Join Tommy the Time Traveling Turtle and his friends as he visits the lost ages and get ready to learn some amazing things about space, time, history and the future!
www.thegreatyear.com
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Finally, the astrophysics community is officially looking for a large mass!
We published our first paper and book over ten years ago suggesting there had to be something very big out there exerting a gravitational influence on our solar system. Considered a fringe idea at the time, we saw the sheer edge of the Kuiper Belt, the behavior of Pluto and other minor planets (before they were called dwarves), comet paths, the constant revisions and stream of new inputs required to make sense of precession theory, the Pioneer anomalies, etc. all pointing to a large mass tugging on our solar system.
Now the race to find it is heating up thanks to the skills of Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin at Caltech. They examined the orbits of the minor planets and have concluded there must be a 9th planet. Anyone that follows the field knows this team and others have actually been looking for a few years. But because these guys have more credibility than the Spanish astronomers that essentially mentioned similar things in 2014, the news this time made headlines. Hence, the number of scientists looking for the source of gravitational influence has expanded. It didn’t hurt that Mike Brown, famed for killing Pluto, framed the new find as a 9th planet to replace the one he knocked off. That sounds safer and more press worthy than looking for two large masses, which the Spaniards calculated in 2014.
Assuming only a large planet type mass could cause the minor planets to display their observed patterns, the search is on for something much bigger than a dwarf. In fact the estimate is that it has to be something equivalent to ten earth masses or more. Another interesting statistic given by Mike and Konstantin is the minor planets pattern we observe has less than a 0.007% chance of being random. And the high end of the assumed periodicity is now within 80% of the periodicity we predicted in 2005.
Anyway, let’s cut to the chase. Since many very smart people have been looking for a large “planet” for over a year, and nothing has been found, we predict no planet will be found – other than maybe another dwarf or two. It is not because of a lack of resources or technology but because we do not think a “planet” is the source of the gravitational influence.
The best explanation for all the data we have seen is a star. If our system were gravitationally influenced by another star it would explain many of the noted anomalies, including the force on the minor planets, and finally make sense of the precession observable (a 50 arc second p/y change in orientation relative to VLBI sources). All our data suggests the precession observable is only partially caused by local influences, nutation and Chandler wobble, but is largely the simple observable of a solar system curving through space. In other words, the large unknown gravitational influence cannot just be a ten earth mass planet out a couple of hundred AU, only affecting the outer minor planets. Rather it is likely a much larger mass, acting on our whole solar system from a distance. The large planets closest to the sun are strongly affected by the sun’s great mass and display low eccentricity and are all within a few degrees of the planetary plane. In contrast, the distant smaller mass minor planets, less bound to the sun, have their orbits inclined, elongated and fall into multiple resonances with the periodicity of the larger binary orbit.
Proving such a hypothesis will only come after enough time and energy has been spent searching for a ninth planet (so it is a good thing!). But when such a planet is not found the search will turn to other ways to explain the large and obvious gravitational effect. This author suggests the whole process could be sped up if the astrophysics community will begin to look at all solar system anomalies, including the strange acceleration of many space probes like Pioneer 10 and 11.
My personal expectation is attention will turn to the possibility of a more distant gravitational source within one to five years and this will lead to exploring the effect of our closest large star systems. Finally we will be thinking beyond the bounds of our own solar system!
P.S. – Please join us this year for tenth Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge to be held at the Westin in Rancho Mirage, California, September 30 – October 2.
Long term predictions of changes in the earth’s orientation to VLBI sources have been historically unreliable. The IAU has found that current methods are “not consistent with dynamical theory”. Part of the problem appears to be that measurements of the precession observable are made to points outside the moving frame of the solar system yet do not account for motion of the solar system relative to those reference points. We have found that by separating the motions of the earth within the local frame (of the solar system), from the motion of the frame relative to external reference points (outside the moving frame), long term measurements of the earth’s changing orientation may be simplified and predicted with a higher degree of accuracy. Click here to download full length paper.
John Anderson, retired astrophysicist from Caltech JPL has noticed something
unusual:
“There is something very strange going on with spacecraft motions. We have no convincing
explanation for either the Pioneer anomaly or the flyby anomaly.” The fact this effect seems most evident with flybys most asymmetrical with respect to Earth’s equator “suggests that the anomaly is related to Earth’s rotation,” Anderson said.
One possible explanation might be that solar system is accelerating through space.
– See more at: SPACE.COM – NASA Baffled by Unexplained Force Acting on Space Probes
Giant Stealth Planet May Explain Rain of Comets from Solar System’s Edge
More scientists need a companion star – or at least a very big planet!
One recent discovery of interest is 2012VP113, nicknamed Biden, a dwarf planet about 450 km in diameter found to be orbiting our sun in a pattern quite similar to Sedna, one of the largest dwarfs, discovered in 2002. Mike Brown, an astrophysicist at Caltech, famed for killing Pluto by his discovery of so many of these minor planets, was the first to note that Sedna cannot exist in its current position without the gravitational help of some unseen body. The discovery of Biden only underlines this point and heightens the quest for a large mass affecting our solar system.
But where and how big? Two Spanish astronomers, Carlos and Raul de la Fuente Marcos, at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain, have examined these distant dwarfs and noticed some unusual patterns. They have concluded that because Biden and Sedna are not large enough to exert much influence on each other, they must be kept in their place by not one but two large undiscovered planets that each has a mass of at least ten times that of the earth.
Furthermore, these mega planets are required to be at least 200 to 250 AU away from the sun (one AU or astronomical unit is equivalent to the distance between the sun and the earth). The Binary Research Institute has long hypothesized that there must be another large mass, most likely a companion star, that affects our solar system.
In BRI’s view, such a mass is required not only to explain the incline of these outer dwarf planet orbits to the plane of the major planets (for example Pluto’s orbit is inclined about 17 degrees) but also as a way to explain the changing orientation of the entire solar system to the fixed stars by about 50 arc seconds per year, a.k.a. precession. In such a model the orbits of these dwarfs are not unexpected. While the Spanish astronomers are not saying the mass affecting our solar system is a companion star, their assumptions concerning the large mass and great distance of their hypothetical planets, are clearly moving us in BRI’s direction. Year by year mainstream astronomy is getting closer to the idea there must be something big out there, and it is influencing our solar system in ways heretofore unknown.
But it is not just the position of these orbits that is so interesting. The most confirming fact from a Great Year perspective is that the orbital periods of these new dwarf planets are in resonance with known Great Year periodicities. And the Spanish astronomers are indeed talking about these resonances. Planets or moons moving in resonance with one another are a sign of gravitational influences and an indication that these bodies have been dancing together for very long periods of time – and not just due to some random star passing by disturbing a planet out of its orbit.
As stated, the resonances of the newly discovered dwarfs are quite confirming to anyone studying the 24,000-year precessional cycle. For example, Sedna orbits the sun in 12,000 years, once per Yuga or twice per Yuga cycle (one complete precessional cycle after applying Kepler’s laws to the current observed rate of about 25,770 years). And Biden’s orbit is in a 3:1 ratio to Sedna, meaning it orbits the sun three times per Yuga, and six times in a complete Yuga cycle. For those that study planetary resonances and understand the Great Year cycle, this supports the 24,000-year precession cycle to a tee!
Commenting in NewScientist on the dwarf planets that are raising all this attention, Scott Shepard of the Carnegie Institution for Science, and one of the discoverers of Biden, said, “As there are only a few of these extremely distant objects known, it’s hard to say anything definitive about the number or location of any distant planets, however, in the near future we should have more objects to work with to help us determine the structure of the outer solar system.”
From the point of view of this Yuga observer that “structure” will eventually be found to contain a mass equivalent to a companion star. This mass, which along with our sun, appears to complete one revolution through the constellations of the zodiac in about 24,000 years (only appearing to move slightly slower now as we are closer to apoapsis than periapsis). Please note, we mention the zodiac here only because it serves as a way to measure the observed motion of the sun as it moves through the sky. The sun, observed at the same time each year, can be seen to move through these twelve constellations at the rate of about 2000 years each.
Add this information to a steady increase in the rate of precession, which looks more like an orbit pattern following Kepler’s Laws than any local wobble phenomenon, and we see evidence of a solar system in motion. The pieces are coming together!
Please join us at the10th Annual 2016 Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge. This year’s event will take place September 31 to October 2nd at the beautiful Westin Hotel in Rancho Mirage California. For more information go to www.cycleoftheages.org or phone Sandy at 949- 399-9000.
Solar sibling HD 162826 can be seen with low-power binoculars near the bright star Vega in the night sky (credit: Ivan Ramirez/Tim Jones/McDonald Observatory)
Source: http://www.kurzweilai.net/astronomers-find-suns-sibling-star
A team of researchers led by astronomer Ivan Ramirez of The University of Texas at Austin has identified the first “sibling” of the sun — a star almost certainly born from the same cloud of gas and dust as our star.
Ramirez’s methods will help astronomers find other solar siblings, which could lead to an understanding of how and where our sun formed, and how our solar system became hospitable for life. The work appears in the June 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
There is a chance, “small, but not zero,” Ramirez said, that these solar sibling stars could host planets that harbor life. In their earliest days within their birth cluster, he explains, collisions could have knocked chunks off of planets, and these fragments could have traveled between solar systems, and perhaps even may have been responsible for bringing primitive life to Earth. “
So it could be argued that solar siblings are key candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life,” Ramirez said.
The solar sibling his team identified is called HD 162826, a star 15 percent more massive than the sun, located 110 light-years away in the constellation Hercules. The star is not visible to the unaided eye but can be seen with low-power binoculars, not far from the bright star Vega.
Double Stars Mysterious Connection
Charged objects like protons and electrons are connected by electromagnetism. Massive objects like planets and our Sun are connected by gravity. From falling balls to an electric shock, gravity and electromagnetism are the forces we experience daily.
http://annesastronomynews.com/double-stars-mysterious-connection/
Since launching the Binary Research Institute website a few years ago, we have continued to research the possibility that our Sun might be part of a binary or multiple star system. This includes investigating a number of issues related to the Sun’s motion, and the methodology of finding other celestial objects. To that end:
• In late 2002 we traveled to the outback of Australia to view a total eclipse of the Sun and discussed the Sun’s motion and related topics with Tom Van Flandern, former head of U.S. Naval Observatory. Conclusion: eclipse cycles indicate the earth moves 360 degrees around the sun in a tropical year, inconsistent with current lunisolar precession theory.
• In mid 2003 we went to the Big Island of Hawaii and The Keck Observatory and spent a good bit of the night with Geoff Marcy, Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkley, as he searched for extra-solar planets (he and his team have found more than 100 so far!). Conclusion: we know less than 1% of the universe and it is likely there will be a number of discoveries over the next few decades that require us to remodel local space.
• We have also met personally, or most often through conferences and the Internet, with a number of astrophysicists and astronomers around the world and discussed the topic of precession and its nuances. Conclusion: precession mechanics is one of the least understood topics in science today!
• The 26th Annual IAU General Assembly determined:
1. the need for a precession theory consistent with dynamical theory,
2. that, while the precession portion of the IAU 2000A precession-nutation model, recom-mended for use beginning on 1 January 2003 by resolution B1.6 of the XXIVth IAU General Assembly, is based on improved precession rates with respect to the IAU 1976 precession, it is not consistent with dynamical theory, and
3. that resolution B1.6 of the XXIVth General Assembly also encourages the development of new expressions for precession consistent with the IAU 2000A precession-nutation model.
The only way we have found to solve the IAU’s concern, is to replace the precession part of the precession-nutation model with a precession theory based on a moving solar system (the binary model). Such a model is consistent with dynamical theory, as it allows local dynamics to determine short period motions such as nutation, and it provides a more accurate way to predict changes in the rate of precession without the complexity of the 2000A precession-nutation model.
It was recently reported by NewScientist that Gravity Probe B received an “F” from the U.S. Government and the project would receive no more funding.
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13938-gravity-probe-b-scores-f-in-nasa-review.html
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Here’s why:
Our government (you and me) spent over $850 million on GP-B, a joint NASA and Stanford project. This was far more than the original budget. In theory the project was simple; put a telescope into space, attach it to some gyros and point it at a nearby guide star. The motion picked up by the gyros was supposed to confirm Einstein’s theory of relativity (that the mass of the earth bends space time) and reveal the exact amount of the relativistic effect.
Over the last decade the GP-B team built the finest gyros known to man, put them in a spacecraft cooled to almost absolute zero, and sent it into a polar orbit far above all the noise of a so-called wobbling earth. In a carefully controlled experiment, whereby the telescope was set to meticulously track the guide star (one with minimal proper motion), they picked up some amazing information – potentially a huge discovery – but it was not what they were looking for.
In order to find the relativistic effect, the GP-B team assumed they only had to cancel out two signals or unwanted motions. First, was the motion of the spacecraft in a polar orbit around the earth. This motion resulted in an aberration between the telescope and the guide star of about 5.1856 arc seconds per orbit. Since that orbit took place every 91 minutes it was an easy signal to spot and remove. The second was the earth’s orbit around the sun, which results in an aberration of 20.4958 arc seconds per year (relative to the guide star). Only one and a half of these orbits took place during the 17 month experiment period so it was harder to find, but it is a motion so well known, that it was also easy to confirm and cancel out. It was assumed that there were no other meaningful celestial motions to cancel, so if the equipment worked right, the only signal left would be the relativistic effect.
There was however another assumption made that now appears to be a potentially huge mistake. That is that the solar system only moves about .005 arc seconds per year. This assumes that the only motion of the solar system is once around the galaxy approximately every 240 million years. The thinking was that this aberration is so small it would not affect the outcome of the experiment. But after netting out the spacecraft and earth orbit motions the remaining signal was far larger than anyone expected. In fact, it is so large it either means there is some unforeseen problem with the gyros or that our sun is part of a binary star system.
Yes, that’s right, if the data is correct our solar system is curving through space (carrying the earth and spacecraft with it of course) so rapidly that the only way to explain it is if our sun is gravitationally bound to another nearby star. When I met with the GP-B team at Stanford last fall they were still in the early process of analyzing the data but openly discussed the idea of an unknown companion to our sun, including the possibility of a not too distant blackhole.
This is by no means the consensus opinion. In fact, most of those analyzing the data suspect the wacky signals are the result of imperfections on the gyros, polhode motion or some other inexplicable anomaly. But given the fact that that the gyros were specifically designed to avoid these types of problems, and were checked by hundreds of scientists before launch, and that the experiment is fairly simple at its core, serious consideration should be given to the idea that the unwanted GP-B signal, deemed to be “noise”, is in fact the signal of a solar system in motion.
A moving solar system model has been the basis of our work here at the Binary Research Institute for the last six years. From this model we have made a number of observations and predications. One is that the observable, commonly known as the precession of the equinox, is principally due to the moving solar system rather than local luni-solar forces (which do produce nutation but very little of the 50 arc seconds of annual earth reorientation). Another is the accelerating precession rate, which has been occurring steadily since Newcomb first provided a formula for the precession constant (which he underestimated and we modified with Kepler’s Laws). Long before the GP-B data was received we wrote Stanford and told them to expect some wacky signals that would appear to mimic precession. One of the subsequent public releases has stated that the signals received do indeed appear to “mimic” the very signals the spacecraft was trying to avoid with its perfect gyros placed far above a so-called wobbling earth.
At this point no one knows quite what to think. Is there something wrong with “the world’s finest gyros ever built” or is our solar system gravitationally bound to some nearby mass? Time will tell.
In the meantime, I can understand the government wanting to shutdown a project that has produced nothing but cost overruns and unexpected results. On the other hand, if the GP-B team is willing to explore novel ideas related to the unwanted signal, they just might discover something even more important than the fifth digit of the relativistic effect, that is, our solar system moves!
Seven years ago, the moment I first calculated the odd orbit of Sedna and realized it never came anywhere close to any of the planets, it instantly became clear that we astronomers had been missing something all along. Either something large once passed through the outer parts of our solar system and is now long gone, or something large still lurks in a distant corner out there and we haven’t found it yet.
Read more • Part 2
http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/2010/10/theres-something-out-there-part-2.html