The Dark Star: The Planet X Evidence (10 page)

In
1986, a rather diligent researcher named William Corliss published his book
“The Sun and Solar system Debris - A Catalog of Astronomical Anomalies”.
Several observed anomalies are cited which may allude to Planet X, or even a
dark companion to the sun. These anomalies remain unconfirmed, of course, but
make for interesting reading nonetheless. One of them describes an object
captured by the IRAS survey which sounds very much like the ‘Orion’ sighting,
only this time it is located in the zodiacal constellation of Sagittarius, in
the opposite half of the sky.
⁶

This
report was written by two British science journalists, Martin Redfern and Nigel
Henblest.
⁷
I wrote to Mr. Corliss in the hope of finding out more,
but his back catalogue of files was simply too extensive to hunt through in
depth. He politely had to decline my request. However, last year my research colleague
Greg Jenner kindly sent me a selection of Planet X documents, and among them
was the article I had hoped to uncover. It certainly makes for interesting
reading.

The
article was published in "New Scientist" on 10th November 1983, and
discusses the discovery of an object in space whose temperature is 230K, which
is too cool for a star, but too warm for a dust cloud. It was spotted by the
infrared space telescope in the constellation of Sagittarius, and fit the bill
for an object ‘several times heavier than Jupiter’. Remarkably, British
scientists at the time accused their American colleagues of keeping the
information of this find to themselves. The British scientists publicly
questioned why the Americans had "been keeping quiet about it in recent weeks".
Speculation was rife, that the discovery was nothing but an intriguing ploy to
bolster the chances of further funding from NASA for a new infrared space
observatory.
⁷

Those few weeks of silence which followed the report of a new
Jupiter-sized planet in the solar system, have now extended to 22 years! Part
of the problem might have been that funding ran out before all the observed
heat sources could be properly analyzed. Observed objects had been properly
catalogued, but there remained an estimated 3 years of further scientific
analysis undone. Some might be satisfied with this explanation.

If you’re not feeling quite as charitable as that, you might
wonder why this remarkable data was never properly announced to the world.
Somehow, it leaked to the British researchers co-working on the project, who
discussed the matter openly in the scientific press. They had their own
political agenda, it seems, which probably fueled this minor trans-Atlantic
spat. But the net result is that we are left with a tantalizing report in New
Scientist of the discovery of a Dark Star in our solar system, located in the
constellation of Sagittarius.

I suspect this "leak" represented something substantial.
Personally, I think they really did find the Dark Star, a planet weighing
several Jupiter masses, and that its temperature is indeed 230 Kelvin.
Somewhere along the line, its discovery was quietly ditched by the Americans,
much to the annoyance of their European counterparts. But given a lack of
access to the actual data, the war of words eventually petered out.

Without this article in New Scientist, no one would have known any
different. There is usually some fire behind the smoke, after all. But, why
would anyone want to shelve such an incredibly important discovery?

In his analysis of ancient texts, Zecharia Sitchin offered a
number of constellations as probable points along the path trodden by Nibiru.
These include, in order, the Great Bear (Ursa Major); Orion (along with the
star Sirius); then, Taurus and Aries; before heading towards Sagittarius.
^8,9,10
The last of these is not listed as a constellation that Nibiru visits, but
rather one that it usually disappears from, in its course away from our solar
system.

If Sitchin’s textual quotes are to be accepted, then the
destination for the fabled planet ― as it disappears once again into the
primordial deep ― is Sagittarius. This area just happens to coincide with
the location of our reported IRAS object of several Jupiter masses. The Zodiacal
constellation of Sagittarius lies on the ecliptic, or the plane of the planets.
This would infer, if it truly represents the Dark Star’s aphelion location,
that the entire orbit of the rogue planet is not particularly inclined to the
others. More on this later.

Suffice it to say for now, that I believe that the extent of the
Dark Star’s deviation from the ecliptic is not as great as proposed by Sitchin.
I suggest that at perihelion, or the closest point to the sun, that the
sighting of ‘Nibiru’ is slightly south of the ecliptic, in the vicinity of
Sirius and Orion.

This is supported by the listed constellations from the ancient
texts. This is the part of the sky that is known as the ‘Duat’ to the ancient
Egyptians. It is a sky location of great importance. But, the Dark Star is not
located there at the moment. It is currently very, very far away in the
opposite half of the sky, in Sagittarius.

Sagittarius is a large constellation, through which runs the path
of the planets, or the ecliptic. Sagittarius is not always easily seen by
observers in the northern hemisphere, because it is a summer constellation
which sits very low in the Southern portion of the sky. This is a pity, because
within this constellation lies the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way, “...studded
with clusters and beautiful nebulae and brilliant with dense star clouds”.
¹¹
In the centre of these star fields lies the heart of our galaxy, some 30,000
light years away.

This is very important, because the Milky Way is at its brightest
in Aquila and Cygnus in the Northern Hemisphere, and Scorpius and Sagittarius
in the southern hemisphere. So our search for this distant ‘planet’ will be
made all the more difficult by the sheer mass of background stars. Not only
that, but there is a huge band of solar system objects, particularly asteroids,
all of which reside in a belt around the line of the ecliptic. Searching for
more distant objects along this ecliptic will often throw up these solar system
objects in the field of view, be they asteroids or short period comets.

Trying to find the distant Dark Star among this array of galactic
stars, nebulae and clusters, creates the same difficulties already faced by
astronomers looking for other, nearer objects. Sagittarius is just not a great
place to hunt for new objects and, frankly, most astronomers avoid searching
there because of these difficulties. The plane of the sun’s planets, the
ecliptic, and the Milky Way, are like two great circles crossing the sky at
angles to one another.

They cross over twice, in Sagittarius, and on the other side of
the sky, between Gemini and Taurus. And so, these locations are awkward places
to hunt for a faint, practically stationary source of light against the
backdrop of millions of others.
¹²
Not only that, but Sagittarius is
difficult to observe from the more northern latitudes, anyway. This is a hunt
for a needle in a haystack, with the lights turned off.

Because of these problems astronomers like Dave Jewitt and Jane
Luu, famous for their discovery of the first trans-Neptunian object, avoid
searching for Edgeworth-Kuiper Objects (EKOs) at these nodal regions. Instead,
they turn their attention to the much darker constellations, like Pisces.
¹²
As a result, distant solar system objects are almost certainly going to be discovered
in the darker constellations, and if the Dark Star just happens to be located
in front of the Milky Way galaxy, well, it will probably remain undiscovered.
Furthermore, because its motion across the sky is negligible, it will remain in
this part of the sky for several generations to come.

John Bagby and the Binary in
Sagittarius

A gentleman who has long argued for the existence of a substantial
tenth planet is the engineer and amateur astronomer, John Bagby. He wrote
several papers outlining evidence he had put forward for the existence of a
Massive Solar Companion, or ‘MSC’.
¹³
Bagby was quite sure that such
a body existed, and he claimed to have data to prove it, if only someone would
listen. He shared this information with astronomers at the US Naval
Observatory, including Drs. Harrington and Van Flandern; Dr. Anderson at JPL
and Dr. Marsden, who collates sightings of new solar system bodies. He also
publicly presented his work at seminars and scientific meetings back in the
1970's.

Bagby
produced papers between 1978 and 1980, which went unpublished, that set out his
observational data and theoretical underpinning for either a tenth planet, or a
massive solar companion. He claimed that the discovery of Pluto in Gemini was
located 180 degrees opposite to the massive undiscovered planet, and that the
pre-discovery prediction work of Lowell and Pickering could be put down to a
classical "direction finding and distance ambiguity".
¹³
In
other words, Lowell had been right, but had looked in the wrong direction.
Planet X lay in Sagittarius, Bagby claimed.

This
proposal from the late 1970s finds itself in accordance with my own analysis of
the location of the Dark Star. Was John Bagby onto something?

Problems
emerge for Bagby, when we come to look at his proposals about the size and
distance of the binary companion. Basically, Bagby was proposing a full-blown
brown dwarf in the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt.
¹⁴
We’d be able to see it
with a regular telescope. How had he arrived at this fantastic, utterly
impossible, conclusion?

It
turns out that Bagby was interested in the work of one E.R. Harrison who, in
1977, postulated the existence of a massive nearby body, lying in Sagittarius,
required to explain observational anomalies regarding a "pulsar period
time derivative".
¹⁵
This sounds like a bit of a mouthful,
doesn’t it? Simply put, pulsars are highly regular emitters of strong
radiation. If a gravitational field comes between a pulsar and us, as observers
on Earth, then the highly specific data from them pulsar will be altered
slightly. This will allow us to imply the existence of a dark gravity field,
which is what Harrison proposed in Sagittarius. His finding may thus imply the
location of the Dark Star.

Other
interesting ideas emerged from the pen of John Bagby. He wondered whether these
Massive Solar Companions might have a distributed mass of some description;
that a reasonable proportion of the mass of the companion could be found at the
LaGrange points of its orbit, presumably in the form of lesser bodies orbiting in
a similar pattern to his main candidate object.
¹⁴
Such an idea might
help to explain anomalies encountered by various space-probes that are on their
way out of the solar system, namely the two Pioneer spacecraft, which appear to
have changed their trajectories over time without a clear causal explanation.
¹⁶
They seem to be getting dragged back towards the sun. Could this be something
to do with an extra quantity of distributed mass in the solar system?

So,
the location of Sagittarius becomes a more exciting possibility when we look at
the evidence of pulsar period time derivatives. The Dark Star may lie within
this constellation, at a great distance from the sun, causing the gravitational
effects that we have on record as "unexplained anomalies". Is there
other evidence pointing towards this constellation as the keeper of our most
wonderful secret?

In
1999, a tentative position for a Dark Star was proposed by Dr. John Murray, an
academic with the Open University in England with an interest in astronomy. As
we noted in the last chapter, his published scientific paper towards the end of
1999
¹⁷
coincided with a similar paper by a group led by Professor
John Matese in Louisiana.
¹⁸
But where John Matese was careful not to
indicate where he thought his version of the Dark Star might be located, Dr.
Murray opted for a tiny constellation called Delphinus, next to Aquila.
¹⁷

This
location lies in the skies to the north of Sagittarius, within the vast star
fields of the Milky Way. John Murray came to his conclusion based upon his
treatment of comet trajectory data, assuming that a perturbing influence within
the distant outer Oort Cloud of comets was causing them to enter the solar
system in a more orderly manner than predicted. He worked backwards from the
trail of historical comet passages to pinpoint the location of this Perturber,
or Dark Star, which he considered to be several times the mass of Jupiter.

Dr.
Murray’s planet lies too far away for my liking, and we should be aware that
his work has received some criticism among his own peers.
¹⁹
Nevertheless,
there are some interesting aspects to his conclusions; the Perturber’s size,
its inclination to the ecliptic and its position, all find parallels with my
own conclusions for the Dark Star, but are based upon very different sets of
evidence.

But
there is a fundamental difference in agreement about the distance of this
object. Murray’s Perturber more closely resembled the proposed ‘Nemesis’ object
at the very edge of the sun’s influence, tens of thousands of astronomical
units away. Nemesis was the name given to a proto-star thought to be circling
the sun some 90,000 AU away, a remarkable distance indeed. It was thought that
such an object circled the sun every 27 million years or so, showering our
planetary zone with a deadly hail of comets during that interval. This proposal
was then neatly presented as an explanation for extinction cycles found on
Earth over similar periods of time. Thus, the name ‘Nemesis’.

Compare
this to my version of the Dark Star orbiting the sun at 500 astronomical units
or more at aphelion, very significantly closer, and smaller! The sub-brown
dwarf proposed by Matese and Murray respectively, lies somewhere in the middle
of these two more extreme possibilities, at about 20-50,000 AU.

There
is no known mechanism to help us understand how a planet could form so far away
from a star in the latter case, and many think it unlikely that a
'free-floating' planet might be captured into such an extended orbit. However,
if firm data pointed to the existence of such an orbit, the scientific
community would quickly figure out a plausible mechanism to explain its
presence, I’m sure.

In
support of the potential for a small Nemesis-type object, a recent precedent
has been discovered by astronomers. In 2002, scientists imaged a young, bright
planet in a star-forming region whose distance from the nearest star is over
100,000 astronomical units Called SOri70. The object’s distance from what is
possibly its parent star is immense. It should not be so far away, and it is a
mystery as to how it got there.
²⁰

Is
this Jupiter-sized planet orbiting the star, or simply free-floating through
the region? It's hard to say right now, but imagine this star was the sun, and
the bright planet SOri70 a similar Dark star forming as a distant binary with
this sun. This finding sets a precedent for quite an extraordinary orbit, in
keeping with Murray's hypothesis.