Vaughn's Homepages - Astronomy Anomalies.

Introduction.

I was spurred to do this page by a comment from my partner about someone where he works. This 3rd party is a conspiracy buff and was relating some story about a mysterious planet that periodically sweeps through the solar system, disrupting orbits and causing the collapse of civilisations, etc. This planet is called Planet X, or Nibiru, and was supposedly known by the Mayans/Sumerians/Egyptians/Atlantians/Aliens from Zeta Reticuli, etc. The Mayan calendar is supposed to end in 2016 because they knew that this mysterious body was going to come and rough up the Earth so much that civilisation would collapse!

My first comment was that it was a load of piffle and that any planet that could have that effect would be detectable by the way it disturbed other planets.

However I recalled something from more serious astronomy sources about a theoretical body that might be responsible for cyclical events on Earth.

So what we're going to do here is first of all look at the scientific hypothesis of Planet X and Nemesis. Secondly we will look at the "alternative" phenomena of Planet X as associated with New Agers etc.

Time to look at another anomaly! :-)

The Facts around Planet X and Nemesis

This theory came about in an attempt to explain the periodic cycle of mass extinctions that seems to occur through the fossil record. The basic premise is that an extremely large and dark (hence undetectable) body, is orbiting the extreme outer edges of the Solar System. As it swings towards the Sun in the course of it's long orbit, it comes close enough to a shell of frozen comets called the Oort Cloud that surrounds the outer reaches of the Solar System. As is passes by, it's immense gravitational pull tugs a swarm of these comets out of their normal trajectory and sends then scooting in towards the inner reaches of the Solar System, bombarding the planets and whatever is on their surfaces.

The first permutation of this theory was called Planet X and was devised by American physicists David Whitmore and John Matese. Planet X is supposed to be a large gas-giant planet.

The second go at this was the Nemesis Theory, devised in 1984 by Richard Muller, Marc Davis and Piet Hutthat. In Nemesis, the perturbing body is some kind of faint companion star of the Sun, possible a brown dwarf.

The Evidence - fossil record.

The fossil record does show evidence of mass extinctions. David Raup and Jack Sepkoski from the University of Chicago, showed that mass extinctions in the fossil record were cyclical, with an interval of roughly 26 to 30 million years.

Co-incident with this, was a growing body of evidence of major crater formation on the Earth. These periods of bombardment also had a period of approximately 30 million years, and these cycles roughly co-incided with each other.

The difficulty with crater formation on Earth, as opposed to any of the rocky planets in the solar system, is that we have an active cycle of erosion happening. Plate tectonics and volcanism build up landforms, and erosion by wind, water reduces down landforms. Large craters up to 200km in diameter may survive erosional forces for up to 25 million years, but evidence of smaller craters will be gone in a relatively short amount of geological time. The evidence for crater bombardment on Earth is eventually wiped clean, whereas on the Moon, which has no active erosion happening, craters last for billions of years.

The One that Killed the Dinosaurs

Many people have heard of the theory that it was an asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs. Referred to as the Creataceous/Tertiary Extinction Event, about 65 million years ago, something happened that virtually wiped out most of the dinosaur population (However many other species survived, like mammals etc.)

When looking at rock layers from this age, there is a thin line that contains abnormally high levels of an element called iridium. Iridium is found on Earth, but only in the molten interior, not rocks in the crust. The ratios of iridium and other trace elements found in this thin layer was consistent with the composition of a rocky asteroid.

There was also a sooty layer there as well. Calculations by Ed Anders of the University of Chicago, showed that the equivalent of 90% of all the living matter on the surface of the Earth at the time would have to have been incinerated to created that much soot.

Iridium - Asteroid or Volcanism?

The presence of iridium layered in the ground is striking for several reasons.

Iridium is extremely rare in the crust of the Earth. It is found deep down in the molten layers beneath the crust, and the only time this source of iridium can come up, is in volcanic eruptions.
The iridium layer dated to the time of the end of the cretaceous period, is sandwiched between two layers of clay. The older layer of clay shows an abundance of micro-fossils. After the iridium layer, the younger layer of clay shows only one species of micro-fossil.
This iridium layer is found throughout the world in similarly aged strata. The existence and age of this layer has been verified by many different teams of scientists, affiliated with many different institutions. An impact from an asteroid would throw material up into the atmosphere where it would settle out world wide.
Within the iridium layer, one also finds quartz granules of "shocked quartz" called stishovite that can only be formed by a catastrophic explosive event. Stishovite has been found in nuclear blast craters and impact craters from meteorites, but not in volcanic craters.
There is also the presence of basalt which has vitrified into glass spherules formed when the asteroid and rocks from the Earth's crust were shock-melted and sprayed up into the stratosphere and beyond. This molten matter cooled into minute glass spheres. These are mixed though the cretaceous iridium layer as well.

Iridium from some kind of monstrous volcanic event would not contain stishovite or the minute glass spherules. The iridium layer at the cretaceous extinction event does.

So!

We have two rather heady theories about catastrophic extinctions. The evidence that we have consist of one example of anomalous minerals, that we believe can only be formed by the impact on Earth by asteroidal bodies. The asteroid would need to be about a kilometre or so in size, in order to cause a nuclear winter effect which would shut down the food chain. Smaller impactors would still create a worldwide firestorm that could have a similar effect, and there is evidence to show that such a firestorm and impact did occur at the cretaceous-tertiary extinction event.

But...

There are objections to Planet X and Nemesis.

The steeply elliptical orbit of an object like Planet X would not be stable for very long. Planet X would eventually be ejected from the solar system. Of course, whether this has already happened or will happen in the future is impossible to say.
The theory of an anomalous, large body disturbing comets and sending them crashing in to the centre of the solar system is an explanation for the evidence found on earth, but...
... we have not yet found Planet X or Nemesis!

We have no proof as to the existence of such an object.

What we do have is a theory that appears to fit the facts. Yet the critical locus of investigation, our smoking gun, is nowhere to be found.

As a species, we don't seem to do anything to help ourselves until disaster has already befallen us, or unless it feeds one of our many collective paranoias. There are programs being run, their purpose being to catalogue and track bodies that may cross the path of Earth's orbit or that could potentially crash into us. The impact of comet Shoemaker-Levi into Jupiter certainly painted a very vivid picture of the effects of a planetary bombardment.

Shoemaker-Levi also demonstrated another point. Jupiter, being the largest planet in the solar system and having a substantial gravitational attraction of it's own, is mostly responsible for either vacuuming up stray comets and asteroids, or ejecting them from the inner reaches of the solar system. Jupiter helps to safeguard us.

Detecting Planet X and Nemesis

So, how likely is it that we can find Nemesis before it finds us?

There are several ways to locate an undiscovered planet in our solar system.

Ever since the time of Isaac Newton, we have had a remarkably accurate understanding of how planets orbit the Sun. Essentially we are caught by the sun's gravity, and gravity is a function of mass. So the more massive an object, the stronger the gravitational pull from it. Now if there was only one planet orbiting a sun, then the planet would move as smoothly and predictably as clockwork. However, throw in another planet and things get slightly complicated. As two planets pass each other in their orbits, they start to exhibit a gravitational influence on each other. As they pass each other, they tug and tussle gravitationally. Now, these attractions when compared to the gravitational pull of the sun and the momentum and speed of the planets as they orbit the sun, are small in comparison. But they are measurable. When a planet's position does not match where we think it should be, and we are sure of the accuracy of the measurements, then it's likely the discrepancy is caused by another planet's gravitational influence
For practical purposes, the stars are a fixed background to us. But the planets appear to move amongst that background. If you take a photo of a part of the sky that includes a planet, then take another picture, say a week later, and flick back and forth between the two pictures, the planet would appear to jump back and forth in it's position, relative to the stars. This technique of "blinking" was used to discover Pluto and is how we currently "look" for asteroids and comets
The least proactive way to discover a planet is accidentally as it passes in front of a star. The star will appear to blink off then on as it's light is blocked by the planet.

A First Conclusion from the Facts.

So! There's a lot of guff above this paragraph. What can we conclusively say?

There is evidence of massive extinction events in the fossil record.
There is evidence of asteroidal impacts on the surface of the Earth
The dates of some of these asteroid impacts co-incide with the dates of some extinction events.
There is direct evidence that the Cretaceous/Tertiary Extinction Event happened at the same time as an event which left a distinctive layer of iridium, stishovite and glass spherules. There is also a layer of soot at this time, calculated to have been caused by the incineration of 90% of the land-based biomatter on the Earth at the time. An asteroidal impact is the most likely cause, and a massive impact crater dated to the end of the cretaceous period has been found off the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Of the two theories, Planet X is least satisfactory from the point of view of orbital dynamics. Such a planet should have been ejected from the Solar system within a billion years of it's formation. Nemesis could be plausible if the dark companion to the sun orbits out as far as a light year from us. It's not unlikely that the sun could have a companion either. Over 50% of the stars in the sky are binary stars.

However, I think the following point is the clincher against the idea of Planet X or Nemesis:

We have no direct evidence of the existence of Planet X or Nemesis. Surveys by satellites with infra-red detectors have failed to show anything. Why should we worry about infra-red? If the sun did have a companion star that was a red or brown dwarf, or some kind of gas-giant, then these objects would show up by the energy they would radiate in the infra-red part of the spectrum. Infra-red satellites like IRAS have conducted surveys of the sky and found no evidence of such an object in our solar system.

The less than scientific interpretations of the Planet X theory.

Having done with the facts, we now get onto the exciting part - the "alternative" theories of Planet X.

The premise of the New Age Planet X is that it refers to a 12th planet of our solar system (which only works out if you count the Sun and Moon as planets apparently!!) This 12th planet called Nibiru is going to sweep past the earth very close, and cause the Earth to flip on it's polar axis.

Zecharia Sitchin wrote a book on this, his information gleaned from an extremely literal look at the legends and myths of the ancient Sumerians.

Now combine with this a woman named Nancy Lieder who believes she channels telepathic messages from aliens who live on the 12th planet (Planet X) who hail originally from Zeta Reticuli. These aliens are experimenting with genetic hybridisation of human beings.

I rest my case! :-)

A Second Conclusion.

This theory is even less likely than the first two. There are many websites that have critiqued the New Age Planet X theory, but in a nutshell, the arguements against the New Age Planet X are the same as the Planet X/Nemesis hypothesis. Add to this the fact that we have no proof confirming the existence of aliens from Zeta Reticuli (A real star by the way.) or genetically altered human beings.

My conclusion is this: a planet large enough to disturb the Oort Cloud to send in swarms of bombarding comets would have been detected by now, either by direct observation in infra-red or by the observable gravitational effects on the outer planets. There are too many "maybes" with Planet X.

Bibliography.

Steel, Duncan. Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets. The Search for the Million Megaton Menace that Threatens Life on Earth. John Wiley & Sons, Inc (1995). ISBN 0-471-30824-2

Moore, Patrick and Tombaugh, Clyde W. Out of the Darkness. The Planet Pluto. Lutterworth Press, Guilford, Surrey. (1980) ISBN 0-8117-1163-3