The Dark Star: The Planet X Evidence
Page 24
The scientists who had been studying this behavior could offer no explanation for the slowing down of the probes, and had checked and rechecked their data for years. The results were substantive enough to actually call into question our current theoretical understanding of gravity! Despite NASA's insistence that the problem of this "anomalous gravitational attraction" could be put to rest, the official Pioneer homepage continues to recognize this as a genuine mystery.10
One must then question whether these gravitational effects might indicate the additional gravitational influence of our unseen brown dwarf? Dr. Carl Sagan once postulated this possibility in 1995, before this scientific anomaly was publicly discussed. He argued that the presence of a massive planet just beyond Neptune would have been given away by variations in the trajectories of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft.11
It turns out that, in the case of the Pioneer craft, such an anomaly has indeed happened. But instead of pulling the craft towards a distant, unseen planet, the effect has been an extra pull form the direction of the sun. It's all very strange.
An interesting footnote to this story occurred one year after the NASA report, presenting a possible explanation that was given about Pioneer 10's weird behavior. It would appear that the craft had been unexpectedly “pushing itself in one particular direction”. No explanation was forthcoming about the same behavior in the other probes, and this discussion of Pioneer 10 was made in the context of it having also been “mysteriously knocked off course” by a new, as yet unidentified, object orbiting the sun.12
The effect occurred in December 1992, when the craft was deflected from its course for about 25 days. The discovery of a Kuiper Belt object was then claimed by researchers at Queen Mary and Westfield College, in London, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
Would our consideration of a widely distributed Dark Star system help to explain this slowing of the spacecraft? After all, the Dark star is very distant at the current time, and its gravitational influence on bodies nearer to the sun would be fairly negligible. But if we consider clusters of bodies along the orbital path of the Dark Star, which are nearer to the planetary solar system, then we can conceive of a way that they might have some minor, but measurable effect.
This effect would be nebulous, however, because by their very nature these clusters are distributed over space, as is the sum of their gravitational pull. In effect, the known gravitational pull of the central solar system itself is greater taking these clusters into account, and this might explain the observed Pioneer anomaly.
In case you're wondering why the Voyager probes are not similarly affected, Dr. Anderson argued in 2001 that the current trajectories of the Voyager probes could not be analyzed in the same way, because they make use of a different kind of orientation and propulsion system.13
10,800 Years Ago
These clusters of minor planetary bodies and comets are spaced along the orbital path of the Dark Star (which is the same orbital path as Sedna, in effect). One cluster is located alongside Sedna, and is heading towards perihelion at the moment. This is the cluster on the opposite side of the sun, opposite from the Dark Star. A second cluster trails behind the Dark Star and, for the sake of argument, may have moved through its perihelion about 3,600 years ago, around 1600BCE.
There has been a lot of conjecture about catastrophism occurring at that period of time, centred around Biblical texts and other sources. It is beyond the scope of this book to explore them in depth, but one need only browse through the collected works of Immanuel Velikovsky to get the general idea. Such arguments were used to generate the concept of an imminent passage of Nibiru in the very near future. This argument about an extended Dark Star system may help some to reconcile such a scenario with the scientific need to place the actual Dark Star at a very considerable distance.
The next cluster of minor planets and comets would have arrived closer to the known planets during the actual perihelion of the Dark Star, some 5,400 years ago. During this period the sun behaved very strangely, dramatically affecting the Earth's climate.
The date that corresponds with the last full orbital period, when Sedna last achieved perihelion and the Dark Star last reached its furthest point, was about 10,800 years ago. This date is associated with great changes to the climate of this planet; Earth - changes that include the sudden warming of northern oceans over short time periods, leading to the catastrophic melting of ice sheets. For instance, the North Atlantic Ocean appears to have warmed by seven degrees Celsius over a period of just 50 years, bringing in its wake dramatic changes to the climate of Greenland and other land masses skirting the edges of the North Atlantic.
Such changes were not isolated to this region, but were concurrent with other climate shifts in China and across the Himalayas.14 Studies of ancient tree-rings near Lake Superior in North America showed that there was no warning of the sudden flooding of the forests there 11,000 years ago. This dramatic flooding resulted from the melting of glaciers at that time, an event that Theodore Bornhorst, Professor of Geology at Michigan Technological University, thinks could happen again, as our own global warming accelerates.15
These sorts of changes to the world's climate sound eerily reminiscent of the kinds of Global Warming issues our world faces today. In our present case, the most marked changes seem to be occurring in the Arctic regions where melting processes appear to be accelerating. It is most likely that our industrial output of greenhouse gases is to blame for the problems we now face, but it may also be true that there is a link to the distant past discussed above, spanning 10,800 years. Because, if a celestial body, or its distributed system of accompanying objects, is to blame, then the global effects registered on our planet would be cyclical. Such considerations make the search for the Dark Star and its extended retinue an ever more urgent consideration.
How Orbital Resonance Started
We have seen that our solar system was not born in isolation, and probably interacted with at least one other star system in the early days.16 Scientists have begun to speculate whether a low mass star, or even a brown dwarf system, may have come so close to the sun that part of its system was captured, leading to the existence of scattered disc objects in the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, and other anomalies in the outer solar system.17 Perhaps the low mass star moved close to the sun during the period of the late, great bombardment some 3.9 billion years ago, when the terrestrial bodies in the inner solar system were subject to an unprecedented period of destruction caused by a swarm of massive asteroids and comets.
This would imply that the sun's planetary system was deluged by the other star's outer entourage of comets, perhaps even its planets. Many of them were captured by the sun and fell into distant orbits, like Sedna and 2000 CR105. We don't yet know the scale of this capture of objects, but it seems entirely reasonable to speculate that one of them was the Dark Star Marduk; an extraordinary object of mythic proportions.
Would these bodies become resonant around the rogue planet among them? I believe so. Resonances are important to astronomers, because the repetitive influence of a major planet can stabilize or destabilize the orbits of smaller bodies in its vicinity. If the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt played host to the perihelion transit of the Dark Star then its influence on some of the smaller bodies in the belt should become fairly structured over time.
There are precedents for this in the planetary solar system. Pluto shares a resonant orbit with Neptune that has a three-to-two ratio: Neptune orbits the sun three times for every two circuits by Pluto. This arises because the gravitational effect of the larger body over time, shepherds the smaller one into a stable orbital orientation.
This results in a situation where their orbital paths actually cross in a spatial sense, but they never actually meet, or collide, because they dance around each other in a coordinated fashion. This is the way the dynamics of planetary bodies normally works. The same is also true for three of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa and Ganymede orbit
the mighty gas giant in a 4:2:1 resonance.
ExtraSolar Planets
The hunt for planets outside our solar system (known as 'extrasolar' planets) is providing a growing data base of planetary behaviors, which will allow scientists to build new models about how the solar system formed. Few expect the current understanding to last for long. Already, many of the new planets exhibit unexpected behavior, indicating that our own sun's planetary system need not provide the blueprint for the entire galaxy.
For instance, brown dwarfs have been discovered orbiting parent stars in very stable systems. The sheer gravitational pull of these massive planets was once thought to rule out such possibilities. It had been thought that they would disrupt the orbits of the other planets in the star system, creating chaotic planetary systems. This is evidently not the case.
The idea was challenged by a discovery by Dr. Geoffrey Marcy's team regarding a star system some 123 light years away. The system, named HD168443, contains a giant planet that is 17 times as massive as Jupiter.
Normally, the astronomers would classify this is a brown dwarf, but this body's close proximity to its star has brought that straightforward classification into question (18). To be circling the star in the relatively close orbit involved, the body should have formed by gas accretion, yet is far more massive than the standard model for planetary formation should allow. The brown dwarf should theoretically have a destabilizing effect on the planetary system as a whole. Yet the HD168443 system is "extremely stable".19
To complicate matters still further, another massive planet, this time 7 times as massive as Jupiter, enjoys a circular orbit within the orbit of the first. A planet this size could be termed a “sub-brown dwarf”. Even with this second massive planet embedded within the planetary system, the overall system is still 'extremely stable'. This example serves to prove that gargantuan planets such as these, that defy easy classification, can surprise astronomers. They need not be disruptive at all. Instead, they might even create a certain pattern of order within a planetary system.
Further research conducted by Geoffrey Marcy, et al., has shown that planets circling a star can be strongly locked into resonant orbits. A second planet discovered around the star Gliese 876, a small M-type star 15 light-years from Earth, was found to orbit the star in exactly half the time it took for the previously discovered planet to do so. This impressive finding raises questions about how gravitational influence and planetary migration are involved in creating unexpected orbital configurations like this.18
This last point is important to our investigation into the question of Planet X. Arguments leveled against the existence of Planet X, based upon the current models of the solar system's emergence and development, may be on shaky ground. We simply don't know enough yet to rule anything out. But the other fascinating point about Marcy's discovery is this question of resonance. It's almost as though these two planets are harmonically converged like strings on a musical instrument.20
This kind of resonance pattern applies to the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Objects (EKBOs); small celestial bodies orbiting in an extended belt beyond Neptune. Theo Kermanidis, an engineer with an interest in the existence of Planet X, recently suggested that I study the orbits of the known EKBOs, to see if resonant patterns might indicate the presence of Nibiru within, or beyond, the Kuiper Belt.3 He provided some data and analysis that suggested to him that an undiscovered body may indeed be interacting with some of the EKBOs - but that its orbit would seem to lie well within the parameters normally suggested for Nibiru. He wondered whether a clearer picture would emerge over time, as the database of EKBOs increased, perhaps leading to the discovery of another planet in the solar system. Theo outlined his approach:
"I plotted out the known EKBO distribution and attempted to compare that with the distribution of asteroids. A couple of things to note:
1. The EKBO count could be too low to get meaningful results, but trends in the data could be discerned.
2. Asteroids cluster around specific resonances while avoiding others... because they are dynamically stable.
3. The dynamically unstable resonances can be a more accurate indicator for projecting possible relationships between orbiting bodies, because these notches in the graph are very well defined (otherwise known as Kirkwood gaps). Whereas, stable or semi-stable orbits are shown as broad peaks.
There is a strong Kirkwood gap with resonance 2:1, as well as 3:1, 5:2 and 7:3. Given these resonances, this will then be used to predict the semi-major axis of a possible influencing body".21
Intrigued by Theo's suggestion, I contacted an expert on EKBOs at Harvard about the potential for this approach. His reply was encouraging in terms of the application of Theo's method, although in this case, Neptune appeared to be the dominant influence.22
The EKBO data appears to be consistent with a resonant pattern with Neptune, but it turns out that this generalization is not universally adhered to. The bizarre, highly eccentric orbit of 2000 CR105 is a case in point. Its 'dynamically unstable' orbit is placed well beyond the influence of Neptune, raising questions about the early influences which may have played a part in forming the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt.23,24
The Kuiper Belt is classically thought to extend out to about 200AU.25 So an elliptical orbit that extends to 400AU, places 2000 CR105 between the Edgeworth-Kuiper Disc and the inner Oort Cloud (which starts about 2000AU away, according to theorists). If this object had a 'normal' orbit at 400AU, it would circle the sun every 8,000 years or so, yet its actual elliptical orbit achieves a revolution around the sun in less than half the time. In itself, this has important repercussions for the possible orbit of the Dark Star.
Based on the precedent of this eccentric orbit, we can in turn potentially extend the aphelion distance of the Dark Star, perhaps towards the inner boundary of the Oort Cloud. This extreme distance may help explain the difficulties of directly detecting an object whose influence is so keenly felt by the solar system.
To satisfy myself that a more conventional explanation for 2000 CR105's dynamically chaotic orbit had not been established in the meantime, I contacted Dr. Holman, one of the researchers involved in its discovery. Its origins, he noted, still remain a mystery and the subject of much speculation.26
I think that Theo's proposal about the resonance of the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Objects deserves further consideration: there may be more scattered EKBOs, whose perihelion distances lie beyond the point where Neptune's influence can be invoked as an explanation for their behavior. If these more distant objects were also to show a resonance pattern - but this time with an unknown Perturber beyond the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt - then the position of this planetary body may be readily verifiable in the not too distant future.
This would assume, of course, that Planet X is 'behaving itself'. But, what if its orbit is itself erratic?
Resonance
The idea of "resonance" is an intriguing one. One assumes that it is an effect that emerges over time as planets 'shepherd' comets, asteroids, or even moons. As we have seen, Geoffrey Marcy's planet-hunting team, from Berkeley, California, have found two planets whose orbital periods resonate together.
Evidently, this effect is a strong one, yet the astronomers seem surprised by this. Presumably, although resonance is noted, it is not predicted for planetary bodies. In other words, our current understanding of celestial mechanics does not lead us to presume that the planets will fall into orbital patterns whose periods become integer ratios of one another. Is that because most of the planets in our solar system quite clearly are not in resonance with one another? Because they are quite evidently more chaotically arranged, we have never assumed that resonance is 'the norm'.
Let's follow this line of thought for a moment. The ancients were not averse to the idea that there was a natural harmony at work in the heavens. Pythagoras, for instance, believed that there was a "dynamic harmony" in the universe, and that the constant movement of the planets and stars created a metaphysical 'music', that was dete
ctable by those with a mystical understanding of the universe.27
I'm not about to suggest that we could scientifically qualify this belief, but the idea of a celestial harmony at work is an interesting one nonetheless. Perhaps, then, there is a force at work within celestial mechanics that creates harmony between the 'celestial spheres', one that scientists have not discovered yet. But why wouldn't they have? Because, simply, the evidence from our solar system does not immediately support the idea of a universal resonance between the worlds. The planets simply don't behave like that.
But we now know that they can and do behave like that elsewhere. Perhaps our solar system is the exception, rather than the rule. If more double/triple planet star systems are discovered which exhibit the same kind of resonance as that found in the planetary system of Gliese 876, then our understanding of the influence of planets over one another would have to be reconsidered.
I think this could be a distinct possibility. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I would predict such an effect. You see, I think that this harmonic resonance is not found in the solar system as much as it should be, because the solar system has recently been disturbed.
The natural harmony, or resonance, between most of the planets of the solar system no longer exists. Over time, I suspect that the resonance would once more be achieved, but the current relative 'chaos' within the pattern of planetary orbits around the sun indicates the presence of another major planet, one whose distant orbital pattern is a disruptive, rather than cohesive, influence.
Order from Chaos
To explain the orderly alignments of the planets within the solar system, astrophysicists have traditionally argued that the planets formed in their present orbital configurations, obeying "Bode's Law" right from the word 'go'. This is partly due to the fact that we don't have planets flying around our ears, as one might have thought if things had begun more chaotic in the past. In other words, the accepted physical models are based upon Newton's Laws, that the planets will keep going in a given orbit indefinitely, unless directly perturbed by another planetary body.