by Andy Lloyd
But the disappointment of the IRAS survey could well have been a "false negative". John Anderson, a distinguished scientist formerly of the Pioneer programme and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, argued that the survey could easily have missed Planet X. He explained that there were many objects in the sky that had infrared signatures similar to those of planets. To truly pinpoint a possibly unseen planet, its proper motion would have to be determined. If the motion across the sky of a distant planet were very small over a period of weeks, or months, then IRAS could easily have missed it.2
Recently, I have been informed that this opinion is also shared by the renowned expert on brown dwarfs, Professor J. Davy Kirkpatrick. He seems optimistic that a brown dwarf could be discovered between our sun and the nearest known star, Proxima Centauri. The IRAS survey didn’t detect such a body, of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. A fellow researcher, John Lee, often working under the ‘handle’ of ‘Rajasun’ agreed that a dark mass with an insignificant proper motion across the sky could not have been distinguished from a stationary object by IRAS. More surprisingly still, he cited an article1 that described how any detection of a possible object with a notable motion across the sky would have been dismissed as questionable data!
These researchers consider the best chance for the future discovery of a binary brown dwarf to be NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. It may surprise the reader to learn that the hoped-for discovery of a brown dwarf closer than the sun’s nearest stellar neighbor is actually one of its main mission goals!14
The commitment of funds for WISE flies in the face of the general negativity among scientists regarding the prospects for a massive solar companion. This future mission, scheduled for launch in 2008, will be specifically searching for such an nearby brown dwarf. It is possible that a brown dwarf might be discovered as a free-floating object in the interstellar space beyond the solar system, or a cold object could possibly be found actually orbiting the sun.
Another positive remark about the potential for an undiscovered planet orbiting relatively closely to the sun emerged when an astrophysics group from Harvard released details of an anomalous Kuiper Belt Object known as 2000 CR105. One of the team, Dr. Matthew Holman, indicated that this object’s bizarre orbit might be the result of a massive perturber in the comet clouds beyond the planetary zone. He went on public record as saying that a Mars-sized body might "easily" have evaded detection as close as 200 AU.15 This clearly flies in the face of the opinion that the IRAS sky survey’s failure to detect Planet X means that there is no Planet X.
So, there is a lot of scope for being open-minded about the existence of Planet X. While it evidently does not orbit the sun as close as the outer planets Neptune and Pluto, you don’t have to move too far away from the sun before its existence again becomes an open question. There are theoretical considerations of course, because many astronomers dismiss the existence of a massive planet out there, because it would cause some problems for our current models of solar system formation. But the tide is turning as new discoveries come to light about other star systems.
I recently had an opportunity to ask the space historian and skeptic James Oberg about NASA’s current attitude towards Planet X, and his reply was illuminating. He suggested that there probably wasn’t an official position towards the subject, but that it is considered when relevant to specific missions, like the proposed Pluto-Kuiper probe. He had seen a renewed interest in the discoveries in the outer frontier of the solar system in recent years, which we will dwell on shortly, and was personally excited about the possibilities emerging.16
It seems that even commentators who are often labeled as skeptics are being won over to the idea that Planet X could be out there. But that doesn’t stop astronomers from being very cagey about what they say on this subject. To openly promote the idea of a major undiscovered planet or brown dwarf in the scientific literature, is to invoke the wrath of many skeptical scientists.
I don’t know why this is particularly, but it is evidently true. The science of astronomy and cosmology can be quite bold and speculative at times, so one would expect that such ideas ― if properly presented in the literature ― would be welcomed in the same way as, say, new thinking on black holes. Alas, this does not appear to be so. One can only surmise that the mere suggestion of the existence of a Planet X suggests greater consequences than just the advancements of scientific knowledge about our outer solar system.
The Dark Star Discovered
In 1999, two researchers presented findings that might indicate the existence of a small brown dwarf orbiting the sun. One of them, Dr. John Murray of the Open University in England, initially found it difficult to even get his paper published. Perhaps that was because he wasn’t an astronomer, but an Earth scientist. More likely was the nature of his proposal, which subsequently brought much criticism his way. As well as a lot of publicity, because any suggestion of an undiscovered planet in our solar system is inherently newsworthy. Popular interest and academic disdain often go hand in hand.
John Murray looked at the trajectories of long-period comets and analyzed them to see if any patterns emerged.17 Long-period comets are thought to originate in the Oort Cloud, an hypothetical, but generally accepted spherical distribution of comets beyond about 2000 Astronomical Units.18 The comets in question emerged from the outer Oort Cloud, which extends from about 20,000AU onwards to the very limit of the sun’s influence. These are very considerable distances indeed.
In his paper, John Murray explained why he thought a very massive planet might be orbiting the sun out among these distant comets: the comets had arrived from points in the sky that indicated a pattern to their origins. He noted that whilst other explanations for this were possible, the cometary orbits were most likely to have attained these configurations because of the presence of an unknown distant object circling the sun between thirty and fifty thousand astronomical units away.17 This is an immense distance and a great circular orbit around the sun out there would take millions of years to complete.
He made a strong case for the following argument: The Oort Cloud should have a random, but spherical distribution around the sun, rather like a very thick skin on an orange. Assuming comets are dislodged randomly from the cloud to move into the planetary zone of the solar system, then the sky locations from which they came should be randomly distributed, as well as their original distances from the sun. His analysis showed that this was, in fact, not the case, but that there was a statistical aberration. That clustering calls for another influence affecting the comets that were disturbed from their meandering distant orbits around the sun. A likely contender appears to be a massive ‘Perturber’ among these distant comets.
Dr. Murray then predicted an approximate sky location for the massive planet, or brown dwarf, based upon its perceived retrograde motion around the sun. When I read his paper I was amazed. This position was somewhat north of Sagittarius, in the small constellation of Delphinius. The planet appeared to be acting in a very similar way to the orbit described by Zecharia Sitchin for Nibiru.
It was moving the wrong way around the sun, compared to the other planets. It was inclined to the plane of the planets by 30 degrees, as proposed by Sitchin. And it was in the right part of the sky. To my mind, this ‘Dark Star’ of Dr. Murray’s was Sitchin’s Nibiru. He had found physical evidence to show that this fabled planet exists.
Myth and Reality
My excitement was compounded by the fact that I had already independently proposed that the way in which Nibiru was described in the myths correlated well with our understanding of a brown dwarf, or failed star. In the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian ‘god’ Marduk, whose 49th Name is Nibiru, was described using words that have a strong cosmological flavour.19 The description seemed to tally with an extraordinary and massive planet which emitted fire and lightning. In other words, it was a planet more massive than Jupiter with certain stellar characteristics.
Its dramatic incursi
on into the myth seems to indicate to us that Marduk had once entered the solar system for the first time, blazing with fire and shining like the sun. There is an even clearer reference to Marduk’s sun-like attributes in these lines, and is quite literally called the "Son of the Sun":
“MARDUK, as Anu, his father, called him from his birth; Who provides grazing and drinking places, enriches their stalls,
Who with the flood-storm, his weapon, vanquished the detractors,
And who the gods, his fathers, rescued from distress. Truly, the Son of the Sun, most radiant of gods is he. In his brilliant light may they walk forever!”
Tablet VI Lines 124-9.20
I believe this designation as the ‘Son of the Sun’ is of great significance. If the ‘Dark Star’, which seems to be synonymous with the Babylonian god Marduk in the Babylonian creation myth exists, then our solar system is a long-standing binary system, whose smallest ‘star’ is now old and cold. But at the time of its dramatic entry into the sun’s domain, it was a radiant and powerful planet whose stellar attributes are clearly described. The planet represented by Marduk seemed to have once shined like a small star, becoming the ‘Son of the Sun’.
Sumerologists and skeptics in general argue that the Enuma Elish should not be interpreted in terms of an astronomical framework, that the gods described in the Creation Myth are not synonymous with stellar deities, whether in the form of planets, stars, or constellations. They take issue with Zecharia Sitchin for making this connection.21 Yet, the Enuma Elish is packed full of cosmic descriptions, in keeping with the advanced knowledge of astronomy of the Babylonians.
This is an old argument that has raged for many years. Although many of the gods of the ancient pantheons are directly related to planets, the sun and the Moon, scholars generally don’t interpret that as meaning that the ancients were trying to tell us about the physical nature of the solar system: myths are myths, nothing more.
Yet, we are becoming more aware of the remarkable astronomical knowledge of ancient peoples, through the complex archeo-astronomical alignments of many of the monuments dating back from megalithic times.22, 23 The myths seem to be an excellent vehicle for the transmission of an oral tradition about the astronomical knowledge that the ancient people all round the world clearly exhibited. Such an argument lies at the heart of an illuminating thesis by the scholars Georgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend entitled, "Hamlet’s Mill".24
These ideas have become part of my own approach to understanding what the myths can tell us about our solar system, and I believe we still have more to learn from them than our present scientific knowledge suggests. To my mind, the existence of an undiscovered planet of massive proportions was suggested by many different legends and traditions, which have been chronicled across the globe.25
Synchronicity
Just months before the release of John Murray’s paper, I had reviewed a lecture given by the British researcher Alan Alford, and had used this short review as a vehicle to formally propose the connection between Sitchin’s planet Nibiru and a brown dwarf. Alan had once entertained the ideas of Zecharia Sitchin and had written a very popular book on the subject.26 He then retracted those ideas, and had made his criticisms of Sitchin’s work apparent during a lecture he gave in Gloucestershire in the summer of 1999.
The criticisms included, quite rightly in my opinion, the difficulties that Nibiru would have sustaining life in the solar system beyond Neptune. In a letter published by the British newsstand publication UFO Magazine, I discussed Alan Alford’s lecture and suggested that Sitchin’s dilemma could be solved by Nibiru’s planetary status being upgraded to that of a small brown dwarf, thence allowing life to exist on its attendant moons:
“Here is the crux of the problem ― the world’s most ancient race, the Sumerians, said that the gods came to Earth from a planet, describing a comet-like orbit around the sun. To generate sufficient heat to have liquid water, the planet must either be too massive gravitationally, or too radioactive to support life. Case closed.
But modern astronomers are trying to grapple with the facts that the solar system exhibits too much gravity, and that there is a huge amount of missing mass in the universe. Brown dwarf stars have been proposed to account for both anomalies. If our sun has a tiny sister star that is too faint and distant to have been detected, then maybe this star is the twelfth planet.
So why would the Sumerians call a star a planet? In fact, they already included the sun as a planet, as well as our Moon. That’s how they arrived at the number twelve as the total number of planets in the solar system. They also said that the Twelfth Planet had a number of ‘attendants’, which we could then consider to be the brown dwarf star’s own planetary system. They said that the Twelfth Planet was glorious to behold, with a great halo. Well, maybe they were describing a brown dwarf that became visible to the naked eye as it traversed the outer solar system as part of its eccentric orbit around the sun.”27
Although I would have written this somewhat differently now, the basic points continue to stand, and formed the basis of later articles released over the Internet that would change many people’s notions about the nature of Sitchin’s Nibiru.
The reason for including this here is to demonstrate that the ideas behind the Dark Star Theory were published two months before John Murray’s paper on his proposed Planet X, which was described by him as being large enough to potentially be a small brown dwarf. We were tackling the problem from different angles, certainly, but coming to similar conclusions at the same time. Of course, the first mention of a ‘Dark Star’ orbiting the sun as a binary companion was made as long ago as 1982, so none of this is entirely new! But at the time, in 1999, this development seemed newsworthy.
There was a synchronicity at play there, certainly, but I would also like to emphasize the fact that I had not taken John Murray’s paper and used that to re-write Sitchin. Rather, I had independently thought through the ‘habitable planet’ problem, come up with a viable solution, and then discovered later that the basis for that idea could corroborate Dr. Murray’s scientific work.
Had my letter not been published in UFO Magazine in the late summer of 1999, I would have difficulty proving this course of events, and I have always been grateful to the late Graham W. Birdsall for its inclusion in his magazine at the time, as well as a major follow-up article a couple of years later.28
John Matese and Daniel Whitmire
A second synchronicity also occurred at that time, because it was not just John Murray who had been looking closely at the patterns of long-period comets. In the United States, John Matese’s research team had carried out a similar analysis, and independently come to a similar conclusion. His paper was published at exactly the same time as Murray’s, although the details of their work varied somewhat. John Matese is a Professor of Physics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and he was joined in this research effort by Patrick Whitman and Daniel Whitmire. The latter famously co-wrote the 1984 Nature paper on the proposed ‘Nemesis’ body, and its link to the 26 million year extinction cycle.7
Like John Murray, they concluded that a massive planet or small brown dwarf could be orbiting the sun, sending comets our way. Unlike Dr. Murray, they stopped short of postulating a possible location for the object. Other details were different too, including the approximate distance, and the orbit. They also considered it likely that the effect supplemented that of the galactic tide, which was the dominant feature in the statistical aberrations.29
In the paper it was also speculated that the orbit of this planet, which they call the ‘Perturber’, would, on occasion, bring it fairly close to the outer planetary zone. This was because an orbit that was at the distance of 25,000AU was not one which could be sustained for the lifetime of the solar system, a point also conceded by John Murray.17 Citing a very interesting paper by Jack Hills from 198530, they noted that any orbit in the outer Oort cloud was liable to be altered by the action of the galactic tide over hundreds of
millions of years.29
As the sun rotates around the centre of the galaxy, it bobs up and down through the galactic plane rather like the horse on a fairground carousel ride. The periodic changes to the orbit of the perturber, known as ‘oscultations’, are related to this motion with relation to the galactic plane, and, according to Dr. Matese’s calculations, could at times lead to a minimum distance from the sun of just 125AU. This is an important point. Let us say that the sun was formed in conjunction with a distant binary brown dwarf that initially formed at the sort of distances that comets are now located at. Over several hundred million years the action of the galactic tide would cause the brown dwarf to drift inwards towards the planetary zone of the sun.
This is precisely what I think took place 3.9 billion years ago, some 700 million years after the formation of the solar system. The sun’s binary companion fell down towards the sun as a result of the galaxy’s gravitational interaction, destabilizing its orbit. It then swept catastrophically through the solar system as described by the Babylonian myths, before migrating out towards the comets once again.
Furthermore, Dr. Matese argued that this situation would repeat itself over time, without significantly destabilizing the orbits of the other planets in the solar system.29 Incredible, isn’t it? The mathematical calculations carried by Dr. Matese and his colleagues created a model to describe how a distant binary companion could, on occasion, end up wandering near to the sun.