This article is from NASA, Nov. 21, 2013.

The animation below shows the most common type of gamma-ray burst, thought to occur when a massive star collapses, forms a black hole, and blasts particle jets outward at nearly the speed of light. Viewing into a jet greatly boosts its apparent brightness. A Fermi image of GRB 130427A ends the sequence.

On April 27, a blast of light from a dying star in a distant galaxy became the focus of astronomers around the world. The explosion, known as a gamma-ray burst and designated GRB 130427A, tops the charts as one of the brightest ever seen.

A trio of NASA satellites, working in concert with ground-based robotic telescopes, captured never-before-seen details that challenge current theoretical understandings of how gamma-ray bursts work.

"We expect to see an event like this only once or twice a century, so we're fortunate it happened when we had the appropriate collection of sensitive space telescopes with complementary capabilities available to see it," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington.

Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the cosmos, thought to be triggered when the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, collapses under its own weight, and forms a black hole. The black hole then drives jets of particles that drill all the way through the collapsing star and erupt into space at nearly the speed of light.

Gamma-rays are the most energetic form of light. Hot matter surrounding a new black hole and internal shock waves produced by collisions within the jet are thought to emit gamma-rays with energies in the million-electron-volt (MeV) range, or roughly 500,000 times the energy of visible light. The most energetic emission, with billion-electron-volt (GeV) gamma rays, is thought to arise when the jet slams into its surroundings, forming an external shock wave.

The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope captured the initial wave of gamma rays from GRB 130427A shortly after 3:47 a.m. EDT April 27. In its first three seconds alone, the "monster burst" proved brighter than almost any burst previously observed.

"The spectacular results from Fermi GBM show that our widely accepted picture of MeV gamma rays from internal shock waves is woefully inadequate," said Rob Preece, a Fermi team member at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who led the GBM study.

NASA's Swift Gamma-ray Burst Mission detected the burst almost simultaneously with the GBM and quickly relayed its position to ground-based observatories.

Telescopes operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico as part of the Rapid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) Project quickly turned to the spot. They detected an optical flash that peaked at magnitude 7 on the astronomical brightness scale, easily visible through binoculars. It is the second-brightest flash ever seen from a gamma-ray burst.

Just as the optical flash peaked, Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) detected a spike in GeV gamma-rays reaching 95 GeV, the most energetic light ever seen from a burst. This relationship between a burst's optical light and its high-energy gamma-rays defied expectations.

"We thought the visible light for these flashes came from internal shocks, but this burst shows that it must come from the external shock, which produces the most energetic gamma-rays," said Sylvia Zhu, a Fermi team member at the University of Maryland in College Park.

The LAT detected GRB 130427A for about 20 hours, far longer than any previous burst. For a gamma-ray burst, it was relatively nearby. Its light traveled 3.8 billion years before arriving at Earth, about one-third the travel time for light from typical bursts.

"Detailed observations by Swift and ground-based telescopes clearly show that GRB 130427A has properties more similar to typical distant bursts than to nearby ones," said Gianpiero Tagliaferri, a Swift team member at Brera Observatory in Merate, Italy.

This extraordinary event enabled NASA's newest X-ray observatory, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), to make a first-time detection of a burst afterglow in high-energy, or "hard," X-rays after more than a day. Taken together with Fermi LAT data, these observations challenge long-standing predictions.

I think everyone kind-a felt like that.

Be sure to do this one full screen for the best view.

Awww, the scientist are getting all excited.

Why? Because their $2 billion toy-ehm... I mean, cosmic ray detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station has found the first significant hint of dark matter. This is the elusive substance that is believed to hold the cosmos together but has never been directly observed. Dark matter is thought to make up about a quarter of all the matter in the universe.
Within months the scientists will collect the data and analyze it at CERN.

The findings last Wednesday are based on seeing an excess of positrons - positively charged subatomic particles. Since the 7-ton AMS magnetic detector began studying cosmic ray particles in space, it found about 400,000 positrons whose surging energies indicate they might have been created when particles of dark matter collided and destroyed each other.
Unraveling the mystery of dark matter could help scientists better understand what holds our universe and galaxies together.
So...I guess it isn't duck tape (or gaff tape)...because that's what holds my universe together.

I remember ages ago having a heated argument with one of my classmates during our lunch hour about the fourth dimension. He believed it was where our soul went after death, and I believed it was time (temporal dimension).

When you look at the psychics of it, many scientists believe that the temporal dimension is the fourth. But the problem I see with this now is it does not correlate to the first 3 and it should, or be termed or defined as something else.

I’ll explain why. In physics spatial dimensions have a classical theory describing three physical dimensions: the basic directions in which we can move are up/down, left/right, and forward/backward. Movement in any other direction can be expressed in terms of just these three. In its simplest form: a line describes one dimension, a plane describes two dimensions, and a cube describes three dimensions.

So you see the first three dimensions are spatial environments. Where Time is not. Have you ever read the definition of “time” in the dictionary?

Small excerpt from Merriam-Webster Dictionary

That is just a small excerpt. It is one of the longest descriptions you will ever read in the dictionary.

It is also interesting to note that (if you ever go) in the Astral Realm, time appears to move at a different rate there, compared to here.

In physics, three dimensions of space and one of time is the accepted norm. There are theories that try to unify different forces and such—these theories require more dimensions. Superstring theory, M-theory and Bosonic string theory respectively posit that physical space has 10, 11 and 26 dimensions. These extra dimensions are said to be spatial. However, we perceive only three spatial dimensions and, to date, no experimental or observational evidence is available to confirm the existence of these extra dimensions. A possible explanation that has been suggested is that space acts as if it were "curled up" in the extra dimensions on a subatomic scale, possibly at the quark/string level of scale or below.

Some complex networks are characterized by fractal dimensions. The concept of dimension can be generalized to include networks embedded in space and characterize by their spatial constraints.

So is the Temporal Dimension the 4th Dimension? I don’t think so. I think it needs its own classification. Dimensions should be spatial measurement only. To clarify, parallel dimensions probably have measurable spatial features, I think it is safe to classify them in with dimensions as well. Even the Astral Realm I would consider as a dimension, but Time...?
I use dimensions heavily in my next book because the character Kealin becomes trapped in one different from where she belongs.
I know it seems like such a nit-picky thing to debate with myself, plus the guy I had lunch with ages ago doesn’t even know the debate is still going on in my head. What a wack-a-doodle I am.

Would we be told if there was an asteroid that was in a collision course with our planet and was large enough to do damage? If we were told, how long before civilization broke down? I don't know if they would tell us. Why would they if the governments of the world could avoid all the mayhem that would come with a declaration like that.

According to astronomers, it would be impossible to keep a oncoming collision quiet because they would all see it, and at least one of them would talk. Plus, they supposedly have all asteroids mapped in our solar system.
Yet, they keep finding new ones...

So asteroid 2012 DA14 is flying by us on February 15, and will swing by  at its closest, about 17,200 miles (inside the geosynchronous orbit of our satellites) and it is the size of half a football field. That's a pretty good sized rock. Make sure you duck. Check out:

Here is a list of more fun rocks in space at, Near Earth Object Program

Sumerians ushered in the age of intensive agriculture and irrigation.
The Sumerians knew that they had to control the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. In the spring the rivers flooded, and when they receded and left natural levees behind. The Sumerians built the levees higher and used them to keep back the flood waters. In the summer, when the land was dry, the Sumerians poked holes in the levees. The river water ran through the holes and made irrigation channel in the soil. An irrigation system took which took planning in draining the marshes for agriculture.
Wheat, barley, sheep, and cattle were foremost among the species cultivated and raised for the first time on a grand scale.

All these accomplishments imply that the people of Sumer were advanced in math for their time period.
They invented and developed arithmetic by using several different number systems including a mixed radix system with an alternating base 10 and base 6. This sexagesimal system became the standard number system in Sumer and Babylonia. They made a system of numbers that, unlike today's Base-10 System, was Base-60.
For example: how we tell time, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. It is amazing they invented something so critical that we still use today.

They also divided up the circle into 360 degrees. They had a wide knowledge of mathematics including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, quadratic and cubic equations, and fractions. This was important in keeping track of records as well as in some of their large building projects. The Mesopotamians had formulas for figuring out the circumference and area for different geometric shapes like rectangles, circles, and triangles. Some evidence suggests that they even knew the Pythagorean Theorem long before Pythagoras wrote it down. They may have even discovered the number for pi in figuring the circumference of a circle.

And because of their trading they created a sophisticated accounting system. They kept a written records of how much was given, to who, and when, along with calculating inventory

They also invented the calendar. By studying the phases of the Moon, Sumerians created the first calendar. It had 12 lunar months and was the predecessor for both the Jewish and Greek calendars. A Lunar calendar that is more accurate then the Gregorian Calendar we use today. The Babylonian calendar was a lunisolar calendar with years consisting of 12 lunar months, each beginning when a new crescent moon was first sighted low on the western horizon at sunset, plus an intercalary month inserted as needed by decree. The calendar is based on a Sumerian (Ur III) predecessor preserved in the Umma calendar of Shulgi (c. 21st century BC).

The zodiacal map (right) was used for practical mathematical & observational purposes.The Zodiac of Sumer, definitely complete by the time of Babylon, was adopted by the Greeks much later.
Babylonians and the Chinese were using the 19 year Sun-Moon cycle in their calculations - by the 6th Century BCE. Today it is called the 'Metonic' cycle after a Greek who wrote of it some hundred years or so afterwards.
I found my sign...

They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records. The first true city states arose in Sumer.
The US government is based roughly on this Sumerian government. You could have a dispute with your neighbor in Sumer and take them to court before your peers to decide a judgement...
There are even a set of laws that citizens must abide by...(remember this is straight out of the Neanderthal stage) Even the poor were fed at the temple as a form of the governments civil service program.

Because they were constantly at war with one another, they may have invented military formations and introduced the basic divisions between infantry, cavalry, and archers.

They developed trade, and established industries, including weaving, leather work, metalwork, masonry, and pottery. Plus, frying pans, razors, cosmetic sets, shepherd’s pipes, harps, kilns to cook bricks and pottery, bronze hand tools like hammers and axes, the plow, the plow seeder, and the first superhero, Gilgamesh. They also and used looms to weave cloth from wool and because they traded heavily throughout the Persian Gulf, they invented the sailboat.

According to Archibald Sayce, the primitive pictograms of the early Sumerian (i.e. Uruk) era suggest that "Stone was scarce, but was already cut into blocks and seals. Brick was the ordinary building material, and with it cities, forts, temples and houses were constructed. The city was provided with towers and stood on an artificial platform; the house also had a tower-like appearance. It was provided with a door which turned on a hinge, and could be opened with a sort of key ; the city gate was on a larger scale, and seems to have been double. The foundation stones - or rather bricks - of a house were consecrated by certain objects that were deposited under them."
The most impressive and famous of Sumerian buildings are the ziggurats, large layered platforms which supported temples.  The Sumerians also developed the arch, which enabled them to develop a strong type of roof called a dome. They built this by constructing several arches. Sumerian temples and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques, such as buttresses, recesses, half columns, and clay nails.

They used logic and recorded medical history to be able to diagnose and treat illnesses with various creams and pills.

Lets not discount the making bronze from copper and tin.

Or Beer Brewing. Chemical analysis has identified a 6,000-year-old brewery at an archaeological site in what is now modern Iran. The evidence, which was published recently in the scientific journal Nature, suggests that fermentation of barley was first practiced in Sumer between 4000 and 3000 BC.

After Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Sumerians' cuneiform writing system is the next oldest which has been deciphered. The status of even older inscriptions such as the Vinča signs and the even older Jiahu symbols is controversial. Since hieroglyphs are considered "pictures", the Sumerians invented the first writing system, with actual "letters" developing Sumerian cuneiform writing out of earlier proto-writing systems by about the 30th century BCE. The earliest literary texts appear from about the 27th century BCE.
Several centuries after the invention of cuneiform, the use of writing expanded beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists to be applied for the first time, about 2600 BC, to messages and mail delivery, history, legend, mathematics, astronomical records, and other pursuits. Conjointly with the spread of writing, the first formal schools were established, usually under the auspices of a city-state's primary temple.

You wanna know how ridiculously smart they were? Take for instance the cuneiform seals they created. This was their mail system. A scribe would write on a piece of clay, backwards so when it was sent to the message receiver, they would take the seal and roll it out on a soft piece of clay. Then they would be able to read what was sent. A Dyslexic's dream job.

The Sumerian language remained in official and literary use in the Akkadian and Babylonian empires, even after the spoken language disappeared from the population; literacy was widespread, and the Sumerian texts that students copied heavily influenced later Babylonian literature. Some Mesopotamian words are still in use today. Words like crocus, which is a flower, and saffron, which is a spice, are words borrowed from the ancient Mesopotamia.

Are you amazed yet? There is sooo much more that I didn't list.
How could a culture, brand new to Earth, have this much know-how, so quickly? They invented so many things we still use, that are so critical to our everyday life in the 21st century. Just astounding!
Want a more in-depth analysis? This guy goes very technical on their inventions.

This blog is about the Sumerian gods, the Anunnaki as depicted in The 12th Planet. See Zecharia Sitchin.

The ancient cuneiform texts, some of the earliest known writing dating back some 6,000 years told the story of a race of beings called the Anunnaki. The earliest record of the Sumerian creation myth and flood myth is found on a single fragmentary tablet excavated in Nippur, sometimes called the Eridu Genesis. It is written in the Sumerian language and datable by its script to 2150 BC.

According to Sitchin, the Sumerians say that the Anunnaki came to Earth from a planet in our solar system called Nibiru. If you've never heard of it, that's because mainstream science does not recognize Nibiru as one of the planets that revolves around our Sun. This planet's orbit around the Sun is highly elliptical, taking it out beyond Pluto at its farthest point and bringing it as close to the Sun as the far side of the asteroid belt. It takes Nibiru 3,600 years to complete one orbital journey, and it was last in this vicinity around 160 B.C.E. As you can imagine, the gravitational effects of a Jupiter sized planet moving close to the inner solar system, could wreak havoc on the orbits of other planets, disrupt the asteroid belt and spell big trouble for planet Earth. Sitchin states, Nibiru is called "the twelfth planet" because, Sitchin claimed, the Sumerians' gods-given conception of the Solar System counted all eight planets, plus Pluto, the Sun and the Moon. It is the home of a technologically advanced human-like extraterrestrial race called the Anunnaki in Sumerian myth, who Sitchin states are called the Nephilim in Genesis. He wrote that they evolved after Nibiru entered the solar system and first arrived on Earth approximately 450,000 years ago, looking for minerals, especially gold, which they found and mined in Africa. These "gods" were the rank-and-file workers of the colonial expedition to Earth from planet Nibiru.

The story of the Anunnaki is told in Sitchin's many books is essentially this:

About 450,000 years ago, Alalu, the deposed ruler of the Anunnaki on Nibiru, escaped the planet on a spaceship and found refuge on Earth. He discovered that Earth had plenty of gold, which Nibiru needed to protect its diminishing atmosphere. They began to mine Earth's gold, and there were a lot of political battles among the Anunnaki for power. Sitchin believes that the fallout from nuclear weapons, used during a war between factions of the extraterrestrials, is the "evil wind" described in the Lament for Ur that destroyed Ur around 2000 BC. Sitchin states the exact year is 2024 BC. He says that his research coincides with many biblical texts, and that biblical texts come originally from Sumerian writings.

Then roughly around 300,000 years ago, the Anunnaki, Enki, decided to create a race of workers to relieve the Anunnaki who had mutinied over their dissatisfaction with their working conditions. Primitive workers (Homo sapiens) were to be created by genetically engineering them as slaves to replace the Anunnaki in the gold mines by crossing extraterrestrial genes with those of Homo erectus. The result was Homo sapiens -- us.

He wrote that ancient inscriptions report that the human civilization in Sumer, Mesopotamia, was set up under the guidance of these "gods", and human kingship was inaugurated to provide intermediaries between mankind and the Anunnaki creating the "divine right of kings" doctrine. Eventually, rulership of the Earth was handed over to humans and the Anunnaki left, at least for the time being. Sitchin ties all this - and much more - into the stories of the first books of the Bible and the histories of other ancient cultures, especially Egyptian.

It's an astonishing story, to say the least. Most historians, anthropologists, and archeologists consider it all Sumerian myth, but Sitchin's work has created a diehard cadre of believers and researchers who take the story at face value.

The Anunnaki (also transcribed as: Anunna, Anunnaku, Ananaki and other variations) are a group of deities in ancient Mesopotamian cultures (i.e., Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian). The name is variously written "a-nuna", "a-nuna-ke-ne", or "a-nun-na", meaning something to the effect of "those of royal blood" or “princely offspring”. Their relation to the group of gods known as the Igigi is unclear — at times the names are used synonymously but in the Atra-Hasis flood myth the Igigi are the sixth generation of the Gods who have to work for the Anunnaki, rebelling after 40 days and replaced by the creation of humans. The Igigi were the younger gods who were servants of the Anunnaki.

The Igigi from Middle Assyrian and Babylonian times on, is generally used to refer to the gods of heaven collectively, just as the term Anunnakku (Anuna) was later used to refer to the gods of the underworld. In the Epic of Creation, it is said that there are “300 lgigu of heaven.” The Anunnaki appear in the Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish. In the late version magnifying Marduk, after the creation of mankind, Marduk divides the Anunnaki and assigns them to their proper stations. Three hundred in heaven, three hundred on the earth. In gratitude, the Anunnaki, the "Great Gods", built Esagila, the splendid: "They raised high the head of Esagila equaling Apsu. Having built a stage-tower as high as Apsu, they set up in it an abode for Marduk, Enlil, Ea." Then they built their own shrines.

According to later Assyrian and Babylonian myth, the Anunnaki were the children of Anu and Ki. The names below were given to the gatekeepers of the Abzu temple at Eridu, the site at which the creation was thought to have occurred.

Here is a good website for detailed compilation of each deity.
And here is a good website breaking down each Anunnaki character. Talk about family drama...

This seems to be such a wild and sophisticated tale for such a primitive civilization. Remember, this is one of the first civilizations known to man. Genetic manipulation? Really? Even the Greek Mythology of their gods doesn’t get so, oh I don’t know, realistic...? Either Sitchin got the translation all wrong, or there is a race of extraterrestrials with some explaining to do. I do tend to believe there is more fact than fiction to this “myth”. I mean, what “god” sees themselves as “rank-and-file workers of the colonial expedition”?

If the Sumerian Myth were true, it would explain a lot. Like how a pioneering society could create such an advanced civilization of government, math, farming, inventions, astronomy, all in such a short period of time. How would a low-level society even come up with genetic manipulation? Plus, it would explain the genetic hole between Homo sapiens and Homo erectus. Isn’t it funny how the first Homo erectus skeleton is discovered in Africa. And what about all those depictions of animal hybrid cross-breeding, like lamassu or mušḫuššu? Are these actually examples of genetically manipulated creatures that the Anunnaki were tinkering with and a human just drew/sculpted what they were actually witnessing? Isn’t this what our scientist are doing right now? And did the Anunnaki really leave, or are there still some here? Imagine if they came back. What a shock not only for us, but for them. We aren’t exactly a nice, trusting, passive group. The past 100 years we’ve truly advanced technologically. Of course, they would be eons ahead of us; still, we’ve split the atom. Imagine if they came back and insisted they were our Gods because they created us. Just imagine... I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.

It just makes you wonder if what we know about the past could be completely wrong. Thankfully, science believes it’s all a myth, so we have nothing to worry about.

I clump these names together because I believe it is one object with many names. I may be completely wrong about that, but let’s just assume it is the same object reported about in past writings.

Plus, you have to keep in mind of the known events that have occurred in earth's and our solar system’s past.

• Magnetic pole reversals occur irregularly around every 300,000 years
• Great floods have been recorded in many different regions of the planet.
• Something destroyed another planet, creating the Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter
• The extinction of the dinosaurs. A rock striking the Yucatan most definitely appears to be the cause, but was the cause of the rock from a planet in our solar system getting smashed to smithereens?
• Is this why we have a moon as large as we do? A left over from a planet that once was?
• How about the fact that Venus and Uranus rotate the opposite direction from all the other planets. What sort of force could make that happen?
• The atmosphere/water Mars, was believed to be sucked off the surface.
• Currently, many of the polar icecaps on the other planets in our system have been observed to be melting. (forget global warming, try solar system warming)
• Even the mythical Atlantis is believed somewhere around 9-10,000 years ago to have been decimated by a cataclysmic event which made a continental plate holding Atlantis to sink into the Atlantic, which coincidentally, would create a worldwide massive flood. Coincidence? But this would be a whole ‘nother blog...
  

It is hypothesized that the passing of a planet through this solar system could be the reason why some of the extreme and violent events have occurred. A planet that comes through this solar system every 3600 years could be disastrous. The gravitational pull of a planet entering the inner solar system would have profound effects on the other orbiting bodies, including Earth. Because it is believed Nibiru is the size of Jupiter, the Earth would be in for some massive and catastrophic changes of floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, a pole shift and other natural disasters which would be so severe that very few would survive.

Could a planet that size create that much chaos in our solar system? The answer is, yes. Is the planet a piece of Sumerian/Bible fiction? That remains to be seen.

There are several different factions that look to the planet Nibiru. The Sumerians are the key ingredient in this belief. In fact, the Anunnaki story says that a previous appearance of Nibiru was responsible for the "Great Flood" recorded in Genesis. Going even further back, some researchers into this topic suspect that Nibiru once collided with Earth resulting in the enormous gouges in our planet that the oceans now fill.

As referred to by Sitchen’s research

In 1976, the late Zecharia Sitchin stirred up a great deal of controversy with the publication of his book, The Twelfth Planet. In this and subsequent books, Sitchin presented his literal translations of ancient Sumerian texts which told an incredible story about the origins of humankind on planet Earth. His interpretation of Mesopotamian iconography and symbol-ology, outlined in his books that there is an undiscovered planet beyond Neptune that follows a long, elliptical orbit, reaching the inner solar system roughly every 3,600 years. This planet is called Nibiru. According to Sitchin, Nibiru collided catastrophically with Tiamat, which he considers to be another planet once located between Mars and Jupiter. This collision supposedly formed the planet Earth, the asteroid belt, and the comets. Sitchin states that when struck by one of Nibiru's moons, Tiamat split in two. And then on a second pass Nibiru itself struck the broken fragments and one half of Tiamat which became the asteroid belt. The second half, struck again by one of Nibiru's moons, was pushed into a new orbit and became today's planet Earth. Nibiru is a term in the Akkadian language, translating to "crossing" or "point of transition", especially of rivers, river crossings or ferry-boats. Scholars calculate the planet was last in this vicinity around 160 B.C.

As referred to by Babylon

In Babylonian astronomy, nibiru is a term of the highest point of the ecliptic, the point of summer solstice and its associated constellation of Libra and Nibiru was also a name for the planet Jupiter. The establishment of the nibiru point is described in tablet 5 of the creation epic Enûma Eliš"
When Marduk fixed the locations of Nibiru, Enlil and Ea in the sky.

As the highest point in the paths of the planets, nibiru was considered the seat of the summus deus who pastures the stars like sheep, in Babylon identified with Marduk. This interpretation of Marduk as the ruler of the cosmos suggesting an early monotheist tendency in Babylonian religion by various authors. Nibiru whose name was replaced with Marduk in original legends by the Babylonian ruler of the same name in an attempt to co-opt the creation for himself, leading to some confusion among readers. Nibiru is described more closely on a complete cuneiform tablet:
Nibiru, which is said to have occupied the passageways of heaven and earth, because everyone above and below asks Nibiru if they cannot find the passage. Nibiru is Marduk's star which the gods in heaven caused to be visible. Nibiru stands as a post at the turning point.

The others say of Nibiru the post: "The one who crosses the middle of the sea without calm, may his name be Nibiru, for he takes up the center of it". The path of the stars of the sky should be kept unchanged.

In the MUL.APIN, Nibiru is identified as Jupiter associated with the god Marduk in Babylonian cosmology:
"When the stars of Enlil have been finished, one big star – although its light is dim – divides the sky in half and stands there: that is, the star of Marduk, Nibiru, Jupiter; it keeps changing its position and crosses the sky."

Although the word wormwood appears several times in the Old Testament, translated from the Hebrew term לענה, its only clear reference as a named entity occurs in the New Testament, in the book of Revelation:

"The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many died from the water, because it was made bitter." (Revelation 8:10–11, New Revised Standard Version).

"Wormwood" is the name of a star in Revelation 8:10-11: This is the third of the seven “trumpet judgments” described in Revelation. The first trumpet causes hail and fire that destroy much of the plant life in the world. The second trumpet brings about what seems to be a meteor, comet, or other heavenly body hitting the oceans and causing the death of one-third of the world’s sea life. The third trumpet is similar to the second, except it affects the world’s lakes and rivers instead of the oceans. It will cause a third part of all fresh water on earth to turn bitter and many people will die from drinking it.

The word “wormwood” is mentioned only here in the New Testament, but it appears eight times in the Old Testament, each time associated with bitterness, poison and death. The Revelation passage may not be saying that the star falling to the earth will actually be called Wormwood by the inhabitants of the earth. Rather, wormwood was a well-known bitter herb in the Bible times, so by naming the star Wormwood, we are told that its effect will be to embitter the waters of the earth, so much so that the water is undrinkable. It won’t be a matter of simply a bitter taste to the water; it will literally be poisonous. If drinking water is unavailable to one third of the earth’s population, it’s easy to see how chaos and terror will result.

There is even speculation that the Vatican is tracking the position of Wormwood/Nibiru.

Father Malachi Martin was interviewed by Art Bell as saying that the Vatican hierarchy, through research at its astronomical observatory, is monitoring the approach of something that could be "of great import" in the coming years.

I read an account on another site saying the gravitational pull of Wormwood/Nibiru might even stop the Earth's rotation for three days, citing the "three days of darkness" predicted in the Bible.

Even mainstream astronomers have long speculated that there may be an unknown planet, a Planet X, somewhere out beyond the orbit of Pluto that would account for the anomalies they were detecting in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. They believed that some unseen body seems to be tugging at them.

Following the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, there was considerable speculation that another planet might exist beyond its orbit. The search began in the mid-19th century and culminated at the start of the 20th with Percival Lowell's quest for Planet X. Lowell proposed the Planet X hypothesis to explain apparent discrepancies in the orbits of the gas giants, speculating that the gravity of a large unseen ninth planet could have perturbed Uranus enough to account for the irregularities. In 1915, he published his Memoir of a Trans-Neptunian Planet, in which he concluded that Planet X had a mass roughly seven times that of the Earth, and about half that of Neptune, and a mean distance from the Sun of 43 AU. He assumed Planet X would be a large, low-density object, like the gas giants. As a result it would show a disc with diameter of about one arc second and an apparent magnitude of between 12 and 13—bright enough to be spotted.

The search was largely abandoned in the early 1990s, when a study of measurements made by the Voyager 2 spacecraft found that the irregularities observed in Uranus's orbit were due to a slight overestimation of Neptune's mass. Today, the astronomical community widely agrees that Planet X, as originally envisioned, does not exist, but the concept of Planet X has been revived by a number of astronomers to explain other anomalies observed in the outer Solar System. In popular culture, and even among some astronomers, Planet X has become a stand-in term for any undiscovered planet in the outer Solar System, regardless of its relationship to Lowell's hypothesis.

The finding was reported in the June 19, 1982 edition of the New York Times:
"Something out there beyond the furthest reaches of the known solar system is tugging at Uranus and Neptune. A gravitational force keeps perturbing the two giant planets, causing irregularities in their orbits. The force suggests a presence far away and unseen, a large object, the long-sought Planet X."

The anomalous body was first spotted in 1983 by IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite), according to news stories. The Washington Post reported:
"A heavenly body possibly as large as the giant planet Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this solar system has been found in the direction of the constellation Orion by an orbiting telescope aboard the U.S. infrared astronomical satellite. So mysterious is the object that astronomers do not know if it is a planet, a giant comet, a nearby 'protostar' that never got hot enough to become a star, a distant galaxy so young that it is still in the process of forming its first stars or a galaxy so shrouded in dust that none of the light cast by its stars ever gets through."

An article posted by MSNBC on October 7, 1999 said:
"A Mystery Revolves Around the Sun, two teams of researchers have proposed the existence of an unseen planet or a failed star circling the sun at a distance of more than 2 trillion miles, far beyond the orbits of the nine known planets... Planetary scientist at Britain's Open University, speculates that the object could be a planet larger than Jupiter."

And in December, 2000, SpaceDaily reported on "Another Candidate For 'Planet X' Spotted."

Another article and photo appeared in Discovery News, published in July, 2001, says:
"Large Object Discovered Orbiting Sun. The discovery of a large reddish chunk of something orbiting in Pluto's neighborhood has re-ignited the idea that there may be more than nine planets in the solar system."
Naming it 2001 KX76. the discoverers estimate that it is smaller than our Moon and might have an elongated orbit, but they gave no indication that it was heading this way.

This continues to be a highly controversial issue.