by Andy Lloyd
The planetary orbits all have their own angular momentums, which are in turn related to the binding energies. A distant Dark Star companion would bring with it an additional and considerable quantity of angular momentum to the overall solar system. If its orbit is somehow variable, then its 'binding energies' are subject to change.
Yet, there has to be a conservation of overall energy within the system. As such, a sudden change in the variable orbit of a rogue companion, would upset the order of the entire solar system. Knowledge of this would bring the importance of the relationships between the planetary bodies into sharp focus.
This is because any such change to that relationship could spell disaster for this planet.
The Solar Pole Shift
The researcher Maurice Cotterell has investigated the cyclical nature of sunspot activity, and how it might relate to other orbital parameters in the solar system, in particular the Earth's orbit and the sun's rotational movement. It is not immediately obvious how this might be so, but a 'great solar cycle' does seem to emerge from his findings, which, remarkably, correlates well with the orbit of the Dark Star. Cotterell took raw data from solar satellite experiments, and ran it through a super computer at the University where he worked. The solar data used in his calculations was tied to the sun's rotational cycle.
Because the sun is a fluid body, it rotates faster at the equator than at the poles, and the common denominator of these two periods was chosen. Bringing in the Earth's orbital period, Cotterell was able to amass a database and study the cyclic periods that might come out of it. He was not to be disappointed.
He was able to establish a relationship between these rotational periods and the sunspot activity cycle of about 11.5 years, although the observable cycle is 11.1 years. But his graph also threw out other patterns, and the most significant of these was a period of 3,740 years, which saw the complete reversal of the solar system's "neutral sheet".9,10 This appeared to be related to an external phenomenon that was affecting the entire solar system. I would suggest that external phenomenon would be the Dark Star, whose perihelion passage may well cause this kind of effect upon the sun and known planets.
As we saw last chapter, the magnetic fields of brown dwarfs are very substantial indeed, creating observed effects in the X-Ray region of the electro-magnetic spectrum, far greater than the size of the bodies would otherwise have suggested. Like bringing two large magnets into close proximity, the motion of the Dark Star around the sun may create a reaction in the overall magnetic field of the sun, and the solar system as a whole.
If Maurice Cotterell's work is correct, then it might well be direct evidence of the presence of a failed star orbiting the sun, with a periodicity of approximately 3,740 years. But this novel idea has not been scientifically proven, and remains on the fringes of scientific thinking. As such, this can only stand as a potentially useful piece of corroborating evidence for an orbital cycle of this length. Indeed, it is by no means certain that things are quite as simple as this, as we shall see later.
Uranus
Uranus potentially offers further evidence of the primordial presence of Nibiru. Uranus is tilted onto its side with respect to its orbit around the sun. Its moon circulates in this tilted plane, giving the appearance of a dart-board facing the sun. All of the other planets orbit with their equatorial regions facing the sun. Astronomers have long speculated that Uranus was knocked onto its side by another planetary body.1
The Enuma Elish describes a close encounter between the Dark Star Marduk and Uranus, which the Sumerians called Anu. The text describes how Anu and Marduk seemed to both obtain moons as a result of that encounter.11 The Uranus system is full of unpredictable anomalies; carbon-rich deposits on Uranus's moons, and swiftly circling elliptical rings around the planet itself.
In August 2000, the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union gave formal numbers and names to an additional 3 moonlets around Uranus; Prospero, Setebos and Stephano, all of which were derived from Shakespeare's “The Tempest”. These tiny moons were discovered telescopically in 1999, and added to the new satellites which had been found orbiting Uranus in 1997, called Caliban and Sycorax. Sky and Telescope Magazine reported their eccentric orbital properties:
“Unlike the planet's inner moons, these new finds are considered “irregular” because they occupy distant, eccentric, highly-inclined orbits and travel in directions generally opposite that of Uranus's rotation.”12
Again, the inference of these findings is that the Uranus system is anomalous, and seems to have been affected by another large body.
On the face of it, then, the data about Uranus and its moons supports the idea that the planet was struck 3.9 billion years ago by a terrestrial-sized body, causing an expulsion of energetic debris, and resulting in the bizarre tilting of Uranus itself. But that is not the only possibility.
Let us say that Marduk is a failed star, not a planet. It is then several times as massive as the biggest planet in the solar system, Jupiter. Surely, a close encounter between this colossal 'planet' and Uranus could have been enough to spin Uranus on its axis, without any catastrophic collision. This would be in keeping with the Enuma Elish, where a description of an actual battle between Anu and Marduk is conspicuous by its absence. One can speculate that Uranus was tilted onto its side because it had a cosmic 'near-miss' with a failed star, not because anything collided with it. During this encounter, it happened to pick up some of the cometary debris accompanying the Dark Star: “Anu brought forth and begot the four winds”.
The Moon
The Moon's gravity is one sixth that of the Earth's, but its presence in orbit around our planet remains a puzzle. The other terrestrial-sized worlds in the solar system either have no moons, or they have only asteroid-sized satellites, like Phobos and Deimos around Mars, or Charon around Pluto. There are many possible explanations for the presence of our Moon in Earth's orbit, but none of them appear completely convincing, suffering as they do with contradictory evidence. It appears that the jury is still out in scientific circles. The main problem is that the Moon is remarkably large in proportion to the Earth.
It seems unlikely that a planet the size of Earth could have captured such a body, simply because it is too small to attract such a large satellite. Others consider it likely that the Earth and Moon initially formed as a binary system. Personally, I am persuaded by those who argue that the Moon was once a chunk of the Earth, and became a satellite following a very early primordial collision. Again, this implies primordial chaos in the solar system as proto-planets were battered by each other.
Zecharia Sitchin is a solid proponent of the idea that there were catastrophic events in the early solar system which played a dominating part in the formation of many of the planets, and the order of their orbits, including the Earth and Moon.13 Most scientists would agree with the assumption that underlies this approach, but would argue that the sudden presence of a rogue planet is not necessary to explain the devastation that may have seen moons evicted from their orbits around planets, with Uranus literally knocked onto its side.
They admit to still being stumped by the problem of how massive planets the size of Uranus and Neptune were able to form in the outer zone of the planetary system, when their computer models indicate that there doesn't appear to have been enough time for all the material to accrete. They wonder about migration of planetary orbits to explain such difficulties, but stop short of considering the possibility that the inner planets themselves may also have migrated. It is a wild thought.
The idea put forward by Sitchin that our Earth and Moon were somehow initially sharing a different destiny in the solar system, is judged to be derisory. After all, on the face of it, the Earth's orbit appears perfectly normal. It occupies one of the positions predicted by Bode's Law.
Yet, so does a missing 'fifth' planet between Mars and Jupiter, an area currently occupied by a belt of planetary rubble. Is it possible that the Earth migrated inwards from this zone, leav
ing behind it the scattered debris of a devastating collision between it and another, smaller planet? Is the Moon itself a highly visible reminder in our skies of such a catastrophe, early in the life of the solar system?
Recent astronomical research has supported the case that the Moon was formed in the same location relative to the sun as the Earth. It might prove to have been an off-shoot of the Earth itself. In March 1999, NASA scientists issued a press release about findings presented at the 30th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, which said the following:
“Analysis of data from NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft has confirmed that the Moon has a small core, supporting the idea that the bulk of the Moon was ripped away from the early Earth when an object the size of Mars collided with the Earth”.14
Scientists put the date of this impact to a time 4.45 billion years ago, only 100 million years after the initial formation of the Earth. However, recently discovered traces of liquid water in zircon crystal, dating to 4.404 billion years, has brought this dating into question, suggesting that liquid oceans were existent upon the Earth a relatively short time after this collision.15 It seems to me that the Earth must have been a bigger planet prior to this supposed collision, and that it would have lost large amounts of its primordial oceans as a result.
I, like Sitchin before me, wonder whether such a massive collision could have propelled the Earth into a new orbit, closer to the sun. Eventually, such an unstable orbit would have settled down into a more or less circular one, shepherded as it is by Jupiter. Similarly, take the asteroid belt; it clearly formed from some early destructive event. Yet, the motion of its asteroids is relatively well-behaved, resulting in their skating around the sun in an eternal circle. No one wonders why they aren't far more erratic.
The similarity between the Earth and the Moon's rocky constituents answers those who have hypothesized that the Moon is a relatively recent companion of the Earth. The writer Immanuel Velikovsky tried to explain various ancient myths that hinted at a previous absence of the Moon and infamously promoted the idea that the Moon had been recently captured by the Earth following a catastrophe, and that the time scale for this event was relatively recent.16 If we can take the evidence presented by NASA scientists at face value, then it seems that Velikovsky was wrong. Yet this evidence is in accordance with Sitchin's version of events in that the Moon was formed by a cosmic collision very early on in the history of the Earth. The researcher and author Joan d'Arc has highlighted the importance of other findings presented by NASA at the same 1999 conference:
“Papers presented at this conference also indicated that “similarities in the mineral composition of the Earth and Moon indicate that they share a common origin”. However, it was noted that, if they had simply formed from the same cloud of rocks and dust, the Moon would have a core similar in proportion to that of the Earth's. Based on information obtained during the Apollo era, the press release stated, it was suggested that a “Mars-sized body” hit the Earth in its earliest history after its iron core had formed. The impact ejected rocky, “iron-poor material” from the outer shell into orbit, which collected to form the Moon, and was then caught in orbit around the Earth”.14
Was this Mars-sized body one of the early moons of the Dark Star? There appears to be two distinct options for such a catastrophic event. The scientific evidence from the Moon suggests that such an impact occurred very early in the history of the solar system, only 150 million years after the formation of the sun and its proto-planetary disc. If this immense impact was with a moon of the Dark Star, then it would indicate that the rogue planet's entry into the solar system was very early indeed.
This might be in keeping with the idea that the Dark Star itself formed as a binary companion in the first place, and was jolted closer to the Earth by the gravitational action of a passing star in the relatively densely-packed stellar nursery. It is a tantalizing possibility. The Moon itself could have resulted from such an impact. However, Sitchin relates that the Moon was already in orbit around the primordial Earth before the appearance of Nibiru/Marduk. So, we might conclude from this that the Moon was formed by a collision with a small planet within the chaos of the early solar system.
There still remains some doubt about the origin of the Moon. Studies of terrestrial rock crystals have shown that liquid water was present on the Earth at a very early stage in its primordial development, seemingly precluding a collision that was big enough to re-melt the Earth, as a direct collision with a Mars-sized body surely would have done.
Recent research highlights a means by which the Earth/Moon system's original distance from the sun could be ascertained. We know from radiological studies that the Earth and the Moon are roughly the same age. It seems that they share common stable isotopes of oxygen, which is a strong indicator that they formed at a similar distance from the sun.17 This isotopic analysis supports the idea that the Earth and Moon were derived from one source.
If the Earth and Moon had always enjoyed the same orbit around the sun, then the isotopic constitution of their rocks would indeed be a unique cosmic fingerprint. The question in my mind is whether this fingerprint is common to other debris in the solar system, like the asteroids. If the Earth was once orbiting the sun at a greater distance from where it is now, then it would surely share this isotopic fingerprint with the asteroids. This would be a simple test of this idea.
The Late Heavy Bombardment
As I mentioned, there are two possibilities for the timing of an interaction with the Dark Star and its retinue. Planetary scientists have puzzled over the catastrophic damage that both the Earth and Moon suffered 3.9 billion years ago. This does not appear to be the tail-end of the primordial chaos of the solar system, but rather a later, sudden onslaught of cosmic debris lasting about 100 million years. Because at least one of the rocks studied turns out to be iron-rich, it is thought likely that the impactors were asteroids, not comets.18
At that time, there was a devastating attack by comets, many of them sizable. The Earth lay in ruins as a result, and the Moon still bears the scars of that widespread destruction. It was like receiving a rapid series of extinction level impacts.
The timing of this momentous bombardment was not during the formation of the Moon. It is a quite separate, later event not directly linked to the chaos of the early solar system. We know this because of the age of Moon rocks, which turned out to be mostly 3.9 billion years old, 600 million years later than expected. This correlates with the age of ancient rocks on the Earth and on Mars, as well as cratering features of the asteroids.18 The implication of this is that the entire solar system was subject to a series of massive bombardments around that time, and that 3.9 billion year old rocks will one day also be discovered on the surfaces of Venus and Mercury. Scientists who have studied this pattern of cratering have speculated that the bombardment occurred at intervals of about 10,000 years during this catastrophic period.19
This implies that an initial catastrophic event disrupted the asteroid belt and then was followed over a period of 100 million years by cyclical after-shocks. Perhaps this temporary cycle of bombardment was connected to the movement through the inner solar system of a massive planet on a 10,000 year orbit that then migrated out, restoring calm thereafter.
Some Moon rocks were indeed 4.5 billion years old, though, implying two separate catastrophic events leading to the formation of the Moon's surface.18 Other ancient surfaces throughout the solar system tell a similar story; massive impacts 3.9 billion years ago. The source of the cataclysm appears to be from within the solar system. This is most likely to be the asteroid belt itself, which turns out to have a smaller than expected population.
There are two possible explanations for the depleted population of the asteroid belt. Either the asteroids were once part of a planet that existed at that location which was destroyed in some way, or a planet was never able to properly form there in the first place because of the proximity of Jupiter's intense gravity field, which desta
bilized the region. Both mechanisms are able to show how asteroids were lost in large numbers. Scientists tend to favour the latter suggestion, whilst catastrophists favour the former. The population of asteroids in the belt is also diverse in terms of their chemical constituency, suggesting differing origins.20 Personally, I think this implies catastrophism, linked to the impacts of the late, great bombardment. I'm quite certain that the Dark Star is implicated in all of this.
Scientists are now grappling with the problem of how the very primitive life on Earth which preceded the collisions 3.9 billion years ago might have survived the onslaught. Life is tenacious, that's for sure. The timing of this bombardment would seem to be in keeping with Sitchin's analysis that the rogue planet Nibiru/ Marduk crashed into the solar system at that time, and that its devastating "attack" left the Moon battered and the Earth scourged of much of its oceanic water.21 It is also possible that the nearby transit of the Dark Star, which I consider to be Marduk, had the gravitational effect of causing the Earth to migrate into the inner solar system.
There are two possibilities for a possible migration, then. The first is that the Earth was propelled inwards by the same impact that caused the formation of the Moon. The second is that the Earth and Moon were later pummeled by debris accompanying the Dark Star, and that the action of this brown dwarf itself was enough to cause the migration. The presence of the asteroid belt tends to suggest the former.
