Sitchin's translations, and his interpretations, are fiercely contested - to the point where accusations of fraud has been levelled at him.  It is often quoted on the Internet that Sitchin knowingly distorted translations of Sumerian phrases and words to fit his own theory.  The translations he presents in his books (3) are sometimes different from authorised texts.  These discrepancies provide ammunition for sceptics and scholars alike to dismiss his work, and allege that he knowingly misled his readership.  (This situation is not helped by the semi-fictionalised fill-ins he added in to his popular text 'The Lost Book of Enki' (4).) Such accusations have become common currency (5), and even maverick writers looking into ancient mysteries often distance themselves from Sitchin's work. 

But are they wrong to be so dismissive?  Furthermore, are their accusations of fraud actually libellous?

In 2015, Zecharia Sitchin's niece, Janet Sitchin, published a book containing various articles, letters and book excerpts written by him (6).  Having noted on the inside cover jacket that her uncle was "known for his ability to read and interpret ancient Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets", Janet Sitchin wrote the following in her postscript:

"Sitchin learned to read various types of cuneiform and researched and learned the ancient languages.  They were Semitic languages and, as such, he felt they were similar to the Hebrew that was his primary language. It was important for him to read and translate the languages for himself so that the nuance of meaning was not lost by a poor or incomplete translation." (6)

According to members of his own family, then, Zecharia Sitchin really did read and translate the ancient Mesopotamian languages directly from the original cuneiform.  Is this so incredible?  People teach themselves languages all the time, using any number of resources to master them.  Sitchin's problem, then, is that he didn't learn these ancient languages the 'proper' way.  He didn't write academic papers, setting his ideas forth in a peer-reviewable format where establishment Sumerologists could unpick his work through standard academic criticism.  Instead, he went straight to the masses, without bothering to check with them whether he was right.  You can see why they might get a bit miffed.

Decades on, and SETI has come up with little of any merit.  The odd interesting blip, sure, but nothing demonstrably repetitive, or intelligent.  Other searches have also come up empty-handed, including an extensive search for highly advanced galactic civilisations using infra-red (3), based upon the theories of the physicist Freeman Dyson.  Looking for an infra-red signature from other galaxies seems like a bit of a stretch to me.  Sagan's initial premise about radio waves emanating from other distant galaxies is more plausible.  By staring at the tiny amount of our sky that any given distant galaxy occupies, radio telescopes can cover a lot of possible stars in a very small space.  If any of them contain radio-emitting alien species, shouting for attention, then we should pick them up one would have thought. 

Which leads me to news of a scientific breakthrough in pinpointing repeated bursts of radio activity from a distant dwarf galaxy.  A determined effort to locate the source of some Fast Radio Bursts, using the Very Large Array in New Mexico, has not only yielded the source (an innocuous little galaxy some 3 billion light years away (4, 5)) but also knocked out some reproducible science:

"In 83 hours of observing time over six months in 2016, the VLA detected nine bursts from FRB 121102.  In addition to detecting the bright bursts from FRB 121102, the team's observations also revealed an ongoing, persistent source of weaker radio emission in the same region." (6)

Five more Fast Radio Bursts have been detected by the Green Bank Telescope in 2016, and one with the Arecibo Observatory, bringing the total number of these short, seemingly random emissions from FRB 121102 to seventeen in four years (7).  They cover a broad range of radio frequencies.  The co-ordinates of FRB 121102 are RA 05h31m55s Dec+33d08m (8) which is in the constellation Auriga near to the 'Flaming Star Nebula' IC 405 (9). 

This begs the question, why aren't SETI all over this?  Isn't this exactly the kind of thing Sagan spoke about?  Instead, all of the scientists involved in this research seem desperate to find a natural explanation for this phenomenon - something more complex than Quasars, but not actually intelligent: 

"We argue that a burst source associated with a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus or a young neutron star energizing a supernova remnant are the two scenarios for FRB121102 that best match the observed data." (10)

and:

"Although there may be multiple physical origins for the population of fast radio bursts, these repeat bursts with high dispersion measure and variable spectra specifically seen from the direction of FRB 121102 support an origin in a young, highly magnetized, extragalactic neutron star." (11)

It's curious - all those decades searching for strong, repetitive radio signals, and when something turns up which fits the bill, Science - and SETI - get cold feet. 

Of course, if this is intelligently-generated radio noise from an advanced civilisation in a distant galaxy, then it was emitted 3 billion years ago, give or take.  Presumably, that civilisation is long since gone.  But wouldn't it be amazing if something intelligible could eventually be gleaned from this radio twitter, even if the source is now, to paraphrase John Cleese,  an ex-extraterrestrial?

Let's go back to that nebula in the constellation Auriga.  It is interesting to note that the proper motion of the central star of this reflection nebula can be traced back to Orion's Belt (12).  It did cross my mind that this nebula might have a Dark Star connection, given my current interest in a nebula shroud wrapped around this proposed outer solar system object (13).   A sub-brown dwarf located at a very distant point in the outer solar system, wrapped up in an accreting nebula in interstellar space (14), could indeed have a magenta hue.  Magenta is a possible colour along the sub-brown dwarf spectrum.

As tempting a proposition as this might be, there are problems that must be overcome here.  For this to be the case, some crazy misidentification would have had to have taken place.  The nebula is thought to reside some 1500 light years away.  That's on a completely different scale to a nebula-shrouding planet at inner Oort Cloud distances, meaning that calculations of the nebula's distance would be stunningly inaccurate.  The Flaming Star Nebula need not necessarily be what I'm looking for.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a smaller, darker nebula is indeed cloaking an inner object in that direction, located relatively close to home, and that its detection is complicated by the coincidental presence of IC 405.  Let us consider whether a planetary body orbiting this Dark Star object be the source of these FRBs.

Because many of these fast radio bursts occur outside of the galactic plane, they are thought to have an extragalactic source.  So, because they're uncommonly bright, these extragalactic distances imply an incredibly energetic source.  Now, if the radio source was instead relatively local, the requirement for a massive amount of energy to create these bursts disappears.  The bursts are also thought to emerge from, basically, a pinpoint region of the sky, but they are often not easily reproducible.  FRB 121102 is an exception to this as further bursts have been detected over the course of several years (8).

Let's speculate that the radio bursts comes from a planet in the Milky Way.  Because of FRB 121102's location in Auriga, the planet is not moving around a star located deep in the Milky Way, because it is not located on the galactic plane.  Perhaps, then, it is located within our local galactic neighbourhood?  Scientists looking at the spectra of radio waves have concluded that the 'dispersion measure' of the radio pulses is too great to have come from a local source.  This is because the radio waves appear to have travelled through a significant amount of ionised plasma on their way to us:

"The burst [in this case that of FRB 110523] has a much higher rotation measure than expected for this line of sight through the Milky Way and the intergalactic medium, indicating magnetization in the vicinity of the source itself or within a host galaxy. The pulse was scattered by two distinct plasma screens during propagation, which requires either a dense nebula associated with the source or a location within the central region of its host galaxy."  (15).  

It's interesting to note that the presence of a dense nebula might create conditions (i.e. an abundant presence of ionised plasma) that could facilitate the dispersion measure effect seen in Fast Radio Pulses.  Such a scenario offers a less exciting proposition than a cosmologically mysterious, highly energetic pulse emerging from a distant dwarf galaxy.  Perhaps that's why astrophysicists seem to favour the latter over the former.

Here's a thought then.  If there is a Dark Star in our own solar system, wrapped up in a highly localised, dense nebula of ionised plasma, which shrouds its emission of visible and infra-red light, then that nebula might provide an alternative explanation for the physics described.  It might also explain why it's tricky to repeat the science.  After all, the bursts would be getting emitted from a planet orbiting the Dark Star.  So, like the Galilean moons of Jupiter, the emitting world would be constantly changing its position in the sky, in an oscillating movement.  It might even spend time behind the Dark Star itself, as it moves along its orbit, thus experiencing periods of radio silence from our viewpoint.

Again, this is simply speculation on my part.  Most (all?) astronomers would have little interest in considering worlds within nebulae, because that's simply not on their radar.  But the idea of nebulae getting wrapped around free-floating worlds in interstellar space is central to my way of thinking right now.  So, an association between these Dark Stars and enigmatic radio 'signals' from seemingly nowhere does not seem quite as strange as it would to mainstream scientists.

References:

   The Sagan Conspiracy

References:

It is little wonder, then, that the Druid god Bel has been associated with the ancient near-Eastern fire god Baal (4).  Indeed, the fires that were (are?) traditionally lit upon Irish hills on Midsummer's Eve were known as the Baal Fires, as ancient pagan Sun-worship ritual (5).   Again, not too much of a stretch to consider how the festival of Beltaine, with its two fires, may in some way be denoting something of great significance from ancient mythology, stemming from the ancient lands of Mesopotamia.

I've come across Baal before in my researches.  Baal initially meant simply 'Lord' in Semitic languages of the north-western Levant, before being applied to deities of various descriptions.  Baal was worshipped across the Levant region, particularly by the Canaanites and the Phoenicians.  Of particular interest to this discussion is a Palymyrene stela showing the trinity of Baal deities: Aglibol Baal, Shamene Baal and Shamene Malakbel clad in Roman armour from around 250AD.  Tragically, the temple of Baal Shamin in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, was destroyed by the so-called Islamic State/ISIS in 2015.  This trinity of Palmyrene deities were Babylonian in origin:

"Before the arrival of Christianity in the second century, Palmyra worshipped the trinity of the Babylonian god Bel, Yarhibol (the sun) and Aglibol (the moon)." (6)

The images have clear celestial symbolism.  The Moon and Sun gods are easy enough to make out.  It's the third, central deity, Shamene Baal, whose celestial identity is less easy to determine.  It seems to me to take on some of the Winged Disk symbolism.  If so, then this is clearly an entirely separate celestial object to the Sun symbol stood next to Shamene Baal.  So, perhaps this Baal trinity is where the idea of the two fires, under the moonlight, comes from in the first place?  Maybe this is where the pagan Beltaine festival stems from.  In which case, there is a need to identify this mysterious second celestial object and, from my perspective, the most likely candidate is the Sun's binary companion; a sub-brown dwarf 'Dark Star'.

Coming back to the Irish folktales about Deirdre, there is more from the poem about her that interests me in this regard; particularly the conflict with the usurper Red King of Alba (7).  Given the self-evident adoption of Baal-worship in ancient Ireland, it is not unreasonable to conclude that these folkloric stories could contain elements of more ancient myths:  In particular, those myths which extended across Europe with the migration of the Celts, but have their origins in the Levant region, and ancient Mesopotamia before that.  As such, I am tempted to draw a parallel here with the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish, and the Celestial Battle between the watery monster Tiamat (the Earth) and the powerful usurper god Marduk (Planet X/Nibiru), as described by Zecharia Sitchin (8). 

I would also note that early in Deidre's life, there is an event where a Druidical staff is broken in two over water, combined with a prophecy of a coming conqueror:

"Then Deirdre, an impetuous child, seized the druidical staff from the hand of Cathbad, broke it in two, and flung the pieces far out on the water. "Ah, Cathbad!" she cried, "there shall come One in the dim future for whom all your Druid spells and charms are naught."" (9)

This has similarities to the breaking in two of Tiamat by Marduk - although, if this is the case, then it is a highly distorted 'account'.  Sadly, Deirdre's eventual fate is to throw herself from a chariot to be crushed against rocks.  Again, perhaps an allusion to cosmic catastrophism.

Lisa Cooper, who runs an excellent group on Facebook, wondered whether Deidre might represent Mars (10)?  This analogy would explain the colour most associated with Deidre: 'Saffron'.  According to Sitchin, Mars was witness to a catastrophe early on in its life.  The breaking of the staff over water, along with the  appearance of the red star of ruin, represents the cataclysmic Celestial Battle which took place at the asteroid belt location (8).  

Deidre's own tragic fate later, by falling against rocks, might then represent whatever whacked Mars to knock the stuffing out of it, causing it to appear now as a 'dead' world.  So often associated with warlike male deities, it's a refreshing change to consider a female characterisation for Mars - particularly in its prior form as a beautiful world before catastrophe struck.

It's interesting to see how these old myths swirl around each other.  Perhaps they have some common origins in cosmic events that took place long, long ago - and which have come down to us through oral tradition from as far back as the last Ice Age.  Or perhaps they're just stories.  We'll not know for sure, until we discover the 'Red Star of Ruin' itself.  We may not have that long to wait.

It has long been assumed that the solar system's inherent stability would be associated with a uniform variety of meteors - fragments of broken up comets and asteroids, or impact residues from minor bodies within the solar system, etc.  In other words, home-grown materials from our solar system chipped away over time, but which share common features, and whose generation is a relatively constant process within the solar system, presenting the earth (and other solar system bodies) with a relatively consistent impact footprint over time.  Now, it appears, that assumption was wrong.  Instead, there seems to have been substantial variation over long time scales:

"Our data show that the meteorite flux has varied over geological time as asteroid disruptions create new fragment populations that then slowly fade away from collisional and dynamical evolution. The current flux favours disruption events that are larger, younger and/or highly efficient at delivering material to Earth." (2)

The reason for this change of thinking was the discovery of the meteorite Österplana 065 in Sweden, which has been termed a 'meteorite dinosaur' by Dr Schmitz.  Since then, an additional 43 micrometeorites have been added to this anomalous family, begging the question:  Where did they come from?  They are quite unlike what we see in more modern meteorites.  It may be that they represent the materials flung out from collisions taking place between particular bodies within the solar system, whose compositional signatures are different from those whose more modern impacts populated the current range of meteorite fragments. 

Or, on the other hand, the unusual compositional signatures might indicate the presence of fragmented cometary materials, originating from interstellar space, which crossed into the solar system half a billion years ago.  Either way, it is now apparent that the previous concept of a meteoritic uniformity across the timescale of the solar system is wrong.  This may allow scientists (both geologists and planetary scientists) to differentiate between various cosmic events, and their collisional aftermath, during the lifetime of the solar system.

References:

A recent news story about Planet X/Nibiru has gone viral.  At the centre of the story is NASA's observation of an inbound Near Earth Object 2016 WF9, which they say will skim harmlessly past the Earth in late February.  

"2016 WF9 will approach Earth's orbit on Feb. 25, 2017. At a distance of nearly 32 million miles (51 million kilometers) from Earth, this pass will not bring it particularly close. The trajectory of 2016 WF9 is well understood, and the object is not a threat to Earth for the foreseeable future."  (1)

A Russian named Dr Dyomin Damir Zakharovich has been issuing some dire warnings about this event, and has linked the provenance of this object with Planet X/Nibiru and a brown dwarf system in the outer solar system (e.g. 2). 

I wanted to find out more about Dr Zakharovich, and to find out where his data is coming from.  I assumed he was a professional astronomer, although the many media reports I examined about this story described him as a 'self-proclaimed astronomer' or variation on that theme.   I went through 10 pages of Google searches to find something about his background, but found nothing tangible about him.  He pitches up in an article or two from 2016, including an appearance in the German media.  Apart from that, nothing at all.  If he had any kind of academic profile, that surely would have turned up.

So then I put in the Cyrillic translation of his name ( Д-р Дамир Демин Захарович ) to see if any Russian universities or institutions showed up, in Russian language websites.  I expected to find, at the very least, an academic entry for his PhD, given his moniker as a doctor.  Google normally picks up a publication or two for anyone with an academic history, and their university profile webpage.  It will usually emerge early on in the search history, because the profile page, or published papers, are long-standing documents on the Internet, provided by reliable sources.   

Again, all I could find were the same series of recent, re-hashed articles from across the Russian media.  I can only conclude that Dr Dyomin Damir Zakharovich has no data worth examining.  He does not appear to be a professional astronomer.  Until I can verify more details (and I'd be interested to hear of any facts that readers can provide about his work) I'm going to assume this is fake news.

There's another issue here; about sensationalism.  It's a problem I've personally grappled with for a long time.  My writing is heavily science-based, but is, at the same time, often challenging and speculative.  I try hard to indicate where something I say is conjectural, and to give the other side of the argument.  I also try to get back to the root of each story I read about, and build from the source (usually academic papers, books or other published materials).  That can be constraining (and definitely time-consuming!) but it is a necessary series of measures to ensure I provide material that is accountable, and bearing some journalistic and scientific integrity.  I'm not saying I'm always perfect here, but I try.

The problem for me as a writer has always been that this is not exciting.  It does not sell books.  It does not give me access to large conferences as a speaker.  It does not provide the world with bite-sized chunks of wild information that goes viral over the Internet.  The temptation is always there, of course, to cross that line.  I watched with fascination how this apocalyptic speculation provided by Dr Dyomin Damir Zakharovich has been subject a media feeding frenzy across the world.  Wow!  The right story at the right time?  More Russian media churning, for dark reasons unknown?  I don't know.  But in this post-fact world, I feel that my way of doing things, my integrity as a scientific thinker and writer, is rapidly losing ground.   Worse, if a programme of censorship really does happen in the years to come, my small websites might themselves be under threat -  even though it's the big media outlets that are often guilty of propagating the extreme stuff just to get lots of hits, and thus advertising revenue.  The whole thing is a mess.

As for 2016 WF9... personally, I'm not worried one little bit.  On the face of it, at least, it does not appear to be connected to Planet X. 

Written by Andy Lloyd,  30th January 2017