nik,
Ok, you are not a liar. You are just misinformed.
1) I would not consider a 20 year old New York Times issue an authoritative source of science information.
2) It may come as a surprise, but neither NASA nor the Naval Observatory are leading authorities in astronomy. They merely provide equipment for use, or lease, by research groups at various universities. And, most of astronomy is actually not done through either agency.
3) In another thread on this site, I have already demonstrated that even a Jupiter-sized planet coming as close to Earth as closest approach of Mars would create a gravitational stress merely comparable to that of the Moon.
4) Stop mixing archaeology with astronomy, unless you are willing to throw in some common sense as well. Do you seriously propose that the anscient Sumerians knew about Pluto, which is <u>extremely</u> hard to detect, but they did not know about the Galilean moons of Jupiter, <u>which are visible even through the simplest telescopes</u>? In which case, why would they count our Moon as the planet, but not, say, Titan, a moon of Saturn, which is twice the weight of Earth's Moon?
5) Your assumption of my ignorance or inanity is amusing, in view of the fact that you get your information from sensationalist pseudo-scientific literature on par with books that prove that Earth is flat after all.
Here's an excerpt from a <A HREF="http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question4.html">NASA website</A> that is <u>a little more recent</u> than 1982:
There is no known Planet X or 10th planet in our solar system. Scientists have been looking for about a hundred years. It was believed that such a planet was required to explain the orbital characteristics of the outer planets Uranus and Neptune. Many searches have been performed and, to date, no evidence of such a planet has emerged. <u>In addition, better information about the masses of outer planets has also now shown that no other planets are necessary to explain the planetary orbits.</u>
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Do some thinking and research on your own every now and then, rather than regurgitating nonsense you absorbed from other "authoritative" sources. Finally, if I had a choice of whom to trust, between NASA and Sitchin, Hoagland, Greer, etc., I would definitely choose NASA. Somehow, I find rigorous, <u>current</u>, and peer-reviewed science a bit more authoritative.
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I am; therefore I think.
[This message has been edited by Boris (edited October 01, 1999).]