The e-mail's author said her brother had heard that a rogue planet called "Planet X" was going to pass by the Earth in May of 2003. When it did, it would cause massive damage: floods, volcanoes, death on a global scale. Her brother was so worried that he was planning on putting his house in coastal Maine up for sale. He didn't want to be anywhere near the ocean come May, when the Earth's axis shifted due to the gravity of Planet X.

Still, while [Zecharia Sitchin] may have originated the idea of Planet X, he is by no means its loudest supporter. That honor goes to Nancy Lieder, an ex-computer consultant in San Bruno, Calif., who has been talking about Planet X since at least 1995. Although she pays homage to Sitchin, her self-confessed main source of information on Planet X is her telepathic communication with aliens. Yes, you read that correctly.

1. For several days, [Mark Hazlewood], a Planet X proponent, claimed this was a photo of Planet X on his Web site. In fact, it's a 5- year-old image of Io, a moon of Jupiter, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. 2. Zecharia Sitchin, a self-taught expert on Sumerian writing, says that this ancient clay tablet shows Planet X as one of 11 planets orbiting the sun. Modern astronomers strongly disagree.