by Andy Lloyd
But this will only work if the parent planet is still out there. If it left the solar system long ago, as Dr. Quillen argues, then it could not have created this effect. As such, an emerging pattern of synchronous scattered disc object orbits will determine whether the body is still awaiting discovery, or whether it is now an absent parent.
As Spitzer and other telescopes carry on their work over next year or two, a pattern in the orbits of newly discovered bodies may emerge, which will only increase speculation about the existence of a massive undiscovered body.
Lagrangian Points
Another possibility is that the Dark Star has attendant clusters of comets, asteroids and minor planets. It is known that there are mathematical locations in a three-body system which are stable regions. These are called LaGrangian points, after the 18th Century mathematician Joseph Louis LaGrange.
If we take the example of the sun and the binary Dark Star as the two main bodies in a 3-body system, we can think about minor objects that could be located at these five stable points. Three of these positions lie along the main axis between the sun and the Dark Star; they are 'co-linear' with the sun and the Dark Star. The two others lie along the path taken by the Dark Star, one of which moves ahead of it, known as the leading LaGrange point; the other is located behind the Dark Star, and is known as the trailing LaGrange point. These positions are really regions, not points, because there are other gravitational influences in the solar system to take into account. The Trojans are more stable regions than the co-linear positions.
An example of bodies located at LaGrangian Points are the Trojans, two clusters of asteroids within Jupiter's orbit, that have a mean motion resonance with the gas giant of 1:1. Is it possible that the Dark Star also has clusters of objects located at its own LaGrangian Points?
John Bagby, a researcher who, several decades ago, considered the possibility that the sun might have a massive companion, offered the thought that immense clusters of bodies at these LaGrangian points might help distribute some of the overall system's mass around the orbital path.16 It seems a reasonable idea, and it would imply that some of these objects in these regions could be quite large; quite possibly as large as Sedna.
As the Dark Star moves along its orbital path, its LaGrangian Points move with it. If one imagines a roughly circular orbit, like Jupiter's around the sun, one could divide the circle into 12 sections, like a clock-face. If Jupiter was located at 12, then the LaGrangian Points along the circumference of the clock would be located roughly at 10, 2 and 6. If we imagine the clock-face slowly turning about the centre, which would represent the sun, then those LaGrangian Points would also change position accordingly. They would move through the same locations as Jupiter, but at timed intervals.
If we imagine that clock-face to be stretched out into a long ellipse, like the shape of Sedna's orbit, then the same principle would still apply. At given intervals, the LaGrangian Points will move through any given location along the circumference of our weird-shaped clock. Sedna might have minor bodies trapped at LaGrangian Points along its own orbit, that will themselves achieve perihelion over the course of thousands of years, or Sedna itself might even be at the LaGrangian Point of a parent body. Admittedly, this idea is speculative. But let us consider the consequences that would naturally follow from it.
Multiple Nibirus?
Let us say that Sedna is part of a cluster of minor planetary bodies passing through the Kuiper Gap, in a 1:1 mean motion resonance with the Dark Star. If that is so, then many other bodies contained within that cluster are about to come to light, because Sedna is only 72 years away from perihelion. This might be interesting news to those who believe that comet activity in the solar system is already on the rise. Not only that, but it may explain other phenomena in the solar system at the moment, like the slight warming experienced by all of the planets. We will look more closely at these issues later.
The implication of this speculation is that the Dark Star may turn out to have a much larger orbit than previously thought; possibly in the region of about 10,800 years. The Dark Star would then currently lie about 1,000 AU away, in the exact opposite part of the sky from Sedna. They would forever be chasing each other's tails. In that case, it will achieve aphelion, its furthest point, when Sedna arrives at perihelion in 2076.
So, this scenario would lead us to conclude that the Dark Star's last perihelion was half an orbit ago, around 3325BCE. This is necessarily an approximate date, because the LaGrangian points are in reality sizable regions, and Sedna could lie anywhere within that region. But, this approximate dating would be around the time of the First Dynasty in Egypt, at the dawn of civilization itself.
It is also worth noting that the Earth experienced some significant changes in solar radiation sometime around 3200BCE. The sun underwent a drop and then a surge in its output 5,200 years ago, leading to a calamitous period of climate change.17 Perhaps this was as a result of the perihelion transit of the Dark Star, whose movement through the solar system may have affected the sun's activity.
We saw last chapter how the sun's magnetic field may have become twisted around this time; Maurice Cotterell places the date at about 3113BCE.18 Is there a connection between this monumental change to the Earth's climate, and the possible perihelion of the Dark Star around 3200BCE? After all, the perihelion transit beyond the EKB would have taken a couple of hundred years, during which the sun's activity would have been subject to change.
For this to be true, we would have to conclude that Zecharia Sitchin's claim that Nibiru's orbit is a Sar in length, or 3,600 years, was not entirely accurate. Instead, the Dark Star itself orbits the sun roughly every 10,800 years, like Sedna, but has associated with it regularly placed pockets of comets and small planets which interact with the outer solar system, perhaps every 3,600 years or so. These correspond with the Dark Star's LaGrangian Points, and their periodic activities are associated in myth with Nibiru. In other words, the phenomenon of Nibiru occurs more frequently than the actual 'appearance' of the Dark Star, because the system is distributed regularly around its orbital path.
If this speculation is correct, it seems like we're living through one of those periods now. This is because the LaGrangian Point which lies exactly opposite to the Dark Star's actual position is currently moving through the EKB, carrying with it bodies like Sedna.
Whether this is the case or not, I suggest that Sedna's discovery draws us ever closer to that of the Dark Star's, and that this parent body will be found somewhere in the sky north of Sagittarius, probably within some of the dense star fields ignored by IRAS. It is quite possible that it has already been catalogued, but incorrectly defined as a more distant stellar object. (It is interesting to note that a faint “red dwarf” star was recently identified as the third closest star to the sun, at a mere 7.8 light years19).
It is heartening that Dr. Brown is now going to turn his attention, and that of the Spitzer Telescope, towards such unexplored regions. He may amaze us all with what he finds there.
That Red Color
The orbital anomalies associated with Sedna have created a major puzzle for astronomers, and have arguably lead us closer to answers about the Dark Star. But there are other aspects to the discovery of Sedna that have created problems for the scientists. One of them is that Sedna is red.
Organic, volatile, icy deposits on the surface of an outer solar system body tend to make these objects reddish, but none of the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt objects have the same degree of reddening as Sedna. It has been suggested to me by a research colleague that high speed, collisional interactions could create this kind of coloring effect on the body's surface.19
EKBOs are thought to collide on occasion, and Sedna is a substantial minor planetary body. But its properties, both orbital and physical, tend to suggest it falls into a new class of scattered disk objects. I have proposed here that this class is related to a massive object, in a similar orbital pattern that currently lies at aphelion. That object is believe
d to have interacted with the other bodies of the primordial solar system in a catastrophic manner. One can readily see how the red color could tie in with this scenario.
That Lack of Spin
A further difficulty is the lack of a moon orbiting Sedna. When Sedna was originally discovered, it was thought that it had a moon in tow, rather like Pluto's moon Charon. The reason for that prediction had to do with Sedna's axial spin, which gives it a rather long 'day' - between 20 and 40 Earth days.21 For a solar system body to have such a slow spin, it must have interacted with a moon of about 400 miles diameter, which would have acted as a brake to Sedna's spin over time.
However, Sedna appears to have no such moon. Observations by the Hubble Space telescope have effectively ruled out a moon down to a size equivalent of ten times smaller than Sedna. Any orbiting moon as small as this could not have slowed Sedna's spin down.
The implication of this is that there must have once been a moon, but it is now missing. Yet, Sedna orbits along a trajectory that is relatively empty of other solar system bodies...at least that's the impression astronomers have so far. If a moon is still there, it would have to be the darkest object in the solar system to have escaped detection, a thought put forward by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of Cardiff, Wales.22
How could it have lost a moon? One is led to conclude that Sedna's past was a violent one. This once again fits with the idea of an extended system of objects along Sedna's orbital trajectory, of which Sedna is the first body to actually be discovered. But we must be cautious because this observed rate of spin is only provisional, and may turn out to be erroneous, rather than a real anomaly.23
Some correspondents have wondered whether Sedna may have been, or still is, a moon of the Dark Star, perhaps dislocated soon after its migration into the outer solar system. This seems an interesting possibility, and makes one wonder whether Sedna's lack of spin might be related to the loss of contact with the original parent planet in a catastrophic episode during the early life of the solar system. However, I am inclined to think that Sedna lies at a LaGrangian Point, and is simply part of the distributed Dark Star system.
Astronomers Consider Brown Dwarf Solution
There is no doubt that astronomers are becoming more interested in the potential for the involvement of a brown dwarf in the early solar system. This open-mindedness is in marked contrast to the population at large, whose interest in the Planet X phenomenon has waned in recent years. Perhaps that is exactly why astronomers feel more at ease in speculating about the outer solar system's origins now; the feeding frenzy of fringe Planet X conjecture has dissipated. In its wake is the possibility of a real scientific debate about whether our sun became entangled with sizable objects in the dim and distant past; interstellar passer's by, brown dwarfs and birth cluster companions.
The birth of our sun is no longer being discussed in terms of a lonely appearance in a quiet, unremarkable backwater of the galaxy. The sun may have had siblings; possibly a veritable litter of starlets of all shapes and sizes, whose early presence may not have adversely affected the inner planets per se, but certainly may have played around with the outer bodies orbiting the sun.
Until recently, not enough was known about these bodies, and the assumption was that they would be found to meander around our sun in a more or less orderly fashion.
However, one of the great things about discovery and science is that the unexpected is always what one must expect. In this case, the orbital patterns of some of these outer solar system bodies are quite clearly anomalous, bringing into question the entire issue of the solar system's origins. Something has been creating patterns of change out there, creating bizarre orbits, creating headaches for the boffins. To solve the riddle of objects like Sedna, the astronomers are forced to be more creative with their explanations, bringing Science into the territory of the Dark Star.
New Scientist has published a feature outlining the new thinking being banded about. In July 2004, it reported an "implausible" but nevertheless "cool" suggestion is that Sedna's controversial orbit could be the result of the early presence of a brown dwarf interacting with the sun. The popular science magazine interviewed an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado named Harold Levison.
He pointed out that Sedna's orbit could not have come about by any mechanism simply involving all the known objects in the solar system. Instead, the group were speculating that there had been an early passage through the solar system by a brown dwarf. They wondered whether Sedna was once a planet associated with that brown dwarf, and had been captured by the sun into an eccentric orbit, as a result of the fly-by.24
The group, which included Alessandro Morbidelli from Nice in France, carried out calculations to test this hypothesis, and there was indeed a correlation with observed behavior in the outer solar system. The calculations also showed that about half of the brown dwarf's proto-planetary disc would have been captured by the sun in this way, and would be orbiting the sun in a similar fashion to Sedna.24
The astronomers have a keen interest in the capture process itself, which is to be the subject of further research. They hope to eventually explain various anomalies in the solar system, like the origin of the Oort cloud and how the outer giant planets came to have such peculiar systems of moons.25 These are the same kinds of issues we have looked at in this book, and indicate the importance attached to them by mainstream astronomers.
But the astronomers fall short of advocating the current presence of a brown dwarf in our solar system. To do so would appear ludicrous to the outside world, perhaps. After all, where is the proof? This is a question that would inevitably be asked by the world's media. It seems highly reasonable from a scientific perspective, to conclude that there is a massive Planet X on the basis of indirect evidence. But the rest of the world demands direct proof.
As time goes on, I suspect that more and more evidence will emerge to bolster their confidence and start open speculation about the existence of a rogue brown dwarf. Already Alessandro Morbidelli has gone on record in France speculating about a hidden tenth planet, stirring up some controversy among some commentators who believe that his arguments reflect even more alternative ideas.26,27 It seems to me that if the sun is capable of capturing half of a rogue brown dwarf's planetary system, then it is also quite capable of capturing the brown dwarf itself! I think it quite likely that a Dark Star awaits discovery, and the minor planet called Sedna has begun the process of unlocking its secrets.
References
1 “NASA Schedules News Briefing about Unusual Solar Object” http://rense.com/general50/mys.htm
2 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3506329.stm
3 D. Whitehouse "Astronomers Discover new planet" 15th March 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3511678.stm
4 Spitzer Press release, 15th March 2004 http:// www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2004-05/release.shtml
5 Brian Marsden, Minor Planet Center, Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory,interviewed by Linda Moulton Howe http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=683&category=Science
6 'Sedna' http://www.rahoorkhuit.net/goddess/goddess_quest/sedna.html
7 R. Willis (Ed) "World Mythology" p216-7 Simon & Schuster 1993
8 R. R. Britt "Distant Sedna Raises Possibility of Another Earth-Sized Planet in Our Solar System" 16th March 2004, with thanks to David Pearson http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sedna_earth_040316.html
9 A. Brunini & M. Melita “The Existence of a Planet beyond 50AU and the Orbital Distribution of the Classical Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Objects” Icarus, 160, pp32-43 (2002)
10 Correspondence from Dr. Mario Melita, 15th January 2003
11 A. Quillen, D. Trilling & E. Blackman “The Impact of a Close Stellar Encounter on the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt” arXiv:astroph/0401372vl, 2004
12 A. Lloyd "Planet X: Past and Present" UFO Magazine, pp32-7, January 2004
13 Z. Sitchin "The Twelfth Planet" Avon 1976
14 J. Davies "Beyond Pluto" pp94-6 Cambridge University Press 2001
15 A. Burrows, D. Sudarsky & J. Lunine "Beyond the T Dwarfs: Theoretical Spectra, Colours, and Detectability of the Coolest Brown Dwarfs" Jun. 2003 arXiv:astroph/0304226v2
16 J. Bagby “Evidence for a Tenth Planet or Massive Solar Companion beyond Uranus” 1982. Many position papers by John P. Bagby were published in several lesser-known journals, nevertheless standing as a substantive public record of his cutting-edge work, including Kronos 1984; Cornell Engineer 1980, v 45, #4, pp32-4; Cycles Journal 1996, and others published as early as 1972
17 Tim Radford “Evidence of 3,000 BC Calamity” 16th December 2004, The Guardian
18 Correspondence from Maurice Cotterell, 13th September 2002
19 Space Daily “New Found Star May Be Third-Closest”, 26th May 2003 http://www.spacedaily.com/news/stellar-03a.html
20 Correspondence from John Lee, 18th March 2004
21 R. Britt "Weird Object Beyond Pluto Gets Stranger" 14th April 2004 http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/hubble_sedna_040414.html With thanks to David Pearson
22 "Unique moon may partner Sedna" New Scientist 21 August 2004 http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996295
23 The Western Mail "University team's theory causes stir" 30th August 2004, with thanks to David Pearson http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=14585326&method=full&sieid=50082&headline=university-team-s-theory-causes-stir-name_page.html
24 Maggie McKee "Stray Star may have jolted Sedna" 27th July 2004, with thanks to Lee Covino and Brant McLaughlin http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996204