by Andy Lloyd
A Planetary Spanner in the Works
If the number of planets in the solar system is simply nine, as is generally accepted at the present time, then there would be absolutely no reason to think that these orbits should change through the life of the solar system. That is why this fact is never discussed, because it is irrelevant under the conditions we think are prevalent in our solar system. The problem only arises when we consider the additional existence of a binary solar companion like our Dark Star.
This situation is a bit like the argument for Einstein's special relativity.3 'Normal' common sense physical laws apply for most situations, but they break down when objects are accelerated towards the speed of light. But the very fact that this happens indicates that there is something about the how the Universe works as a whole that we missed before considering the relativity problem. In our case, every object in the solar system can affect all of the other objects, when the energy of its orbit changes.
So we can legitimately state that if a comet changes its orbit because it moved close to a planet and was perturbed by it, then that change in the orbital energy of the comet will change the entire system. However, that change would be so infinitesimally minute that it is effectively negligible. For all intents and purposes, the subsequent effect is unobservable. So, the common sense physical laws still apply.
However, this situation alters dramatically as the comet we are considering starts to get larger in mass. The bigger it gets, the greater the overall orbital energy it carries with it. How about a comet whose mass is greater than that of a gas giant? Would the same effect of a change in its orbit be measurable then? Absolutely. One physicist I have corresponded with about this, put it very succinctly:
“The inner planets are pretty tightly bound to the sun. The binding energy scales like M m / r, where M is the solar mass, M the planetary mass, and r the orbital radius. It is, therefore, hard to see how a shift in orbit of a lightly bound outer planet would significantly affect any of the inner planets (e.g. Earth), unless the outer planet was very massive”.4 [my emphasis]
So, if Planet X is simply a Mars-sized object, then the binding energies of the inner planets would not be significantly affected by any given change in its orbit. However, if we consider a binary companion, such as a small brown dwarf, then there would be a measurable effect. If the brown dwarf's binding energy changed, due to a perturbation of its loosely-bound orbit, then the Earth's orbit would alter. It could contract or expand, depending upon the change to its binding energy.1
The Dark Star's mass is presumably several times that of Jupiter, which in turn is more massive than all the other planets in the system combined. So the entire mass of the planetary system becomes multiplied upwards from what we normally work with, and the Dark Star itself accounts for the majority of that total planetary mass. This means that the relationship between the Dark Star and the other planets is important, in terms of the overall energy of the solar system: it becomes our “speed of light” issue. Alter the energy of the Dark Star orbit, and the rest of the planets will feel a significant and observable jolt as a result!
Because the Dark Star's orbit lies beyond the planetary solar system, it is only loosely bound to the sun, and is thus more likely to be affected by outside influences. Although we should not say that its orbit is necessarily 'unstable', it is clearly subject to change, like the comets.
Assuming that any given perturbation, or change in its orbit, is not extreme enough to hurl the Dark Star into the sun or out of the solar system completely, the fact is that the rest of the planets would still be affected by any given change. This is because the Dark Star's mass is so great, that even though its orbit is relatively distant it will still play a major part in reshaping the orbital energies of the other planets, in order to conserve the overall energy of the system.
In that way, we can legitimately talk about the planetary orbits collectively expanding and contracting as a response to the perturbation of the Dark Star. So, if the orbit of the Dark Star were to migrate away from the sun, the Earth's orbit would expand, the length of the Earth year would increase, and the world would become colder. This would happen to all the other planets, asteroids and comets at the same time as well, as the whole system changes in response to the Dark Star's orbital contraction. There would be a small, but collective, mass migration.
Conversely, if the Dark Star was nudged into a more expanded orbit, then the orbits of the known planets and other solar system objects would collectively contract. All of these worlds would become a little warmer, and their years would be shorter. Readers acquainted with myths about the year gaining or losing days from the calendar will no doubt raise an eyebrow at this point. As much as I'd love to delve into this subject at this juncture, a careful examination of such mythology is best left to a future book.
Now, we know that the Earth's global climate system is complicated, and possibly rather fragile. I suggest that even a relatively small orbital change that, say, saw the Earth year expand or contract by just a few days, would be sufficient to trigger major climate change as a response. This is why I think that the Dark Star could be responsible for certain aspects of the phenomenon called Ice Ages.
Ice Ages and Interglacials
We are all familiar with the term “Ice Age'” The normal understanding of the term relates to a prehistoric time when much of the Northern Hemisphere was covered in continental sheets of ice. This Ice Age slowly wound down over the course of several thousand years, leading to the extinction of many species which had become specially developed to cope with the extreme conditions of cold prevalent during the glacial period. This, then, is the extent of common knowledge about Ice Ages.
It turns out that the last Ice Age was one in a series of such Ice Ages, which have been coming and going over the course of the last four million years. The fluctuation between these Ice Ages and the warmer Interglacial periods seems to follow an approximately 100,000 year cycle. Evidence emerged in the 1960's which persuaded scientists that the Pleistocene era had been dominated by this cycle.5 Such a cycle required an explanation.
The first ideas about the possibility of Ice Ages were written about in the 18th Century, but received little attention. The idea was put forward to explain the phenomenon of erratic boulders strewn across the landscape of Europe. It was taken more seriously in the 19th Century, when it was promoted by the Swiss Louis Agassiz.
Almost immediately, the idea started to become associated with astronomical cycles, but this was within the context of great controversy about the subject as a whole. It took a long while for the concept of Ice Ages to become acceptable, and even longer for the link between the fluctuations of Ice Ages and Interglacial periods to be established. This may be because the cycle itself is a rather complex one, containing other minor patterns of climate change.
The Milankovitch Model
The link to Earth's movement through the solar system was made by a Serb engineer and mathematician named Milutin Milankovitch. He looked at how variables in the Earth's tilt, precession and orbital eccentricity might fit in with climate change over periods of many thousands of years. He created a theoretical model for establishing a link between climate and astronomical influences, but the detail of this model could only be put to the test when dating techniques were developed to provide a detailed picture of climate change over the millennia.
This took many, many years and, in the meantime, the Milankovitch Model was widely dismissed by scientists. In the 1970's, experimental techniques were developed which were able to provide sufficiently detailed quantitative data to properly test the Milankovitch hypothesis. As a result, the dating of climate change was found to fit with the complexity of his proposed astronomical cycles.5
The major 100,000 year cycle, connected as it is with changes in the Earth's eccentricity, is peppered with periods of dramatic change. These can be sudden and extreme. The Earth's geological record has helped us to realize that the world's climate changes dramat
ically, often without warning.
For example, ice cores examined in Greenland show that, when the last Ice Age was coming to a close some 15,000 years ago, there was one occasion when continent-sized ice sheets melted and fell apart within just one decade. Then the climate cooled again, going through a fluctuating pattern of change before the Ice Age finally completely receded.6
Work carried out in the Antarctic has shown that the weight of the continental Ice Cap changed dramatically about 14,000 years ago, leading to Tectonic deformation in the western Marie Byrd Land and the Ross Embayment area. This may have been brought about by separation and crustal uplift, caused by isostatic rebound following the last glacial maximum.7 As we can see, massive climate changes took place in both hemispheres over a similar time-frame, and scientists now accept that the coming and going of Ice Ages occurs on a global level.8
The Ice Age/Interglacial cycle fluctuates with a complex rhythm dependent upon the Earth's variable eccentricity in its orbit, as well as its tilt and precession. There is even a relatively minor effect attributable to variations in the gravitational pull of the other planets felt by the Earth over time! One can see how fragile the world is, if such seemingly inconsequential variables can have such dramatic effects on the global climate. It should now be clear why I can argue that orbital changes of the Dark Star could cause such a system to unbalance even more dramatically.
I need to make it clear that the Dark Star does not influence this Milankovitch Cycle. I am not proposing that it is another causal variable in an already well-established pattern of climate change connected with the Earth's movement in the solar system.
What I am attempting to establish is whether the Dark Star might be the causal factor behind why these Ice Ages occur at all.
Ice Epochs
For the vast majority of geological time, the Earth has had no ice caps. In effect, the whole planet was an ice-free zone during immensely long periods of time, spanning hundreds of millions of years.
During those ice-free eons of time, the Earth was presumably still undergoing the same rotational and orbital changes. Its orbit's eccentricity was presumably just as variable. Its angle of tilt still changed over time. Its precession, the wobble about its own axis, still took place, presumably. Even the gravitational influence of the other planets must have still played a part. In other words, the multiple factors governing the Milankovitch Cycle were still very much at work.
Yet, for some reason no one can fathom, the Earth saw no ice for hundreds of millions of years at a time. However, the global warmth experienced by this planet during those extended periods would occasionally be exchanged for periods of intense cold known as Ice Epochs.
The most recent Ice Epoch, which lasted for about four million years up until about 10,000 years ago, was fragmented into a number of periods of glaciation with intermittent warmer periods, associated with the Milankovitch Cycle. When we casually talk about the last Ice Age, we are simply referring to the last in a series of Ice Ages that made up the Ice Epoch.
It's possible that the Ice Epoch has not actually ended at all, but that our world could yet be dramatically plunged back into a new Ice Age, as part of the Ice Epoch's internal cycle. We may simply be living through a warm interglacial period at the moment, which may be an unsettling thought.
Scientists are still unable to offer a definitive solution to the reason why long-period Ice Epochs occur at all, bearing in mind that during most of the last billion years this planet had no permanent ice. In fact, it appears that the Ice Age that occurred 600 million years ago was so extensive that the whole globe may have been affected, leading to what some scientists have termed “Snowball Earth”. On either side of this extreme period of almost total global glaciation, there was no ice whatsoever. Yet, the reasons behind these massive fluctuations in the terrestrial climate remain elusive.9
We are currently four million years into one of these periods of cooling, which sometimes lasts a hundred million years or more. Our current era appears to be a period of glacial retreat, a process which we are accelerating due to our own environmental destruction. The reasons for the advance and retreat of the glaciers during an ice age is quite well understood, dependent as they are upon various orbital factors. But why these extremely long, cool periods occur at all is just not understood.
In the last billion years, long periods of glaciation have occurred during these geological periods:
1. During the late Protozoic (800-600 million years ago).
2. During parts of the Ordovician and Silurian (between about 460 and 430 million years ago).
3. During the Pennsylvanian and Permian (between about 350 and 250 million years ago).
4. During the late Neogene to Quaternary (the last four million years).10
When trying to understand why these long periods of glaciation should be occurring, scientists look at a number of contributory factors, including changing continental positions, uplift of continental blocks, reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere and changes in the Earth's orbit. The mechanisms of plate tectonics contribute to the formation of extensive ice caps by intermittently providing large land masses at high latitudes for the ice to build upon. The subsequent formation of large ice-sheets appears to be catalyzed by positive feedback mechanisms due to reflection of sunlight away from the Earth, and thus general cooling of the planet. Changes in the orbit of the Earth around the sun are also alluded to, particularly with respect to the Earth's eccentricity, tilt and the direction the North Pole points towards.10
But these explanations are simply the same ones that are used to explain the Milankovitch Cycle. They simply become overextended when being brought to bear on the problem of Ice Epochs. The problem of this particular variation takes us to a new level, calling for an external influence that is simply missing.
There does not appear to be any known mechanism that could explain why the Earth is wrapped in ice for hundreds of millions of years, then completely free of ice for similar periods of time: It's almost as though the Earth has moved into a new orbit.
Thinking the Unthinkable
Towards the beginning of this chapter, we looked at the orbital binding energies and noted that both astronomers and physicists are well acquainted with the idea that planetary orbits are reliant upon inter-dependent energetic relationships, rather than simply gravitational interactions. In this way, a large rogue body shifting its orbital path would necessarily cause orbital shifts in the other planets in the same system.
The fact that theory called for the Earth's orbit to actually migrate seems to have created artificial limits on the starting point of the binary companion's orbit, at least in the minds of the scientific advocates of the Nemesis theory. Yet, what we are seeing in the evidence presented in this book is that the migration of the Earth is not impossible at all; in fact, it is absolutely pivotal for a proper understanding of our planet's history.
The fact that there is way too much water on this planet compared with the theoretical situation implied by its current location is a major clue. Then there are the mysterious comings and goings of these Ice Epochs. I am quite sure that scientists looking at these problems must have at least considered the possibility that the Earth's orbit has shifted at times during the lifetime of the solar system.
But because there is currently no rational mechanism to allow this to occur, this common sense solution is shelved in favour of more elaborate ones. Yet, the existence of the Dark Star creates a viable and dramatic causal factor. It should allow us to think outside the box.
I suspect that more evidence to support this hypothesis will emerge, as our knowledge of planetary science increases over the coming years. Future study of the other terrestrial planets' geology will provide further evidence for other cataclysms on other worlds, and my bet is that the same boundary chronologies will be discovered. After all, if the planetary binding energies change as a result of a 'phase change' in the Dark Star's orbit, then all of the planets will be affected. Local p
lanetary conditions might alter the physical manifestation of the effect, but the timing would necessarily be the same.
In this I can make a scientific prediction based upon my hypothesis. Epochal boundary changes on Mars and Venus will be synchronistic with the P-Tr boundary event, the Precambrian-Cambrian explosion and the late, great bombardment, or 'lunar cataclysm'. Other huge changes in the geology and climate of these worlds will be found to be synchronistic with changes on this planet too, including extraterrestrial geological markers commensurate with the sudden onset of long-period terrestrial Ice Epochs.
Will the patterns of glacial advance and retreat over Epochs be the same on Mars as it is on Earth, for example? Was Mars similarly warm over 4 million years ago, only succumbing to a long period of severe glaciation, as the Earth became similarly gripped by the 4 million year long Ice Epoch? As the Earth steadily warms will we see a similar pattern emerge on Mars, leading slowly towards a more habitable climate on the red planet?
Changing Poles
Other researchers have considered other radical ideas to explain anomalous patterns of Ice Age fluctuation.
For instance, in Graham Hancock's book “The Fingerprints of the Gods”, he discusses the theories of Charles Hapgood regarding “Earth-crust displacement”. Evidence of sudden global climate change in our prehistory is not new, but some people may not be aware of the many anomalies that have been found, indicating extremely sudden change. For instance, “flash-frozen mammoths in Northern Siberia and Alaska, and the 90ft tall fruit trees locked in the permafrost deep inside the Arctic Circle at a latitude where nothing grows”.11