This past summer, during my internship at MIT's Lincoln Lab, Dava Newman (Deputy Administrator of NASA) came to give a talk about NASA's journey to mars. At the end of the talk (during the Q&A), some greybeard conspiracy nut in the back of the room asked her about the existence of Nibiru; suffice it to say, she had no idea what he was talking about..
Right on :) Every time when there's discovery for yet another distant object from the sun, there's some speculation that pointing to Nibiru (where does this name come from)?
"Although the name "Nibiru" is derived from the works of the ancient astronaut writer Zecharia Sitchin and his interpretations of Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, he denied any connection between his work and various claims of a coming apocalypse."
Yep! Lincoln is MIT's DoD/FFRDC lab in Lexington, if that helps. There are people who have been there since the SAGE program... I lived with one of the guys who currently works in the director's office for a couple of weeks before I could move into the campus dorms; he would tell me about how these life-timer researchers literally die at their desks.
