by Andy Lloyd
The Dark Star
by Andy Lloyd
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder. Copyright © 2013
Timeless Voyager Press http://www.timelessvoyager.com
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, digital scan, ebook, as a digitized cyber-document, or other means for the purpose of copying / publishing not in existence yet.
THE DARK STAR
Andy Lloyd
ISBN: 9781892264404
TIMELESS VOYAGER PRESS
PO Box 6678
Santa Barbara, CA 93160
1-800-576-8463
ebook Printing 2013 by Timeless Voyager Press
Cover, ebook, and Original Book Development: Bruce Stephen Holms
Editor: Bruce Stephen Holms
Cover Design: Bruce Stephen Holms
Table of Contents
1. Dedication
2. Acknowledgments
3. Publisher's Note
4. Introduction
5. The Extended Habitation Zone
6. The Sumerian 'Nibiru'
7. Planet X, Past and Present
8. Binary Companion
9. Brown Dwarfs
10. Anomalies in the Solar System
11. The Great Water Conundrum
12. The Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt
13. Planet of Crossing
14. The Origin of the Binary Companion
15. Sedna
16. The Dark Star System
17. The Dark Star and Mass Extinctions
18. Ice Age
19. Is This Our Nemesis?
1. Dedication
I would like to dedicate this book to Fiona, and our two boys, Chris and Robbie, whose light fills each and every one of our days.
2. Acknowledgments
My very special thanks go to my best friends, and colleagues, Dave and Martin Cosnette, without whom I would never have embarked on any of this. From an inspirational chat over a cup of tea, we three set about creating one of the world's best-loved UFO websites, “Cosmic Conspiracies”. Also thanks go to my great friends, Simon Faulkner for the Dark Star inspiration, and to Pete Scott, for the T-shirt.
Lee Covino deserves special thanks for all the hard effort and time that went into editing this book, not to mention the persistent urging to find a publisher. I would also like to express my gratitude to my publisher, Bruce Stephen Holms, for believing in the merits of this project, and to Peter Gersten, without whom that opportunity would not have arisen.
The long road to “The Dark Star” has been made a great deal easier by the help and encouragement of many people. In particular, I have been inspired by Zecharia Sitchin, greatly encouraged by Lloyd Pye, believed in by Monika Myers, and actively published by Joan d'Arc and Al Hiddell, of Paranoia Magazine. Their support and guidance has been invaluable throughout.
I am also very grateful to the following people, who have helped along the way (with apologies to anyone I've forgotten): Rob Astor, Anthony Austin, the late John Bagby, the late Graham W. Birdsall, Tom and Kerry Blower, Shad Bolling, the “Clockwork Team.” (Parameshwaran Ravindranathan, Samit Basu and Jaideep Undurti), Frank Cordell, William Corliss, Al Cornett, Maurice Cotterell, Roger Cunningham, Richard Day, Kathy Doore, Dr. Richard Fitzpatrick, Robert Frola, Mattia Galiazzo, Dr. Brett Gladman, Andy Goldie, Dr. Matthew Holman, Holger Isenberg, James Arthur Jancik, Greg Jenner, David Jinks, Allene Keller, Theo Kermanidis, Dr. Marc Kuchner, John Lee, Lystra Maisey, Dr. Mark Marley, Ed Massey, Marshall Masters, Dr. John Matese, Ralph McConahy, Brant McLaughlin, Dr. Mario Melita, James Monds, Dr. John Murray, James Oberg, David Pearson, Enrique Pérez Porter, Dr. Alice Quillen, Angel Rapallo, John Rockley, Rick Savard, Robert Sepehr, Robertino Solarion, Pat Thomas, Barry Warmkessel, Michael Weinberger, Phil Whitley, Dr. Daniel Whitmire, and Roel Wolfert.
3. Publisher's Note
I felt it was necessary to explain some apparent changes in the world of astronomical thinking that have affected Andy's book. Since I first formatted and published The Dark Star in 2005, there has been one major change in the planetary structure of our solar system.
Pluto, once regarded as the 9th planet, from its discovery in 1930 until 2006, lost its status in the late 1970s as a planet. Pluto's relatively low mass and its status as a major planet was in question ― so, on August 24, 2006 ― the International Astronomical Union (IAU) excluded Pluto as a planet and added it as a member of the new category "dwarf planet". Pluto was added to the list of minor planets and given the number 134340.
Since the book was written, both Andy and I have discussed the possibility of re-writing the book and making the necessary corrections. During this time of re-writes, I have decided to publish the ebook version of the original book keeping it intact until we have decided whether to correct the original book or write a new version with many of the latest scientific discoveries that have come about since 2005.
Since the advent of the ebook, it is certainly easier to update the material digitally, so I believe that the re-write will be finished much quicker than in the "old" days of "hard" copy. Keep checking the Timeless Voyager website for updates. http://www.timelessvoyager.com
Thank you,
Bruce Stephen Holms, Publisher
4. Introduction
It is human nature to accept certain apparently self-evident facts as fundamental truths.
We live comparatively short lives, and the education we receive as children and fledgling adults, for many of us is the only education available in a lifetime. Most people in the world have no time for books. Their televisions are their sources of knowledge, perhaps aided and abetted by newspapers. So what is taught in schools is what is taken to be truth, often for the rest of a person's life. Yet our science and our understanding of the world change over time, often very rapidly. Academics must spend a lot of time just keeping up with the changes of knowledge in their own fields of expertise. And there are thousands of fields of expertise...so what real hope is there for the rest of us to access the latest thinking of science and the arts?
This is where books have a unique role to play. Through 300 pages or so we can immerse ourselves in modern knowledge and thought, and extend the rudimentary understanding of our world imparted to us through school. Sometimes we must 'unlearn' as well, as what was once taught as fact becomes an historical mistake. Yet people don't readily unlearn. They don't readily throw off cherished beliefs or theories to accept those offered by a new generation. This leads to conservatism within academia and society as a whole.
A kind of cultural constraint is evident within the field of science, as it is in our religious and educational establishments. That is not to say that scientists do not consider weird and wonderful new theories, as many of them are open-minded and liberal. However, the institution of science has itself become rather conservative, and there are certain lines of inquiry that are as heretical to modern science as witchcraft was to the medieval church. The British Egyptologist, David Rohl has highlighted the ultra-conservative consensus that plagues modern scholarship.1 He argues that most scholars lack the imagination to really take on the big unanswered questions, and that the vacuum is filled by non-academic thinkers, who lack the resources and critical training to balance their work.
We live in an ultra-sceptical world where new ideas are derided as a matter of course. It seems
as though modern science has achieved the begetting of the central tenets of its knowledge, and is happy only to tinker with the peripheral details. The major problems that remain are ignored, and scholars who chose to tackle them are often sidelined, or even publicly ridiculed.
It is a cultural norm to laugh at suggestions that our origins are from the skies, not the seas; or that evolution through natural selection might not actually provide a cast-iron explanation for the development of humanity, or that 'Others' might live in our own cosmic backyard, while our SETI scientists peer over the fence into the cosmic fields beyond in search of extraterrestrial life.
As odd as it may seem, the often stiff upper-lipped Victorians and Edwardians were far more open-minded about the possibilities of life in our solar system than we. We live in an age of high technology, space exploration and global communication. These are great, if not monumental achievements in the history of our species, but what has been lost recently is the speculative form of science that the Victorians indulged in when considering such things as the possibility of life existing on other planets.
The hope that we are not alone took a bit of a battering. If life was not to be found on Mars or Venus, then the next best possibility was life around other stars. The distances involved and the physical limitations of space-travel, mean that this possibility is far less dramatic, or even relevant. Hence the relative sterility of the scientific debate regarding extraterrestrial life. This debate has become fringe science, yet this has not subdued its general popularity. Such a position can be infuriating for scientists who perennially find themselves pouring cold water over popular speculation about alien life.
It is said that a change in human understanding of some fundamental 'truths' takes not years, but generations. Historically, great leaps forward in science, such as the identification of the sun as the centre of the solar system by Copernicus (1543) and Galileo (1633), were not accepted overnight.2 Quite the contrary, the Western religious institutions that wielded such power over our ability to reason fought tooth and nail for hundreds of years to prevent these ideas from catching on. Carl Sagan analyses this intellectual intransigence in terms of the psychological craving we have to be the centre of the Universe. Each stage of scientific progress that exposes our ordinariness in the eyes of the Cosmos knocks our concept of self-importance, and humanity seems to always reject it, at least to start with.3 Often in the past this has been because of religious sensibilities about our rightful place in the Cosmos.
Sagan may be right. But on the subject of ET life, it is not the religious establishments that have stifled debate, but the scientific Establishment itself. Scientists have been banging nails into the coffin of 'ET life in the solar system' for decades. But the contents of that coffin are about to be resurrected. There is another incredible possibility, one that is so remarkable that it has quickly caught on among interested parties surfing the Internet. Since 'The Dark Star Theory' first proposed this new possibility, the growth in visits to the site has been rapid. Why? Because it gives a clear and plausible argument for the possibility that life could evolve elsewhere in the solar system. A planet beyond Pluto need not be cold and lifeless! Astronomers know this. This is not controversial for them. They understand what brown dwarfs are, and they realize that they provide enough heat and light to provide habitable environments on planets orbiting these failed stars. They know that one might well be circling the sun, in the comet clouds that make up the bulk of the solar system's volume. They recognize the difficulties that detecting such a body present. But where the Victorians would have indulged in a little hopeful speculation, the modern mainstream scientists remain stubbornly mute, afraid to cross that boundary into what has become fringe science.
So instead of reading of these ideas in scientific journals, that in turn would be reported on in mainstream media outlets, you, dear reader, are instead reading an 'alternative science' book. What I like to refer to as 'alternative astronomy'. This book will be dismissed and ridiculed by the intellectual establishment, insofar as it even moves above their horizon of interest. Even so, I can promise you something; you will discover in these pages a reasoned and scientific debate, one worthy of open scientific inquiry. I hope that this book re-kindles the debate about extraterrestrial life in our solar system, and the environments that such life could inhabit. It throws the tremendous repercussions of the potential discovery of a brown dwarf in the solar system into the public domain. In this way, it paves the way for the astronomical discoveries of the future, and the way they will bring change to the way we understand ourselves.
When we were in school our physics teachers told us that there are 9 planets in the solar system; Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. They may even have added that Pluto may not really be a planet anyway. What they didn't tell us was that that knowledge is not cast into stone like Moses' Tablets. This is because our scientific knowledge is necessarily limited at the moment by our ability to detect distant dark objects. We simply cannot say with certainty that we have discovered all of the planetary bodies that orbit around the sun.
One day we may understand our solar system more fully, and be able to draw up our own Tablets of Knowledge. When we do it seems that there will be ten entries as well, just like there were with Moses. But at the moment we are missing a crucial commandment...
1 D. Rohl “Legend: The Genesis of Civilization” p50 Arrow 1999
2 P. Moore “Atlas of the Universe” p12, George Philip Ltd. 1999
3 C. Sagan “Pale Blue Dot” Headline 1995
5. The Extended Habitation Zone
Our investigation starts with a look at our current understanding of where life can be found in the solar system. In years gone by, scientists and fictional writers speculated that life was common on other planets and that alien civilizations existed on Venus and Mars, our nearest neighbours. When Humanity began to explore the planetary environments in more detail with space probes, it became apparent that life was a rare commodity in the solar system, and perhaps throughout the galaxy as well.
Life needs liquid water, and water takes its liquid form through a relatively small range of temperatures. Most of the planetary environments in the solar system have more extreme environments than we enjoy here on Earth. Mercury, the sun’s closest planet, is hard-boiled and baked, its surface blasted by the heat of the sun.
Venus, planet number 2, maintains a thick atmosphere which has been made highly acidic by what is thought to be a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Temperatures on the surface of the planet are extremely high, air pressures intolerable, and the combination of these factors means that lead melts on the ground there. Not very promising for the search for life, although it may still be found high in the atmosphere.
The Earth, however, is just the right distance away from the sun, and basks in the sort of medium-range temperatures that allow liquid water to exist across most of the surface of the planet. This has been the case for billions of years, and life has had a firm foothold here for most of that time. Earth is in the sun’s ‘habitation zone’. If the sun was bigger and hotter then that habitation zone might have been on the next planet, Mars.
If the sun was smaller and cooler, then Venus might have enjoyed a more profitable relationship with life. But only Earth enjoys that exalted, and possibly unique position. The discovery of life further out in the planetary solar system remains one of the great unanswered questions in science.
Is There Life on Mars?
We still don’t know for sure whether there is life on Mars, and by implication whether there is life elsewhere in the solar system, or Universe beyond. The Viking landers searched for signs of life in the 1970s, but the results of the experiments on soil samples on the Martian surface were said to be ‘inconclusive’.1 The famous meteorite ALH 84001, discovered in the Allan Hills of Antarctica in 1984, seemed to contain evidence that life once existed on Mars.2 These findings remain controversial, and provide the merest threads of
proof of extraterrestrial life. But those strands of hope are enough for many people to maintain their hopes that the rest of the solar system is not barren.
Confirmation of the existence of alien life has been inextricably entwined with the search for life on Mars, mainly because it seems to offer the second most hospitable environment in our solar system. Its atmospheric conditions are certainly deadly for most life-forms currently dwelling on Earth, but under the regolith of its barren plains may lie lakes and even seas of frozen water. Surface features of the red planet tantalizingly suggest the movement of liquid water during the distant past, or possibly more recently.
Thousands of enthusiasts scour over detailed images of Martian terrain sent back by NASA probes hoping to find conclusive proof that the surface of the red planet plays host to life. Others are intrigued by the trace amounts of methane detected in the Martian atmosphere, which may allude to micro-biological activity occurring under suspected ice packs. Their motivations may be driven by the fear that Mars is the last hope; that beyond this cold world the solar system may be truly devoid of life.
Far Beyond the Sun
But there are other possibilities elsewhere, much further from the sun. This is where the conventional notion of the ‘habitation zone’ starts to break down, and new possibilities open up.
The asteroid belt beyond Mars is simply a collection of orbiting rocks, devoid of life like our Moon. Scientists have been able to rule out life on the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, and the frigid outer giants Uranus and Neptune. These huge worlds have no detectable solid surfaces below their immense pressurized atmospheres, and even if they did the internal pressures would surely rule out the emergence of life in any recognizable form. Pluto, at the far reaches of the planetary zone, is a frigid Moon-like world far too bleak to harbour the chrysalis of life.
