Do you think the whole Nibiru/Planet X hoax-fest started when someone read about Barnard's Star?

Question

According to Wiki "Barnard's Star is approaching Sol rapidly at 140 kilometers per second (87 miles/second) and will get as close as 3.8 light-years (ly) around 11,800 CE"

Not exactly a "near-hit", as George Carlin would say, but a fascinating piece of trivia that might have made some loon (with apologies to bot our Canadian neighbors and the waterfowl) think "hey, if one invisible star could come within 4 light years, then another could..."

You see, Barnard's Star is invisible to the naked eye. As a Red Dwarf, it has an apparent magnitude of about 9ish. This could be mis-interpreted by the chronically silly.

Answer 1

That could be one very likely possibility. The one that I had originally thought might have brought about this Nibiru junk about was the Nemesis Theory, AKA Nemesis the Death Star, which suggest the existance of either a brown dwarf or red dwarf companion star to our sun with a very low magnitude (I think it was theorized at around 7) and orbits the sun at a distance of about 1-1.5 ligh-years away. The original concept behind that theory was brought about to explain periodical mass extinctions that have occured throughout earth's history at rough intervals of about 26 million years; the theory suggests that Nemesis is responsible for causing disturbances in the outer Kuiper Belt and fabled Oort Cloud at certian part of it's orbit which sends a shower of comets loose upon the inner solar system, thus, being responsible for the periodic extinctions that have occurred in the past.

So far, no definite proof has been found to conclude the existance of such a star but the theory hasn't been completely thrown out either. My guess is some nut out there came across this bit of info and thought "Death Star and mass extinction every so many millions of years! Why not?" That theory in conjunction with the Mayan Calender as well as some other theories out there could have given rise to such a hoax.

Unfortunately I don't think we'll never know for sure how the whole Nibiry/Planet X end-of-the-world 2012 hoax originally was created, but it can be any combination of things out there.

Answer 2

I don't think so.  But many of the conspiracy theories start with a real science theory, often one which has already lost favor.  These are ripe for the plucking because 1) you can find them for nothing by reading old books in your libraries' obsolete science section. 2) these were theories that sounded plausible, so the can still sound plausible to the undereducated.

Some of the conspiracy theories start with a real science question.  Like, is there a planet on the exact other side of the Sun from the Earth.  Makes for good science fiction.  Except that such a planet would be unstable - over the age of the solar system, the gravity of the other planets would disturb it... but these days we've actually looked.  But the facts haven't stopped anyone.

What bothers me is that as near as i can tell, the people who initiate this nonsense must have done considerable research, and must have known better.  It has to be deliberate at some level.