(Referencing news reports such as: Nemesis No More? Comet-Hurling 'Death Star' Most Likely a Myth)

I don't know where Nibiru came from. Inner mind or outer limits? The descriptions I've seen have not been seen and they wouldn't be subtle like Nemesis.

A couple of points: the resolution of an infrared telescope is not very good. Resolution is inversely proportional to the wavelength of the radiation being measured. So with WISE data being from light 6 - 20 times longer than visible, resolution for a given size telescope is 1/6 to 1/20 as good. So right there is a problem with finding parallax. WISE was not designed to do that. That would take a specialized telescope with a narrower field of view, probably an interferometer, which is very expensive.

Also the WISE team is referring to the thing as Tyche. That is a slightly different object but it might also exist. It was hypothesized because of similarities in the orbits of long-period comets. That is a solid form of evidence so I'm waiting and wish Drs. Witmire and Matese a lot of luck.

:D

Since Brown Dwarfs don't come closer to the Earth than the Asteeroid Belt they are not in danger of hitting us.

No brown dwarf came close even not as close to the asteroid belt.

Here you go: http://universesandbox.com/
Try to simulate a brown dwarf that comes into our solar system.
Observes what happens the orbits of the planets. And especially observe the orbit of that brown dwarf. All orbits shifts, that messes up any calendar even the mayans. One of the simulations I did made Jupiter 1000 days less and Earth lost 1 day per orbit as example.

I approached him and asked him about that figure. He said that it's possible to get 0.2 )" but that you would have to do some special processing. 1.375 )" is about two and a half light years, which means a parallax search would barely included Nemesis, if it exists.

Hold on a minute.
A pixel is 1.375", what has this to do with parallax? What has this to do with a distance of 2.5 light-years?

Also a planet the size of Nibiru would encompass many pixels because it is close.
And those pixels would move because again it is close.

Welcome back. I always enjoy reading your posts. Obviously I still don't think that Nemesis is out there, but science is still science, even if I disagree with the premise, and I will always remember J. Harlen Bretz.

The 219th annual convention of the American Astronomical Society was held in Austin, Texas January 7th through 12th at the Convention Center here in Austin at about 3rd and Trinity streets. I went to meet the Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer team to see if I could find out anything of interest to the readers of this blog. Boy, was there EVER!

I did not have a badge and did not find out about it until the 8th, so Sunday I spent wandering around hoping I would meet somebody I knew or knew about. I went looking for people from Caltech and quickly found out that Mike Brown had come and gone Saturday. The event was closed to the public and the WISE closed meeting was Thursday.

The one open event was a speech by Dr. Steven Weinberg, our local Nobel Prize winner, and concerned, "Big Science in Crisis". Dr. Weinburg had lost a Big Science project, the Superconducting Supercollider, and almost lost the Alpha Mass Spectrometer. Both instruments would show us things we couldn't see before. The Alpha Mass Specrometer, which sees in cosmic rays, was the last significant addition to the International Space Station. Dr. Weinberg mentioned that an important Congressman was with him on a Larry King radio show and when asked if he thought the basic science from the Supercollider was important, simply responded "no". I agree with Dr. Weinberg on this.

I went Thursday and met a former editor of Astronomy magazine, who now works in the NASA press office. He was outside waiting for a ride to the airport. We briefly discussed Lagrangoids and personalities (S. Alan Stern) then he rode off to the airport. He states that the Solar system's gas giant planets have inclinations that are inclined to a significant degree (Jupiter's is about one degree) and that it takes a lot of energy to do that. I told him about my GravitySimulations.

I went in and was very fortunate to meet a strikingly attractive mature lady in a red dress who was an, uh, (rank designation approximate), Associate Administrator of the American Astronomical Association and who waved me through the Iraqi-style minders (she was awesome, like Yoda) and got me into the exhibit hall. I went straight to the WISE booth, where I was informed that the WISE team was meeting as we spoke. A member of the MacDonald Observatory's staff got me a badge. It said Exhibit Hall Only but I put on my best Yoda impersonation and managed to crash the last half of the meeting.

The speaker spoke quickly, some of the highlights include that there will be a release of all data from WISE to the public on March 14. He described how the data were processed and included the rather disappointing news that a pixel would be about 1.375 arcseconds (1.375)", )" = arcsecond) across. After the meeting I approached him and asked him about that figure. He said that it's possible to get 0.2 )" but that you would have to do some special processing. 1.375 )" is about two and a half light years, which means a parallax search would barely included Nemesis, if it exists. However, if it is found by other methods it could be verified that the object is indeed Nemesis. He said that several teams are searching for Nemesis, but that no parallax search was planned.

With the meeting concluded I went back downstairs to the WISE booth. Honestly, I think the team felt uncomfortable around me, so I just pointblank asked a team member as he was walking to another booth about 2012 crackpots, if they'd had trouble with them. He said that they had. Most of the trouble was with people insisting that NASA (meaning him, personally) was hiding data. Such a thing could be said on several levels, for instance, they're not doing a parallax search; but I said nothing to him about any parallax search. Instead I went back to the booth where I noticed they were giving away this really neat postcard.

What made the postcard so neat was that it was beautiful, answers a lot of questions about parallax searches and related things, and backs up what the speaker said; there was no shortage of spectacular images contained within the WISE data set. The upper left hand corner of the postcard said, "Zeta Ophiuchi". Zeta Ophiuchi is a large, bright (visible to the naked eye) class O or B star that was (believed to be) once in orbit around a larger star that exploded. With no dancing partner, Zeta Ophiuchi went flying off into space. It is plowing into the supernova shock, which was initially faster but has large resistance in the interstellar medium, and produces it's own bow shock, which shows up as bright red and wispy green in the WISE data.

If you turn the postcard about 15 degrees, it still says "Zeta Ophiuchi" in the upper left hand corner and www.nasa.gov in the lower left, but in the lower right it changes from "DSS (digital sky survey) Visible Light" (a ground based survey similar in aperture and focal length to WISE) to "WISE Infrared Light". What you can do with such a resouce is "blink" it, just change the angle and see if there's any difference. For instance, along the top edge and about two thirds of the way towards the center is a star that's plainly visible but not all that bright in the DSS data but is the second-brightest star besides Zeta Ophiuchi in infrared light. If Nemesis were in that frame, then it would be completely invisible in the DSS data and would be quite dim in infrared. I'd say there are at least several hundred stars that are brighter in infrared than visible light on the postcard, but so far I haven't found any that are completely invisible to DSS.

The entire sky needs to be searched this way to find Nemesis. In the postcard, I would estimate about 6 or 7 percent shows interstellar clouds of dust and gas in front of which Nemesis could be hiding.

So, the search is not easy.

Moving along, I went to the Herschel booth and had a nice but relatively unproductive meeting, then I went to the Spitzer booth and that was VERY interesting. They had a graph of the five color bands available to that instrument, which ran out of helium coolant before it's narrow aparature, high magnification telescope could image anywhere near the entire sky (it's doing the "warm" mission, like WISE which ran out of hydrogen ice). I described to the booth attendant an article I saw in Scientific American which examined birds and reptiles, who live in a world of color vision we cannot even imagine. Thy have green sensitive rods, like we do (actually a broad range of colors) and red and blue sensitive cones. Most mammals lack blue sensitive cones like primates', but birds have orange and ultraviolet cones, and some but not all of their cones have tiny droplets of colored oil in them.

It turned out the booth attendant was color-blind! He relayed a story from WWII, when colorblind people rode in reconnaisance planes because Nazi camoflage made clever use of color which colorblind people could see right through and once resulted in an allied victory. He can tell stoplight colors by their relative positions but cannot tell yellow from red at long distances where he can't see the relative positions. I could see why he got a job in infrared astronomy.

Anyway, I regret to report to the various skeptics inhabiting this board that the search for any of these objects cannot be said to be finished by March 14. Nevertheless if there's no announcement by then then if you think there's something like a Nemesis or Tyche or Nibiru or anything like that, you are welcome to look throught the data but you need a generous portion of good luck to do such a thing. Mike Brown is still pulling Kuiper Belt objects from his epic search for Eris (success!!) and Haumea (he was beaten by an amateur equipped with sheer good luck).

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. :D Hope I swept up all the typos.

-signed, Michael Charles Emmert

Here is a AU breakdown of the main hypothetical objects that get munged into 2012ism. Note Planet X(Harrington) and Nemesis both strong evidence they don't really exist since the theories were offered. Note: e = eccentricity, a = semi-major axis.

planet x (Harrington):
e = .411
a = 101.2 AU
distance to sun = 59.6 to 142.8 AU

Nemesis:
e = 0.7
a = 1.5 LY
distance to sun = 0.45 to 2.55 LY
(= 28400 to 161200 AU)

Tyche:
e = <0.5
a = 15000 AU
distance to sun (max e) = 7500 to 22500 AU

References:
Dr Muller's Comments on Nemesis (paper included):
http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/lbl-nem

Tyche paper:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1004/1004.4

Planet X (Harrington) paper:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1988AJ.....96.1476H
(click 'Send PDF')

but do you guys have some good reason why so many comets and asteroids coming this way now?

You assume there are more coming this way. Do you have a reason to say that? Or do you:

(1) Know of more because you're paying attention,
or
(2) Hear of more because of improved detection?

No, seriously, I think I remember saying somewhere on these forums that for every one paper in support of the Nemesis hypothesis you can find a paper to shed big doubts over it. Well, if that's a continuing trend, then it's swung back towards the side of "Oh no it doesn't" in answer to question "Does it exist?"

You've two flavours of news articles to have a read up on, from Universe Today or PhysOrg, but it ultimately won't matter which one you pick, they are literally the same article on two different sites.

Instead, go a step further, to the source of the news for further information.

Does this study do enough, or is there still that possibility of an object out there. It's not like people aren't looking for it, and it's not like people can't find evidence either for or against, but like I said at the start, the swing seems to be in favour of no such object. We'll have to see what the next study to tackle the idea brings, though what it'll find or when it'll be done is anyone's guess.

manage to live for 16 million years.

Foreever young I want to be forever young do you really want to live foreever and ever…

Here are two sources straight from Muller himself. One is an explanation with the professional paper attached, the other is a lecture he gives students.

http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/lbl-nem.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERy-MTfgulc

Michael, you clearly are well read and have a lot of knowledge on Astronomy (which I lack) and reading all of your (and other's posts) has been very interesting. As far as I know, our knowledge of NEO's (Near Earth Objects) is really only just beginning. Although I don't believe in the 2012 predictions, I think it should be pionted out that such objects exist, we only know a fraction of them along with their orbits, and they can "hit" at any time. The "Nemisis" theory is, in my opinion, very much worth examining.

Oh, if only I could be a witness of the extinction of humans some 200000 years after it happened. How amazing would That be?