins. You can refer to the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff Limit for more information on sizes required.

Also, Black Holes on Wikipedia gives a pretty simple explanation on black holes.

[Xavier]

I sincerely hope that everyone who believes the world is over in 2012 just commits mass suicide, I hate this shit.

[Woozie]

I sincerely hope that everyone who believes the world is over in 2012 just commits mass suicide, I hate this shit.

Nope, they're an unstoppable force. Neither rain, nor hail, nor sleet, nor meteors/nuclear war/planetX/Canada can stop them. I'm betting once 2013 hits a new "doomsday" will be predicted.

[Exoduso]

I sincerely hope that everyone who believes the world is over in 2012 just commits mass suicide, I hate this shit.

Nope, they're an unstoppable force. Neither rain, nor hail, nor sleet, nor meteors/nuclear war/planetX/Canada can stop them. I'm betting once 2013 hits a new "doomsday" will be predicted.

At least it'll be something original.

[Saga]

interesting, thanks for the explanations. i always find stuff like that pretty fascinating, i love getting to the "why" of things. not just that a black hole exists, but what causes it to exist in the first place, etc.

[Jefe]

I just wanted to include that the mass of the white dwarf is so dense, that if one were to take a tablespoon with the material it would be as dense as the earth. Finally something useful from those Physics classes

[Grievear]

I just wanted to include that the mass of the white dwarf is so dense, that if one were to take a tablespoon with the material it would be as dense as the earth. Finally something useful from those Physics classes

You know what else is as dense as the earth? A hand full of earth. I think you meant it would be so dense that a tablespoon would have the same mass as the earth.

[Cail]

I sincerely hope that everyone who believes the world is over in 2012 just commits mass suicide, I hate this shit.

Nope, they're an unstoppable force. Neither rain, nor hail, nor sleet, nor meteors/nuclear war/planetX/Canada can stop them. I'm betting once 2013 hits a new "doomsday" will be predicted.

im betting a new doomsday will be predicted way before then and then a new thread will be made and we will laught at it.

[Blarg]

Computers will stop working in 2012.

[Cail]

Computers will stop working in 2012.

oh dear god no!

[Metah]

Thank God, now I finally have an excuse to not work and waste my life away

"Guys, the world's over in 4 years! I'm gonna live it up and party hard until then, suckas!"

[Chips]

I sincerely hope that everyone who believes the world is over in 2012 just commits mass suicide, I hate this shit.

Nope, they're an unstoppable force. Neither rain, nor hail, nor sleet, nor meteors/nuclear war/planetX/Canada can stop them. I'm betting once 2013 hits a new "doomsday" will be predicted.

Woah woah woah, don't get cocky now.

[HAcoreRD]

If 1/4 of Americans are retarded enough to think 9/11 was a conspiracy, can the Kyle theory be applied to this, saying 1/4 of the human species is retarded? (excluding the actual handicapped)

The story did seem believeable in some parts, until the alien bullshit at the end. alien presence, Military death squads. Why keep weapons if some intense heat or radiation's gonna fry us all in a heart beat?

Furthermore, wouldn't we classify "Planet X" as another object, not a planet? Object X? Even then I recall hearing shit about the fabled planet X when i was really young, funny seeing it come back up.

2012 we'll see. If there's global death, accept and embrace it, seeing as the world will merely be worse off since "mass radiation" would occur.

As for Black Holes... they wouldn't eclipse this planet/sun because if it was that big I'm sure we'd have a bigger issue on our hands.