(SNES) Nibiru - our the Silly Season cometh yet again

["Les Coleman" <les11@cox.net>]

Hi Everyone,

The silly season must be upon us again.  I've been receiving questions about the close
encounter of Earth with the planet [!] Nibiru at the end of May. Besides causing problems
of biblical proporations (literally - it is being blamed for the parting of the Red Sea on
it last pass to allow Moses and the Isrealites to flee), it has various astounding
properties such as an orbit which includes not only the Sun but an unseen red dwarf star at
707 AUs from the Sun.  It is a Kuiper Belt Object that resides in the Oort cloud (huhhh?)
It has a period of about 3600 years so that it can come this year after visiting Moses.

Actually, the appearance of the red dwarf seems to have been introduced when someone with a
smattering of astronomical knowledge pointed out that a object with a semimajor axis of
about 707 AUs would have a period closer to 18500 years than 3600.  Nibiru can't be closer
or we would have seen it.  Actually, this argument makes no sense because for Nibiru to
visit the inner solar system by the end of May, it would of necessity be no more than 2.4
AUs out currently.  It would rival Mars in brightness already unless it had an extremely
low albedo.  Mars is already a very low albedo planet.  Nibiru would have to be blacker
than coal dust to be hidden in the visible spectrum.  Of course if it had an albedo this
low, it would be so warm that it would be immediately visible as a blazing object in the
infrared - but I don't want to be a spoilsport so I'll assume the all sky infrared scans
somehow miss the track of Nibiru.

While we are on the subject of infra-red consider the "red dwarf".  At 707 AUs out it would
be just a bit over 1/100 of a light year out.  Proxima Centuari - the nearest star and a
dim red dwarf is a bit over 4 light years away.  Proxima is about the 14th magnitude.
Presto-magic-osto we do a few sums and determine that the mysterious red dwarf would be
about 1600 times as bright at Proxima.  It couldn't be less dim than a 7th magnitude star
even if we assume it is only half as bright as Proxima.  (duhhhh?)  To make the orbits work
out, the "star" can't be so small or it would reduce the period very much from 18500 to
3600.  It would have to be at least a large brown dwarf and easily visible when it flared
occasionally.

Les Coleman
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