The Dark Star: The Planet X Evidence (6 page)

One of the central criticisms leveled at Zecharia Sitchin was
aimed at his claim that the gods are ‘flesh and blood’ and live on a planet,
Nibiru, that moves among the comets. This seems quite impossible. There is not
enough heat in that part of space to warm a planet sufficiently to support any
kind of life at all.

Consider
the outer rocky planets. They are so far away from the sun that their
atmospheres, if they are able to retain them at all, are desperately cold.
Rocky planets do not have significant internal heating due to their relative
small size. So their outer mantles are frigid. Most gases precipitate out as
ices.

Triton,
for instance, the largest moon around Neptune, seems to have a surface laden
with dark organic materials and nitrogen ices, some of which appear to have
been snowfall at the equator. Triton’s atmosphere is very thin, entirely due
to its great distance from the sun. If it were to be moved closer to the sun,
say around Saturn, then these ices would evaporate and form a rich atmosphere,
similar to Titan.

Triton
shows us what happens to the atmosphere of a rocky world that is extremely
distant from the sun; its atmosphere becomes surface ice. At this distance the
sun’s warmth is so diminished that it is singularly incapable of warming Triton
sufficiently for it to retain an atmosphere. Instead all of the atmospheric
gases become locked onto the surface of this Neptunian moon in the form of
volatile ices. If the Earth was suddenly moved to Neptune it would suffer the
same fate; not only would the oceans freeze, but the air would freeze also,
precipitating out to create a layer of nitrogen and oxygen snow ten metres
thick across the entire surface of the planet. Our atmosphere would be gone,
exposing the surface of our world to the intense cold of space.1
²

Which
begs the question, how could Nibiru retain an atmosphere out in the comet
clouds? The warmth from the sun would be practically nil. Which means that
Nibiru would have to be generating its own heat. Yet, a rocky world generates
insufficient warmth in its core to retain an atmosphere without an external
heat source such as the sun.

The
gas-giants generate plenty of internal heat, however, at least all of them but
Uranus. But their massive atmospheres create severe pressure problems for
potential life-forms. These planets also lack surfaces to speak of. At the
cores of Jupiter and Saturn, the pressures are so intense that the very air,
consisting mostly of hydrogen and helium, becomes metallic.

In
contrast, Uranus does not appear to exhibit the same outflow of heat from its
interior, despite being very similar to Neptune. Uranus is also anomalous in
that it has been turned on its side, but this does not necessarily explain why
its internal heat supply has been turned off. In some ways, this air of mystery
prevents planetary scientists from claiming that they understand the mechanisms
that are at play in the interiors of the gas-giants, and this leaves a little
lee-way for Sitchin.

Could
not a terrestrial-sized planet have some internal heat source that is currently
not well understood? Might its atmosphere be self-luminous in some way,
allowing the evolution of complex life forms? This conjecture is what 12th
Planet theorists put forward to extricate themselves from the various
difficulties discussed above. However, we move into the realm of science
fiction with these ideas, not science fact. Not only that, but there is a
better solution.

When Is A Star Not A Star?

The
size of Marduk was described as greater than all the other gods, which we
interpret as planets, yet Sitchin’s Nibiru had to be a world that was itself
habitable. A planet large enough to create its own heat would end up with
atmospheric pressures that would destroy terrestrial-based life. Yet, if Nibiru
was to be understood as a far smaller planet, then the lack of internal heat
would cause its atmosphere to precipitate out as ice, only to re-evaporate once
every 3600 years as Nibiru achieved perihelion around the sun. Like a
planet-sized comet.

Marduk’s
appearance was said to be fiery; his ‘halo’ the equivalent of ten gods. Yet
that self-same atmosphere had to be capable of supporting oxygen-breathing
humanoids; the Anunnaki. Nibiru would have to be a strange world indeed, self-heating, self-luminous, yet terrestrial. Is it any wonder that so many consider
the concept of a cometary planet supporting life ridiculous?

Let
us go back to those accounts and start afresh. Let us try to unravel the
mysteries of Marduk and Nibiru.

The
Sumerian word ‘MUL’, meaning ‘celestial body’, could be used to describe both a
planet and a star. The equivalent word in Akkadian, ‘Kakkab’, has the same dual
meaning.
¹³
Either this means the Sumerians weren’t sophisticated
enough to differentiate between stars and planets, which seems highly unlikely
given the general level of their knowledge, or else they were more insightful
about the nature of ‘celestial bodies’ than we give them credit for.

Sitchin’s
astronomical interpretation of the creation myth in the Enuma Elish is
supported by corroborating evidence found in a Babylonian astrolabe, as cited
by Van der Waerden:

“The
red star, which when the stars of the night are finished, bisects the heavens
and stands there whence the south wind comes, this star is the god
Nibiru-Marduk”.
¹⁴

This
is an explicit Babylonian record denoting Nibiru/Marduk as a red star, a
description that clearly differentiates it from white Jupiter. The reference
implies that this star is seen as a bright early morning object in the south.
This is important because it differentiates this object from a reddened
heliacally rising planet such as Venus or Jupiter, which would naturally be
seen in the east. The Babylonians included it in a star list, as can be gleaned
from the “12 stars of Elam, Akkad and Amurru” in APIN, BM 86378 col. 1, 36-38:

“When
the stars of Enlil have disappeared the great faint star, which bisects the
heavens and stands, is Marduk-Nibiru SAG.ME.GAR; he changes his position and
wanders over the heavens.”
¹⁴

The
Babylonians astronomical knowledge is widely recognized as being considerable.
Nibiru-Marduk was clearly understood in astronomical terms, yet its description
does not readily lend itself to any known celestial body that astronomers
recognize today. These passages also show that Sitchin’s interpretations of the
ancient texts were neither fraudulent nor misguided, as many have claimed.

The
passages also present us with evidence that Nibiru/Marduk appeared to the
Mesopotamians as a red star during historical times, and that its heavenly
passage was unusual. It was faint, red, stood still in the sky and then
wandered like a planet. This is highly unusual, to say the least. It is no
wonder that the nature of Nibiru remains controversial.

The
closest match to these observed accounts of the appearance of Nibiru is that of
an unknown and rarely seen celestial body. A comet would be an obvious choice
were it not for the red color. It would have to be a very special comet; one
whose color is red. But even then there would be problems.

When
we look at comets, we see only the material being blasted off its surface by
the heat of the sun. Its actual body is lost to sight within this huge stream
of gas. But if the cometary body was big enough ― perhaps the size of a
planet ― the gases driven off would be relatively less. We would start to
see the world itself.

So
Nibiru seems to be a massive comet of planetary proportions, one whose gravity
retains relatively more of its volatile gases as it moves among the more
familiar planets. Its surface is red, which is in keeping with many of the
bodies in the outer solar system whose surfaces are strewn with reddish organic
material. Yet it also appears as a comet.

This
would make sense of the ancient Mesopotamian myths. Except that Marduk seems a
rather more sizable god than is implied by this description of a reddish
planetary comet. Marduk is described in monumental terms; the ‘Sun of the
Heavens’. To my mind, this implies a body that generates its own heat; a brown
dwarf that is the sun’s binary companion. That ability to produce heat out
among the comets is crucial to the sustainability of an atmosphere, liquid
water and life.

It
is clear that Nibiru is a planetary comet, but I now doubt that Nibiru is
absolutely identical to Marduk of the Babylonian creation myth. Marduk
‘created’ Nibiru in the heavens, and takes the name as one of fifty. But are
they entirely the same?

I
believe that the answer to this riddle is that Marduk is the binary companion,
the Dark Star that orbits the sun like a comet. Marduk crashed through the
solar system and caused great chaos some 4 billion years ago, as described by
Zecharia Sitchin. It then migrated out into a larger orbit as a result of its
encounters with the sun’s other planets.

What
the ancient Mesopotamians saw and recorded in their astrolabes and star lists
was one of Marduk’s moons, or planets, appearing among our planets for a short
while, and behaving very strangely.

This
is a complex explanation. The reason I have opted for it after many years of
research is because of the scientific evidence. To understand Nibiru, we cannot
just read myth.

We
must also understand how that myth might fit into physical reality. Science has
learned an awful lot about the outer solar system in recent years. That new
knowledge needs to be incorporated into the hunt for Planet X. That knowledge,
I believe, points towards the explanation I have presented here, and this book
will present the logic that lies behind it, which I believe to be compelling.

At
this stage, it would be very helpful to look back over the history of the
search for a tenth planet, and to then bring forward that new scientific
knowledge. We must leave the myths and legends of ancient Sumer and time-travel
to the last century, and consider the data emerging from just the last few
years.

¹
D. Rohl “Legend: The Genesis of Civilization” pp29-31 Arrow 1999

²
“The Cassell Atlas of World History” Cassell 1997

³
C. Sagan & I. Shklovskii “Intelligent Life in the Universe”
pp456-463 Holden-Day Inc., 1966

⁴
Z. Sitchin “The 12th Planet” p245-246 Anon Books, 1976

⁵
E. Plunket “Calendars and Constellations of the Ancient World”
p8, John Murray, London 1903

⁶
L. Lawhon “Nephilim. The Theories of Zecharia Sitchin”
http://ufos.about.com/science/ufos/library/weekly/aa010801a.htm

⁷
Z. Sitchin “The 12th Planet” Chapter 7 Avon 1976

⁸
G. de Santillana & H. von Dechend “Hamlet’s Mill” App. 39,
pp430-451,
http://www.apollonius.net/trees.html
Thanks to Robertino Solarion

⁹
R. Temple “The Crystal Sun” Century 2000

¹⁰
The Babylonian "Enuma Elish"

¹¹
Z. Sitchin “When Time Began” pp110-2 Avon 1993

¹²
C. Sagan “Pale Blue Dot” p140-141, p127 Headline Book Publishing
1995

¹³
Z. Sitchin “When Time Began”p161 Avon 1993

¹⁴
B. Van der Waerden “Science Awakening II” pp66-68 Oxford
University Press 1974, with thanks to Pat Thomas

7. Planet X, Past and Present

The
idea that there is a massive undiscovered planetary body orbiting the sun is
almost 100 years old now. It is certainly not a new idea, but is one whose
popularity has fluctuated down the years. At the moment, it is a possibility
that is regaining a certain amount of scientific credibility. An idea, perhaps,
whose time has arrived.

Our
science and technology seems to progress at an accelerating rate, and this
tends to make us all a little complacent about what remains to be discovered.
It seems common sense that any scientific endeavour lasting 100 years would
have certainly reached a conclusion by now, as the means to discover the answer
has improved. Yet, many of the most important scientific questions remain
unanswered: a cure for cancer; a renewable energy source; a unified field
theory in physics, to name but a few. These problems remind us that our
knowledge of the cosmos, the Earth and ourselves is far from complete, and that
science has much to learn.

And
so it is with our knowledge of the solar system. Because we are looking further
and further into space with larger and more technologically refined telescopes,
we have a tendency to assume that everything in-between has been discovered,
catalogued and understood. This is far from the truth in reality.

Astronomy
is only as good as its ability to pick up light sources, or sources of other
types of radiation, and distinguish them from other similar sources. Our eyes,
searching the heavens at night, perform the most simple form of astronomy,
detecting the light from distant stars. Yet we cannot see closer objects,
including the outer planets of the solar system beyond Saturn, nor the asteroids
and distant comets.

Even so, we know that these objects are there, because they have
been detected and photographed by our telescopes and spacecraft. We don’t need
to see them with our own eyes. Similarly, we cannot see far more distant
objects than our neighborhood stars, for instance distant galaxies. Yet
telescopes, and sometimes just binoculars, allow us to see these incredibly
distant swirling masses of stars. Because we can clearly ‘see’ so far, we think
that our knowledge of the heavens is nearly complete.

However, we are dependent upon light for our knowledge. Almost all
of the objects in the sky that we can see emit their own light. A few simply
reflect sunlight, like the Moon and the five planets visible to us as we look
up at the heavens.

As these planets become more distant from the sun, the amount of
light they reflect dwindles such that the massive outer planets Uranus and
Neptune are too faint to see. This brightness deteriorates very rapidly as you
consider objects in the outer solar system. So although we can easily see
thousands of stars light years away, it becomes extremely difficult to detect
even planetary-sized bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune.

Astronomy is rather like looking down a long garden at night-time. You might be able to see the light from the house behind your back fence,
but beyond a small distance your own garden is in darkness. It is within this
darkness that our knowledge of the outer solar system resides, even after 100
years of peering through the gloom.

Just because we can see the lights over our back fence, does not
mean we should assume we know what’s prowling about at the bottom of our own
garden. The extent of our sun’s gravitational influence may be about 50,000
Astronomical Units, or 50,000 times the distance from the sun to the Earth. Our
current knowledge of solar system objects includes only those within about 50
AU, which is just 1/1000th of the distance to the edge of the sun’s influence.

Continuing my analogy, if our nocturnal garden is 100 metres long
then our current view out of the window at night takes in just 10 centimeters
of the patio! Beyond that we have no clue what’s out there beyond inference and
theoretical considerations.

Yet, for some reason, we think we can assume an excellent
knowledge of what’s out there beyond Neptune. We can’t.

For
many years, people have speculated that other planets lie beyond Neptune and
Pluto, waiting to be discovered. Some evidence has emerged to back this
conjecture up, and some arguments have been leveled against such an idea. The
result is that the current scientific consensus is that we have a pretty good
idea about what the other 999/1000th of the solar system looks like, without
ever having seen it, and that there are no more big surprises in store. Anyone
who thinks there are ― is thought to be fantasizing, or is labeled a
‘crank’.

Well,
I beg to differ. There is plenty of astronomy-based evidence for a so-called
‘Planet X’, and plenty of good reasons to remain open-minded about the
possibilities. Not only that, but there is the potential here for great
science.