What is Nibiru?
There is a lot of misleading information on the internet about Nibiru and Planet X, so let me try and explain the origins of the theory and how it related to us in this day and age, specifically in regards to 2012.
Nibiru is the name of a Babylonian god, and the name of a celestial object in Babylonian mythology. The word is derived from a cuneiform term meaning, loosely, a crossing marker or crossing point. In early Babylonian writings, Nibiru is mentioned as being located in several different constellations. As such, it can be determined that Nibiru was not a star or constellation itself, but a celestial body moving through the sky, such as a planet or asteroid.
In recent years, the work of author and academic Zecharia Sitchin has garnered much attention. He claims to have uncovered, through his retranslations of Sumerian texts, evidence that the human race was visited by a group of extraterrestrials from a distant planet in our own Solar System.
Sitchin’s proposes there was a planet called Tiamat between Mars and Jupiter, which was a thriving world with jungles and oceans. Its orbit was disrupted by the arrival of a large planet or very small star (less than twenty times the size of Jupiter) which passed through the solar system between 65 million and four billion years ago. The new orbits caused Tiamat to collide with one of the moons of this object, which is known as Nibiru. The debris from this collision are thought by the theory’s proponents to have variously formed the asteroid belt, the Moon, and the current incarnation of the planet Earth.
Sitchin hypothesizes it as a planet in a highly elliptic orbit around the Sun, with a perihelion passage some 3,600 years ago and assumed orbital period of about 3,750 years; he also claims it was the home of a technologically advanced human-like alien race, the Anunnaki, who apparently visited Earth in search of gold. These beings eventually created humanity by genetically crossing themselves with extant primates, and thus became the first gods.
Curiously, this theory is confirmed in Genesis, the first book of the Christian Bible, around the time of Noah, which archaeologists theorise to have been around 3,600 years ago.
Sitchin also postulates that Pluto began life as Gaga, a satellite of Saturn which, due to gravitational disruption caused by Nibiru’s passing, was flung into orbit beyond Neptune.
