The Dark Star: The Planet X Evidence (25 page)

Despite the promising distribution pattern of EKBOs, the 'passing
star' solution is unable to tackle the very problem it sets out to solve: it
simply fails to create a 'truncation' in the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt.
⁸
This is a big problem for the 'passing star' scenario, leading us to suspect
that the origin of the massive object involved is homegrown.

There is a greater degree of complexity apparent in the
observational data that the passage of a passing star struggles to explain in
these calculations. Stellar encounters seem to be able to drag out the bodies
in the disc to a variable degree, but cannot account for the Kuiper Cliff in
its entirety. Dr. Quillen, an Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy at
the University of Rochester in the USA, concedes this point in her paper, describing
another possibility that is of tremendous significance to our investigation:
she concludes that if the existence of the Kuiper Cliff is eventually
confirmed, then it is much more likely to have formed as a result of “a
companion, either stellar or planetary”.
⁹

I was quite surprised by this conclusion when I read it, because
it wasn't the direction the paper initially seemed to head off in. Her
calculations not only ruled out a stellar flyby scenario for the solar system,
they also pointed in the direction of a massive companion. This was a promising
lead which needed following up.

Game, Set and Match?

I wrote to Professor Alice Quillen and asked her about a few
points to do with her paper, and put it to her that a bound companion must have
caused the anomalous edge in the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, as she had so quietly
stated. After urging a little caution about how concrete science's knowledge of
the alleged Kuiper Cliff was, she confirmed the point. The edge in the
Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt could not be the result of a single stellar fly-by,
because this would be incapable of producing a sharp enough edge.

She considers it likely that the effect was produced by a bound
companion that is no longer there. That bound companion would have to have been
moving around the sun in an eccentric orbit. She argued that it must have been
expelled from the solar system some time ago, simply because it must be large,
and thus readily detectable even at great distances:

Alice Quillen:

So suppose we believe that the edge is real and sharp. Then a
flyby can't have produced it. Something bound could, because it gets multiple
passes. A bound low mass planet could do it, but would have been detected even
out at 10000 AU in the Oort cloud. An Earth out there would probably not work, but
might not have been detected. You can't have anything further than a few times
10^4 AU, because nearby stars would scatter and remove it. I think that leaves
something that was previously bound and is no longer in the solar system. Oort
cloud comets are removed from the solar system too. So, it's not inconceivable
that there was a planet or nearby star bound to the sun, in an eccentric orbit
that is no longer around.
¹⁰

Andy Lloyd:

Did you mean 'low mass star' (rather than “low mass planet”)?

Alice Quillen:

I meant a Jupiter-mass planet. Yes, you have remembered things
correctly: Earth-mass type things can evade detection in the Oort cloud, but
Jupiter-mass things can't. It's hard to imagine an Earth-mass object being
able to truncate the KBO (though maybe this should be checked numerically to
make sure). It's easy to imagine a Jupiter-mass planet doing the job (don't
need to check, I have done enough simulations with Jupiter-mass objects to be
pretty sure about this). A low-mass star can truncate the KBO, too.
¹¹

This statement by a professor of astronomy seems quite remarkable.
She considers it probable that the sun once had a bound companion, either a
star or a massive planet, which was capable of creating the edge in the
Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt over the course of many orbits. Its orbit must also have
been eccentric. This conclusion has been reached because nothing else fits the
observed facts.

This is the Dark Star Theory, but with the proviso that the Dark
Star is no longer there. Not because the observed facts don't imply its
existence, but because its existence implies its detection. However, as we have
seen, such faith in the assumed ability to observe such a body may be
misplaced.

The binary companion existed in the past, though, and either left
the solar system at some point, or it is still orbiting the sun and has evaded
detection to date. Either way, we seem to have clear scientific evidence that
the sun has been, and may still be, part of a binary system.

I pressed Dr. Quillen a little further about the probable size of
this binary companion. She described it as a Jupiter-mass planet, or larger,
and that she had run enough simulations with Jupiter-mass planets to be sure
that it would truncate the EKB. A low-mass star could also fit the bill.

However, a terrestrial world of the size of Earth probably
wouldn't be large enough.
¹¹
So, the range of objects that were
capable of creating the observed effect is effectively the same as that covered
by the brown dwarfs. Her calculations showed that the truncation of the EKB was
caused by nothing other than a brown dwarf companion bound to the sun!

It may turn out to be true that a Jupiter-sized object cannot have
evaded detection up until now, but this is an arguable point, as discussed
already in this book. Certainly, Dr. John Murray thought that such a body could
have evaded detection in the Oort Cloud
¹²
, when he proposed his
giant planet solution at the same time as Professor John Matese.
⁹

This remains a controversial issue, but Dr. Quillen's viewpoint
also should be respected. The lack of discovery of a Jupiter-sized planet
(which is clearly leaving its footprints in the butter, so to speak) is a
puzzle, there's no doubt about that. I personally do not share the opinion that
the lack of direct detection to date automatically rules out its existence. I'm
not the only one.

Our correspondence confirmed that a body with a mass of Jupiter,
or greater, could produce the observed truncation effect in the
Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt. I wondered why Dr. Quillen hadn't published those
particular calculations as well. After all, she seems very clear about what has
created the effect in the EKB. One would have thought this was newsworthy.
Bear in mind that I had only asked her about this aspect of her work because I
had spotted one or two short lines written into the body of a scientific paper.
Because I'm already interested in the potential for a brown dwarf companion, I
had pursued the matter.

One can compare this episode directly with how the paper was
reported in New Scientist, under the ominous title: ”Rogue star smashed up the
solar system”. The article describes a fly-by of a small star, creating a
redistribution of the objects in the EKB. It doesn't discuss the fact that Dr.
Quillen concluded that such an event could not have produced the observed
truncation of the Belt. The origin of the "interloper" is described
vaguely, but the clear implication is that the object was not bound to the sun,
but came from the neighboring star cluster:

"In a paper submitted to Astronomical Journal, the
researchers suggest that the interloper probably came from the star cluster in
which the sun was formed, and that the close encounter would have occurred
within a billion years of the birth of the solar system".
¹³

Reading the article in New Scientist, one would be forgiven for
thinking that the 'passing star' is the solution concluded by the researchers;
the article fails to report that this is only half the story. If the Kuiper
Edge is for real, then the 'passing star' scenario simply fails to explain it.
Why was this not reported?

I suspect that the writer of the article did not delve too deeply
into the paper being reviewed. Perhaps a larger article might have brought up
the possibility of a bound Jupiter-sized planet being perfect for the task of
explaining the Kuiper Cliff, but somehow I doubt it. Somehow, the idea of a
binary companion the size of a brown dwarf creating this observed effect seems
too incredible.

Yet, it is eminently plausible.

When confronted by the twin problems of an astronomer burying her
real conclusion within her paper, and the scientific news media subsequently
reporting only half the story, one could be forgiven for wondering whether the
possibility of a rogue brown dwarf companion to the sun is just a little too
much for everyone's reputations to withstand. One must wonder whether such a
notion is tantamount to a modern scientific heresy.

It is clear that we cannot rely upon a singular stellar encounter
to explain the anomalies observed in the EKB. It seems quite plausible that
such an event could have happened during the early days of the solar system,
but only if the sun was part of a dense cluster of stars. The potential for
such an encounter increases if the intruder is already associated with the sun,
as in the case of an early binary companion whose orbit then fluctuates,
bringing it closer to the planets and outer proto-planetary disc.

Dr. Quillen was at pains to point out to me that the massive solar
companion must have exited solar system some time ago. This is not all that
unlikely, it seems. Such a parting of the ways is known as "binary
dissociation". It can occur at orbital periods greater than about 3,000
years, corresponding to separations on the order of a few hundred AU.
⁷
This allows astronomers to explain how stars born in dense stellar clusters end
up as simple binaries, or on their own. Such dense clusters early in the life
of a star system then allow astronomers to argue the case for stellar fly-bys,
which might otherwise be rather unlikely.

This is a rather neat trick that explains a condensed initial
environment when stars are born, helping to build mechanisms for the kind of
chaos often observed. It also allows astronomers to square that aspect with the
observed nature of older, more mature systems which are less dynamic. Of
importance to us is the very real potential for transient binary companions
early in the life of a star system. These then move on when the star cluster
breaks up. At least, that's the theory.
⁷

If the sun formed in a stellar nursery in close proximity to other
stars, then there was a good likelihood that one of them passed through the
Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt early in the solar system's history. Given what we now
know about the formation of brown dwarfs, such a body could just as easily have
been a smaller 'failed star', which may have been tempted sufficiently by the
sun's greater gravitational influence to have been captured by it, as it moved
through the EKB. This capture could have caused the brown dwarf to move through
the proto-planetary disc, interacting with the other planets in a similar way
to that outlined by Sitchin. His interpretation of the ancient myths thus
correlates well with the science we are currently discussing.

Secondly, the Dark Star 'Marduk' may have been born as a binary
companion in the first place, and migrated inwards to a new orbit that caused
its interaction with the planets. This migration might have resulted from a
stellar encounter with another young star in the relatively dense birth
cluster. This would prevent us having to worry about the sheer chance of such
an object being captured by the sun from interstellar space. In fact, Sitchin's
scenario appears to receive tentative support by this mode of thinking.

The astronomer Shigeru Ida describes the point at which a 'binary
dissociation' can take place, as about 3,000 years for the binary companion's
orbit.
⁷
Zecharia Sitchin's proposed planet Nibiru/Marduk is said to
have an orbit of 3,600 years, which would put it on a knife-edge, as far as
this effect is concerned. So the Dark Star could be disassociating right now,
and at the very least, the implication is that this isn't a terribly stable
orbit. Or it may have already dissociated, leaving only a remnant signature on
the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt at about 50AU.

This situation is consistent with my previous claims about
migration patterns of the Dark Star, and the consequent effect of changes on
the orbital energies of the planets. This is an important point to discuss. If
a Dark Star is moving around out there in a migratory way over the lifetime of
the solar system, its angular momentum has been changing during that time.
Given its distance and mass, such changes would be considerable in relation to
the solar system's angular momentum as a whole, which needs to be preserved. So
this would imply a counter-active migration of the other planets in response,
possibly leading to great climatic changes on Earth, as well as on the other
planets during their geological histories.

You see, the more mechanisms that astronomers have to call upon to
explain the varied patterns of extrasolar planetary orbits and proto-planetary
discs, the more flexible the concepts of planet formation and migration must
become. Instead of making the existence of a binary companion less plausible,
such variety helps us argue the case for keeping our options open.

It seems quite reasonable to me that the chaos of the early solar
system could have left us with a rogue massive planet out there, whose current
pattern of migration and movement urgently needs assessing. This is because it
is not an isolated body whose effect on the rest of the solar system is
negligible. Even though it may be found at a great distance, its sheer size
means that its influence on the solar system as a whole may be non-negligible.
It may explain a great many anomalies pertaining to our own planet's varied
geological history, too.

Nibiru, Once Again...

The Dark Star may have formed alongside the sun as a bound companion,
burning brightly as a young brown dwarf. It may have had an eccentric orbit
that brought it into the planetary zone of the primitive solar system, where it
interacted with the Water World 'Tiamat' as described by Sitchin. This
interaction may have disrupted the natural order of the planetary system,
causing the primordial Tiamat to migrate into the inner solar system, where it
subsequently lost the vast majority of its water and became Earth.

The Dark Star may then have migrated out of the planetary zone
sufficiently to affect only the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt from then on, despite
maintaining a relatively high eccentricity. This encounter with the sun's inner
planets early in the life of the solar system might have caused the Dark Star
to become rather more attached to the sun than it normally would have,
preventing its loss to the system by 'binary dissociation'.

The observed phenomenon of Nibiru's presence is purported to have
a cycle of 3,600 years or so. This may vary over time, depending upon how loosely
bound the Dark Star is. Science may soon spring the Dark Star from the hat -
running through an eccentric orbit which takes it from the edge of the
Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt all the way out to the inner Oort Cloud. Such a
discovery would explain why the ancients kept watch for this mythological
planet (as well as a few modern 'believers' and their rather unorthodox
priesthood!). It would explain why the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter
hasn't been completely 'swept out' by now, as it should have been had Nibiru
passed that way every 3600 years. It would stop us from having to worry about
the Kozai effect which has been used to criticize a highly inclined perihelion
transit through the planetary zone.

It would explain the early migration of the Earth to a location
where it should be completely bone dry, yet isn't. It might explain how Neptune
and Uranus are found so far away from the sun, where the accretion time for
them to form should be prohibitively long. It would explain the Late Heavy
Bombardment. Most of all, it would explain the observed phenomenon of the gap
in the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, that has got the astronomers stumped. In fact, as
we have seen, it's the only viable scenario to explain this last issue.

Planet X As A Moon of the Dark
Star?

If we are to consider the possibility that ancient peoples on our
planet were intimately aware of the comings and goings of the Dark Star, then
we need to understand how they portrayed that understanding. We have looked at
the myths of ancient Mesopotamia, but they are not to be held in isolation.
This book is primarily aimed at answering the scientific questions raised by a
binary companion to the sun, but a lot of my research over the years has looked
at its symbolism.

It is beyond the scope of this book to move into that territory in
any great detail, but I believe that I have adequately established an
association between the Dark Star and seven other stars. These presumably
constitute the Dark Star's own system of planets. One of them seems to become visible
at some point during the perihelion passage of the Dark Star through the outer
solar system.

The appearance of this mysterious and mythical planet is varied,
taking on many forms. One of its descriptions is that of 'Phaeton', and in
their book "When the Earth Nearly Died", authors D. Allan and J
Delair speculate about how the planet's actual appearance could have produced
the multitude of mythical image attached to it down the ages. They have created
drawings showing how the 4 most significant moons and the tail would change the
overall appearance of the Phaeton Phenomenon as it moved through the heavens,
and the moons orbited around it.
¹⁴

Note the appearance of 4 moons; does Nibiru bring its own
entourage? Is it possible that companion moons could be visible at such great
distances? Or, is it simply that the incursion of the planet Nibiru through the
outer solar system is coincident with a great hail of other cosmic debris;
comets from the Dark Star's own sphere of influence.

If the moons/planets/comets orbiting the Dark Star Nibiru were
very widely distributed, as the researcher John Lee has suggested in the past,
it creates a complex situation which might then explain the sheer diversity of
symbolism employed by various cultures. John argues that the Dark Star should
not be definitively associated with the myths of Pheaton and Nibiru/ Marduk, as
its orbit is likely to be wider and of longer duration than 3600 years, or
thereabouts. So there is little need to tie its existence in with myth at all,
from John's point of view. This is a valuable opinion, requiring us to bear in
mind that although science seems to be moving towards its existence, that
doesn't necessarily mean that it must end up being entwined in ancient myth.

However, I believe that the various myths do lead us to the Dark
Star, in the same way that the science now being played out in observatories
and academic halls is moving in the self-same direction. As such, I think the
symbolism, as varied and complex as it is, should be taken into account. But
the symbolism can only tell us part of the story; that of the observable,
visible phenomenon. There may be more to it than that. We must be cautious of
crossing the Rubicon just yet.