by Andy Lloyd
It's a pity that more detailed data is unavailable at this time, particularly regarding the isotopic ratios of the water of Tempel 1. Rational reasons for delay aside, one might be forgiven for wondering whether the scientists charged with probing the secrets of Tempel 1 are struggling to come up with an explanation as to why this comet seems to be a piece of a familiar world. Namely, the Earth! Such a link would be an extraordinary revelation, and would have far-reaching repercussions. We can only wait and see what news the coming months bring.
References
1 B. Harder “Water for the Rock: Did Earth's Oceans come from the Heavens?” Science News 23 March 2002; Vol. 161, No. 12 Thanks to Lee Covino
2 A. Delsemme “An Argument for the cometary origin of the biosphere” American Scientist 89 (Sept.-Oct.) 2001; pp432-442 [cited in (1)]
3 M. Drake & K. Righter “Determining the composition of the Earth” Nature 416 (7th March) 2002; pp39-44 [cited in (1)]
4 A. Morbidelli, et al. “Source regions and timescales for the delivery of water to the Earth” Meteoritics and Planetary Science 35 2000; pp1309-1320 [cited in (1)]
5 L. Mullen “Borne Bone Dry” 17th February 2004, with thanks to Shad Bolling, http://www.astrobio.net/news/article833.html
6 Astrobiology News “A Taste for Comet Water” 25th May 2001 http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/news_stories/news_detail.cfm?ID=154
7 Z. Sitchin “The Twelfth Planet” Avon 1976
8 L. David "Long-Destroyed Fifth Planet May Have Caused Lunar Cataclysm, Researchers Say" http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/fifth_planet_020318.html 18th March 2002
9 J. d'Arc “Space Travellers and the Genesis of the Human Form” p29 The Book Tree 2000
10 I. Semeniuk "Neptune Attacks!" pp26-9 New Scientist 7th April 2001
11 J. Augereau & J. Papaloizou, A&A, astroph/0310732, 2003
12 A. Quillen, P. Varniere, I. Minchev & A. Frank, AJ, 2004
13 C. Grady et al, AJ, 122, p3396, 2001
14 D. Koerner & S. LeVay "Here be Dragons: The Scientific Quest for Extraterrestrial Life" pp20-1, 43, Oxford University Press 2000
15 Horizon' BBC2, “Snowball Earth” Shown on 22nd February 2001
16 G. Marcy & P. Butler "Hunting Planets Beyond" pp43-7 Astronomy March 2000
17 Hazel Muir, "Brown Dwarf may Someday Harbour Habitable Planets" 8th February 2005, http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6977
18 A. Alford "The Phoenix Solution" pp171-4, Hodder & Stoughton 1998
19 A. Lloyd "Planet X: Past and Present", pp32-7, UFO Magazine January 2004
20 A. Pike “Exoplanets: What's New?” , p72-3, UFO Magazine, February 2004
21 J. Foust "Bizarre new planets puzzle astronomers" Spaceflight Now 10th January 2000
22 Planetary Correctness' Associated Press, 9th January 2001 http://www.aci.net/kalliste/
23 The Similarities of the Planets (and Other Celestial Objects)” http://www.livingcosmos.com/celestial.htm, With thanks to Lloyd Pye
24 J. Kelly Beatty “Bigorbit Object Confounds Dynamicists”, 5th April 2001, with thanks to Frank Cordell and Theo Kermandis http://www.skypub.com/news/news.shtml#bigorbit
25 L. Moulton Howe “Deep Impact Spectra: Carbonate, PAHs and Some Amino Precursors in Comet Tempel I” Interview with Dr. C. Lisse, Professor of Physics, 12/8/05 http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=960&category=Science
With thanks to Lee Covino
12. The Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt
Scientific evidence for the existence of Planet X is growing. That is not just my opinion, it is a fact. More and more astronomers appear to be incorporating into their thinking the possibility that something big is playing around with the cometary bodies that make up the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt (sometimes more simply known as the 'Kuiper Belt').
This large belt of planetesimals was first proposed by a British researcher called Kenneth Edgeworth. His idea was first published in 1943, but there was a more significant paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1949 outlining his ideas. Two years later, the same proposal was made by the American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, "in a chapter which he had contributed to a book edited by J. Allen Hynek".1
The now prevalent term 'Kuiper Belt' seems to have been first coined by Scott Tremaine in 1988, and was consequently used in the first paper describing the historic discovery of a solar system object beyond Pluto. This discovery was made by Dave Jewitt and Jane Luu, who entitled their paper "Discovery of the candidate Kuiper Belt Object 1992 QB1". The name quickly caught on.1
As a result of the confusion caused by the controversial naming of this belt beyond Neptune, different researchers call it different things. Because I have a misplaced sense of patriotic duty towards all things British, I will call it the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, and objects within it Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Objects (EKBOs).
The Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt is a sizeable body of planetesimals and comets, many of which have been herded into stable resonant orbits with Neptune over time, and lie within poorly-defined bands just beyond this outer gas giant. Pluto, the outermost planet, could itself be said to be a large EKBO. It has a resonant orbit with Neptune such that it avoids the larger planet, even though it periodically crosses its orbital path. In theory, all of the objects in the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt should have orbits that are in some way related to the known outer planets.
But, as it turns out, they don't.
'Ten in a Bed...'
Although the sheer scale of the belt is immense, there is a problem of missing mass. The Belt shows a surprisingly large deficiency of predicted objects out to about 50 Astronomical Units, a fact that puzzles astronomers. Even though there will be times when some of these objects interact with Neptune in such a way that they are eventually ejected from the solar system, there still seems to be too few of them. The astronomers Petit, Morbidelli and Valsecchi theorized that primordial planetary embryos up to the mass of Earth could have spent time in the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, flinging the normal EKBOs around, and thus leading to a massive loss of comets.2
So where are those planets now? If they were still orbiting just beyond Neptune they surely would have been found by Clyde Tombaugh over 60 years ago, as he thoroughly searched the sky for similar planets to Pluto. If they are still out there, then they are further away than this, having migrated out. It is thought that there might be Mars-sized bodies embedded in the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt that have so far evaded detection.
Edgeworth-Kuiper Objects exhibit different orbital properties, falling naturally into sub-categories of 'classical belt' objects and 'scattered disc' objects, with further sub-divisions looming as the database of objects increases.3 This is a complex set of solar system objects whose system of classification is far from straightforward. The more extreme examples of these objects may be indicative of an unknown influence affecting the belt, as we shall see.
The Belt itself lies predominantly in the plane of the ecliptic, along with most of the rest of the solar system. But some of the EKBOs are inclined to the ecliptic, as is Pluto, and thus create a diffuse band in the sky. This is quite different from the more distant Oort Cloud of comets, which covers the sky in a spherical way: long-period comets arriving from the Oort Cloud do so from all regions in the heavens. Although, as we have seen, there are those who argue that the 'random' positioning of these comets around the solar system is nothing of the sort!
Between the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt (which is more like an asteroid belt of comets) and the Oort Cloud, there is an immense gap of essentially nothing. This, I would suggest, is significant in itself. It implies the presence of something undiscovered.
Our present technological capability has allowed astronomers to detect some of the Edgeworth-Kuiper Objects that lie nearest to the orbits of Pluto and Neptune. Trying to pinpoint these hidden objects in the sky is difficult work, to the extent that objects that are discovered during a particular sky search are even difficult to confirm during later observation attempts, despite know
ledge of their whereabouts. This is important, because it can require several observations over time to work out a given object's exact trajectory, which then allows astronomers to pinpoint the objects position at a later date.
Only the 'inner' part of the belt is currently within the limits of our observational capacity. But even so, astronomers are seeing examples of the more distant 'scattered disc' populations, as they are sighted during their perihelion passages just beyond Neptune. These distant objects are only observable at their closest approaches to the sun, implying that there are a great many more so-called 'scattered disc objects' beyond.3
A system of classification for newly-discovered solar system objects is widely in use, and the registering of such objects is managed by the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) "Central Bureau," based at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The label attached to any given object begins simply with the year it was discovered. Then, a letter is applied for each half-monthly interval in that year, ignoring I and Z. Then, a second letter is applied denoting the order in which reports are officially received.1
As the number of new solar system objects discovered each month steadily grew, the need arose to supplement that system with a suffix number. That is how we have arrived at a name like 2000 CR105. It was discovered in February 2000, and was one of several hundred similar official reports of Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Objects.
Anomalies Emerge
The Edgeworth-Kuiper Objects 2000 CR105 and 1995TL8 are 'scattered-disc objects', and exhibit orbits that are difficult to explain dynamically. They are potentially highly significant, because their orbits seem to be 'de-coupled' from the influence of the giant planets in the solar system. The implications seem to the astronomers, including Brett Gladman, to be significant.3
His team have speculated that the anomalous scattered disc objects of the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt have been subject to gravitational forces 'out there', expanding their perihelia distances beyond that allowed by normal interactions with the classical EKBO 'shepherd', Neptune. The researchers offer a number of possibilities to explain this, all involving large objects passing through, or even currently resident in the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt. These include perturbations caused by passing stars (see also4, now-absent primordial embryos passing through the belt as they were ejected from the solar system (as detailed above), and, of course, Planet X (and even Planet XI, Planet XII, etc.) lying undiscovered within the EKB.3
One of the team, Matthew Holman, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, made no bones of the fact that he thought it entirely possible that a Mars-sized body might lie within the extended Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, and that such a body could easily have escaped detection thus far, despite the infrared sky searches carried out to date.5 This contrasted sharply with the previous scientific attitude towards the case for a substantial Planet X.
2004 DW
Dr. Holman's optimism is not without foundation. The luminosity of objects in the solar system drops off dramatically with distance from the sun. Large bodies, only slightly further away than those already discovered in the vicinity of Neptune and Pluto, remain to be discovered. Examples of recent massive EKBOs include Quaoar in 2002, a spherical object the size of a small moon, and Sedna, a more substantial body still, which brought with it a whole raft of problems. The floodgates of discovery appeared to be opening.
In 2004, a substantial planetoid was detected 4.4 billion miles (48AU) from the sun. Currently known as 2004DW, it may be 1400 kilometers across, and orbits the sun every 300 years. It has a high eccentricity, a remarkable 20 degrees from the plane of the ecliptic, which brings forward questions about its origins. One of the scientists who discovered this object, Mike Brown, an associate professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech, had this to say about the discovery's possible implications:
"It's now only a matter of time before something is going to be discovered out there that will change our entire view of the outer solar system.6
This was an ambitious statement that was partly due to the discovery of 2004 DW, but may also have be driven by all the new evidence coming in about the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt. Mike Brown's team went on to discover Sedna, the most dramatic discovery so far. But it is not just the objects that are being found that are amazing scientists, it is also a certain lack of objects...
Standing at the Edge
In the last year or two, the astronomical community has been shocked by another finding about the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt. According to the consensus of scientific opinion, it was expected that the Belt would extend beyond the current ability to observe objects, and that as the technical proficiency to capture dimmer objects grew, our knowledge of deeper objects in the Belt would expand. However, workers on the cutting-edge of this field soon discovered something that was not expected, and not readily explainable. The Disc stopped.
The EKB has an empty band in it known as the "Kuiper Cliff" or "Gap" where the predicted distribution of planetesimals simply is not observed. The problem is a significant one, because the population of 'EKBOs' beyond this point should actually be greater than those within it. This is because they are too distant to have been disrupted by Neptune and the other planets.
The acquired observational knowledge of this area is currently limited, but it appears from work carried out by Allen, et al. that the populations of EKBOs here drops off unexpectedly, and somewhat mysteriously.7.8 It either marks the end of the Belt, or a sizeable gap. In the terminology of the astrophysicists, the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt is "truncated".
This has profound implications for our understanding of the formation of the solar system. In fact, such a predicament has allowed the idea of an undiscovered distant planet to creep back into the thoughts of astronomers. A lack of objects beyond this 'cliff' would imply that the original proto-planetary disc of the sun was curtailed at this point; an unexpected and unlikely discovery.
Various ideas have been proposed to explain the Gap. We have already noted the possibility that giant planetesimals may have been prevalent in the early EKB, causing chaos. Then there's the Planet X debate. Another possibility is that a passing star may have torn part of the outer belt away.9
This finding presents a major problem that several research groups have been urgently attempting to address, and, as we shall see, some tentative conclusions appear to be pointing in the direction of the Dark Star Theory.
Perihelion Beyond Neptune
I had been corresponding with an independent researcher named John Lee (aka 'Rajasun') who, like me, was not a professional astronomer, but had learned a great deal of technical information by immersing himself in papers and books about the outer solar system. He was of the opinion that the brown dwarf could not travel too far into the planetary zone during perihelion. In fact, he felt that it would remain beyond the orbit of Neptune for the entirety of its perihelion passage. I could see that his technical arguments were good ones, although they were in direct contrast to the case put forward by Sitchin, that 'Nibiru' was capable of reaching as close as the asteroid belt during perihelion.
John Lee's work seemed to mesh well with this new material about how objects in the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt were behaving, and I began to wonder whether he might be onto something. Perhaps this more distant belt of comets and planetesimals was actually the 'hammered bracelet' that Sitchin wrote about, not the Asteroid Belt. After all, there were now two 'asteroid belts' in the solar system to choose from, a situation that was not well known when Sitchin had written most of his books.
I began to wonder whether the Dark Star's perihelion passage occurred beyond Neptune. Neptune is not visible from Earth at all, of course, and it was quite late on in the history of astronomy before it was first observed. How could a Dark Star have been recorded in classical times, then?
Nibiru was once a luminous, glowing planet, as described in the ancient texts. I wondered whether an approach to the planetary zone would reveal these characteristics, as the old brown dwarf
crossed through the Heliopause and encountered the solar wind. After all, we know that these brown dwarfs are highly active magnetically, and the influence of the Solar Wind within the confines of the Heliopause might have been sufficient to 're-ignite' the old flame.
John needed convincing though, because he was quite sure that a brown dwarf as old as the solar system would not be capable of emitting any light, no matter what the circumstances. And since we are unable to see either Uranus of Neptune at these distances (and they are sizeable planets in their own right), then the brown dwarf beyond Neptune would also be too faint to see without a good telescope. His viewpoint was characteristically persuasive, based as it was on the conventional scientific wisdom. This led to some soul searching on my part.
We had an ongoing debate about this issue for some time. At the crux of the problem, was whether the rogue brown dwarf could ever become visible from Earth. If it did appear as a flaring red star, rather like a comet on fire, then this could have created a series of mythological descriptions, which formed the basis of much of my earlier work. If it was invisible throughout its orbit around the sun then I had a big problem on my hands.
To try and solve this problem, we sought various scientific opinions. This in itself was a tricky business: most scientists were making a point of avoiding the subject. Fortunately, John was sufficiently versed in the technicalities of astrophysics to engage professional astronomers in debate, and even to precipitate new research on his behalf!