“Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose…I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.”
— J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Essays (1927)
Please bear with me, as today’s story takes a bit of set up. It’s important to know the factual basis for the punch line, to understand that it’s not just tin-foil beanie pipe dreams.
In the 1500s, Tycho Brahe produced one of the greatest libraries of astronomical observations ever. Based on his work, Johannes Kepler formulated his Three Laws of Planetary Motion, in 1609 and 1619. He found that all orbits are ellipses, that bodies accelerate as they move toward the Sun and decelerate as they move away, The third law stated that the square of a body’s period was proportional to the cube of its semi-major axis (average distance from the Sun). Kepler also found a harmonious relationship between the orbits of the planets, such that we discovered new planets from the orbital positions given by Kepler. From these laws, Newton derived his laws of Universal Gravitation.
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At this point, we should mention the Titius-Bode law that predicted for any given planetary system, each planet will be twice as far from its star and the one before it. This hypothesis is credited with finding Ceres and Uranus, but not Neptume or Pluto. It also appears to fail in many exoplanetary systems. Just something to keep in mind.
The late Tom van Flandern, who earned a degree in Celestial Mechanics from Yale and spent most of his career as Head of Celestial Mechanics at the US Naval Observatory, also made an interesting discovery, based on Kepler’s laws. We find planets at every orbital position formulated by Kepler, except between Mars and Jupiter. In that orbit, we find instead the asteroid belt, thousands of boulders and debris, except for Ceres.
Van Flandern was intrigued, and he took the ephemera (orbital measurements) of several thousand asteroids and periodic comets, and ran them backward in time. He found that they all converged at a single point 3.2 million years ago, and 65 million years ago. This could only mean that there was a planet there that somehow underwent what SpaceX calls a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”. He assembled his findings into the Exploded Planet Hypothesis, or EPH, and made a number of predictions based on his data.
The asteroids are divided up into several classes based on composition — Carbon, Silicate, Metal, and Dark (covered in tholins). Of the asteroids, Ceres is a fully-formed and differentiated (layered) sphere, while Vesta appears to be a large chunk of a much larger body, showing layers the way a road cut does here on Earth. All the rest are just random boulders of all sizes.
What’s more interesting is that the convergences roughly align with the Cretaceous-Paleogene and Pliocene-Pleistocene mass extinctions. The former is easy to find — it’s a grey-white band that is found everywhere on Earth, below which are lots of fossils, and above which is just rock. The P-P boundary is a little trickier to find, but it’s there if you know where to look.
We will focus on the P-P event, since most of the following data align with that one.
The number of bodies in the Solar System with hemispheric dichotomies (hemispheres that are radically different) is really surprising. The Moon’s far side is densely cratered and rough, while the near side is relatively smooth and far less cratered. Mars’ southern hemisphere is nearly 2km higher and far more cratered and rough than its northern hemisphere. Saturn’s moon Iapetus looks like a fusion between a cue ball and an 8-ball. Mercury, Jupiter’s Ganymede and Calisto, Venus, and quite a few other bodies show similar and striking differences in hemispheres.
It’s also important to note that of the planets, Venus’ orbit is nearly circular and the most circular of all the major planets (the Pluto argument is for another day). Mercury has the most eccentric orbit, with Mars taking third place. The gas giants, in contrast, are fairly circular. We need to note that Venus rotates “backward” compared to the other planets, and Uranus is tipped about 98 degrees from the others.
Trust me, this will all come together eventually. Keep in mind that these are all mainstream, verifiable facts. We haven’t even begun the woo-woo stuff yet.
So, here’s the scenario: Planet V (the commonly used name for the hypothetical fifth planet) exploded roughly 3 million years ago. This caused a shock wave and bubble of debris, kind of like a shotgun blast, to fly out in all directions, as well as casting Mercury, Mars and Ceres — originally moons of Planet V — into their own orbits, with Mars destabilizing what was the fourth planet and sending it careening into Jupiter, which dislodged Jupiter’s core to become what we now call Venus (see Emmanuel Velikovsky). A large piece of Planet V hit Uranus, tipping it over on its side. Meanwhile, the debris cloud swept past the other bodies, pummelling them with meteors, depositing rock and soot on the sides facing the explosion (hemispheric dichotomy).
The pieces of Planet V clumped into the asteroid belt, while some of them shot out quite a ways to become the periodic comets. Since Planet V was fully differentiated — had geologic layers — some asteroids were chunks of carbon, others just plain rock/silicates, while still others, probably from the planet’s core, are nearly pure metal. We note that the asteroids are not evenly distributed, but tend to gather on one side of the Solar System, and they are further clumped with the S types closer in, while the C types further out, and the M types scattered hither and yon.
Besides the asteroid belt, there are Centaurs, TNOs, Damocloids, and Trojans which may be part of the Planet V debris cloud. Some of them have ephemera that clearly resonate with the asteroid belt, and a couple of them may be lost moons of Planet V, as well.
So do we have any evidence that any of this scenario is even approaching reality?
Why, yes, we do.
“The successful predictions include: (1) satellites of asteroids; (2) satellites of comets; (3) salt water in meteorites; (4) ‘roll marks’ leading to boulders on asteroids; (5) the time and peak rate of the 1999 Leonid meteor storm; (6) explosion signatures for asteroids; (7) the strongly spiked energy parameter for new comets; (8) the distribution of black material on slowly rotating airless bodies; (9) splitting velocities of comets; (10) the asteroid-like nature of Deep Impact target Comet Tempel 1; and (11) the presence of high-formation-temperature minerals in the Stardust comet dust sample return.”
The two most stunning confirmations have been the presence of asteroid moonlets and that comets appear to be the same as asteroids.
In fact, hundreds of moonlets have been discovered, and many more will likely be found. Some have even been found to have rings. At the time Van Flandern made this prediction, none were known and the scientidiots pooh-poohed this idea. NASA’s DART mission claims to have changed the orbital period of one such moon, Dimorphos, though no credit was every given to the EPH for predicting the presence of the moon.
The prediction that no scientidiot can bring himself to admit is the comet/asteroid connection. Spacecraft have now visited five comets, including bombings and landings. The mainstream view that comets are dirty snowballs/snowy dirtballs has been completely falsified. All five comets look identical to asteroids, except for the electrical phenomena that create the coma and tail (yet another post in the future).
At least four asteroids have been observed to exhibit comet-like behavior, most notably (2060 Chiron). If all the comets we have seen up close look exactly like asteroids, and some asteroids have been seen to behave like comets, then the EPH has shockingly debunked the Standard Model with predictions the Standard Model says were unthinkable, even impossible.
So here we are with multiple lines of evidence for an exploded planet in what is now the asteroid belt. This event coincides with a mass extinction event on Earth, mass crater formation across the Solar System, the appearance of Australopithecus in Ethiopia, the Pliocene climate with cooler and drier conditions (atmospheric dust?).
Van Flandern proposed three different natural means to cause a planet to blow up, but he was not satisfied with any other them. This leaves us with strong evidence for an exploded planet, but no model to make it happen naturally. Therefore, we need to look at technical or mechanical means to do it. And this is where the woo rubber meets the speculative road.
Suppose Planet V was the Tiamat mentioned in the Sumerian lore, or Phaeton as proposed by Titius-Bode Law. Suppose it was inhabited by an advanced, interplanetary civilization (archologies across the Solar System). Suppose this ancient civilization invented a technology that accidentally or purposefully destroyed Planet V. Suppose survivors of Planet V had to manipulate the Solar System to restabilize it, and so parked Mercury, Venus, the Moon, and Mars in their current locations, and perhaps moved Neptune and Pluto around, as well. Suppose these survivors engineered humans as beasts of burden to help them rebuild their civilization.
The Titius-Bode law appears to fail for most exoplanetary systems, but could the law actually be proof of engineering in our system?
Suppose those survivors sit like algae mats on a fetid pond.
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Very Interesting story! From what I have seen of Human life on Earth, I seriously hope that humans never escape from our Prison planet. Never should humans be allowed; To seek out new life, new civilizations and destroy them.
To move the planets around would take a lot of energy. Where did the pond scum get the energy?
Planet V would be pretty darned cold in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter. I don't think it could support life as we know it.
If your theory is true. The pond scum are pretty dumb. They blew up their own planet and mated with humans. That's a dangerous mess.
But then the pond scum blew up their own planet so their nature doesn't change either.
Very Interesting story! From what I have seen of Human life on Earth, I seriously hope that humans never escape from our Prison planet. Never should humans be allowed; To seek out new life, new civilizations and destroy them.