Shock claim Planet 9 wiped out life on Earth before...and will again

The respected former astrophysics professor claims the ice giant knocks space rocks towards Earth as its 20,000-year orbit around the Sun takes it through the Kuiper Belt – a band of asteroids, comets and ice balls beyond Pluto.

He blamed the planet's passage through the belt for apocalyptic "extinction events" found to have taken place on Earth every 27million years.

The bombshell claims bear staggering similarity to the "Nibiru Cataclysm" conspiracy theory.

Fossil evidence suggests most of life on Earth is mysteriously wiped out every 26 to 27 million years.

Scientists working in the 1980s and 90s suggested the cyclic extinctions could be down to a small red dwarf star or brown dwarf planet – dubbed "Nemesis" or the "Death Star" – passing through our Solar System on its wide orbit.

The theory was later dismissed.

But conspiracy theorists claimed it was evidence for Nibiru – a fabled giant planet whose wide orbit takes it dangerously close to Earth every 3,600 years, first proposed in the 70s.

Doomsdayers are increasingly certain a collision or catastrophic near miss will happen THIS MONTH.

Nemesis or Nibiru were widely dismissed as crack-pot pseudo-science – until more and more serious astrophysicists started reporting their really had discovered a large previously hidden planet at the edge of our Solar System.

Two separate teams of respected international scientists claimed to have uncovered evidence of a new ninth planet beyond Pluto – long referred to with the name "Planet X" – in December.

Then boffins at the California Institute of Technology, in the US, revealed they had conclusive "proof" of the ninth planet – now dubbed "Planet Nine" – the following month.

Conspiracy theorists immediately claimed it was Nibiru – and couldn't help but declare in the loudest voices possible: "We told you so."

(dailystar.co.uk)