Comet origins and the mysteries of mankind's ancient past

Astronomer Tom Van Flandern (1940 - 2009) had a PhD in astronomy specializing in celestial mechanics. He was the former Chief of Celestial Mechanics at the US Naval Observatory. However, he left mainstream science when he began to believe that the conventional explanations for many of the phenomena of the solar system and the universe were incorrect. In particular, Dr. Van Flandern challenged the Big Bang Theory of origins, and the conventional explanation for the origin of comets and asteroids.

In his book Dark Matter, Missing Planets, and New Comets: Paradoxes Resolved, Origins Illuminated (1993), Dr. Van Flandern lays out the problems with the conventional explanations for the topics mentioned above, and puts forward his controversial alternative theories. While I personally believe that the hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown provides a better explanation for the origin of comets and asteroids, and one that is backed up by extensive corroborating geological evidence here on earth (see list and links in this post), it is important to note that Dr. Van Flandern was alert to the massive problems in the conventional theories and was bravely putting forward alternative views, even though it made him unpopular among his fellow astronomers.

In a similar way, I believe that the sheer volume of alternative theories for mankind's ancient past is the result of the massive problems with the conventional timeline, which stimulates thinking people to explore other possible explanations. Even though we might not agree with all or any of them in their entirety, we should view these theories as evidence of the problem with the accepted view, and commend those who are willing to risk ridicule in order to put forward a better suggestion.

Dr. Van Flandern noticed the harmonic relationship of the orbits of the existing planets and the well-known fact that there is a gap in the pattern between Mars and Jupiter, and became the leading modern proponent of the Exploded Planet theory, which proposes that there was once a watery "Planet V" between Mars and Jupiter, which exploded, leaving the asteroid belt in its wake. He further controversially suggested that the inhabitants of this exploded planet, realizing in advance the need to leave, came to earth and that we are their descendents.

Whatever one thinks of these speculations of extraterrestrial life, Dr. Van Flandern's arguments about the problems with the conventional explanation for the origin of comets are sound, and his proposition that comets originated with a violent explosive ejection from the inner solar system appears to provide a much better answer than the existence of a hypothetical Oort Cloud.

In the previous post about Comet Hale-Bopp, we examined some of the problems with the conventional explanations for the origin of comets. In his book, which can be read online here, Dr. Van Flandern explains the conventional theory and its problems. First, he explains the size of the proposed Oort Cloud, which is important to understand in order to perceive the problems with the theory. If the entire solar system as we know it, out to the orbit of Pluto, were the size of a US dime (just over one centimeter), then the Oort Cloud would be a shell of comets in a generally stationary posture, hovering far from the sun, an average of six meters away (over nineteen and a half feet out). This analogy reduces the actual distances by a factor of 10¹⁵ and can help us understand how hard it would be for a comet, hovering in stasis, to be dislodged in such a way that it would actually enter the dime-sized solar system and be visible to us on earth at all.

Dr. Van Flandern explains:

These comets [in the hypothetical Oort Cloud] are essentially stationary with respect to the Sun, having mean velocities in the scale model of just 3 millimeters per 1000 years. Passing stars, on the other hand, move relatively rapidly, with typical speeds of a meter or so per 1000 years, and stir up the comets they come very close to. It is deduced that in this way an occasional comet will by chance have its motion redirected towards the Sun in such a way that it will manage to pass within the 1mm-diameter sphere centered on the Sun, within which we on Earth can discover and observe it. [. . .] The number of comets within the cloud is believed to be immense in order to provide the few comets we observe, because the chances are so small of any one comet being perturbed into the observable range. And the absence of certain planetary perturbations in their motion proves that a large number of new comets arriving from the cloud could never have passed so close to the Sun before, even though they complete a revolution around their orbits every few million years. How could these curious objects evolve into such a seemingly improbable situation? 181.

Dr. Van Flandern then goes on to illustrate evidence which argues against the Oort Cloud theory. For one thing, it is difficult to explain a mechanism that would allow comets to coagulate at all in the near-perfect vacuum that exists so far from the sun. Further, the Oort Cloud theory must account for the complete regeneration of the cloud whenever it is wiped out by galactic tides, molecular clouds, and passing stars.

A major problem he and other astronomers have also pointed out is the complete absence of hyperbolic comets -- comets whose orbits are so fast that they will come into the solar system only once, slingshot around the sun, and then disappear into deep space forever, never to return. If comets are launched from an Oort Cloud by the perturbation of passing stars, some should travel so fast that they would have hyperbolic orbits. However, none with such velocity have ever been observed. On the other hand, if comets originated from an explosion in the inner solar system, then any matter that was not initially traveling fast enough to completely escape the sun's pull would eventually reach a point where it came back: such objects would then orbit far out again and return. In other words, if comets came from the inner solar system originally, we would not expect to see hyperbolic comets, only comets making their first return or later returns after such an event.

As explained in the previous post, over millions of years, some of these non-hyperbolic comets might be accelerated by a close encounter with Jupiter to the point that they would be ejected from the solar system, and this is the reason that explanations for comet origins must be fairly recent, because if comets originated billions of years ago, Jupiter would have captured or ejected more of them than exist today. This is why there is an Oort Cloud theory in the first place, but if comets originated in a relatively recent violent explosion from within the inner solar system, it would also explain the number of comets still in existence. However, the lack of hyperbolic comets shows that the Oort Cloud explanation is not a good one, and that an explanation which provides for comet origins from the inner solar system would be far more satisfactory.

Incidentally, Dr. Van Flandern points out that his criticism of the Oort Cloud theory does not imply criticism of the cloud's namesake in any way. In a footnote on page 191, Dr. Van Flandern says "Astronomer Oort always maintained that an origin of comets from within the solar system, perhaps in connection with the event which gave rise to the asteroid belt, was the most probable."

While Dr. Van Flandern proposed an exploding fifth planet for their origin (a planet which must have been watery, since comets are mostly ice), the hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown would also provide the same satisfactory explanation as the theory of Dr. Van Flandern. The only difference is that the violent explosion that launched the comets and asteroids came from earth rather than a hypothetical planet between Mars and Jupiter, and that there is extensive evidence for such an explosion -- which initiated a global flood -- in the geological record on earth's surface including on the bottom of the oceans.

It is also worth pointing out that the Exploding Planet theory of Dr. Van Flandern has been used as a launching point for the idea that our solar system was the scene of an ancient extraterrestrial war, a war in which the destruction of the missing planet was the ultimate blow. This theory, which has been put forward by Dr. Joseph P. Farrell in his books including the Cosmic War, also falls into the category of theories written by those who perceive the enormous problems with the conventional academic models and which try to explain the ancient history of mankind on earth in a way that is more consistent with the evidence. Whether or not we actually agree with the hypotheses that alternative theorists put forward, I believe they should be commended for bravely offering alternatives to the accepted wisdom.

Tom Van Flandern's book provides an excellent explanation of the problems with the currently-held theory of comet origins. It is clear from his own theories and of others who have followed his work that the question of comet origins actually intersects the question of ancient human history on earth as well. I personally believe that the hydroplate theory offers a new and very helpful perspective on these questions, not only the question of the origin of comets but also of the mysteries of mankind's ancient past. The Mathisen Corollary book explores these connections.

Comet Hale-Bopp

Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered on July 23, 1995 by two independent amateur astronomers, Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp, both from the US (New Mexico and Arizona, respectively). It was still a great distance from the sun when it was discovered, and apparently holds the current record for furthest comet from the sun discovered by amateur astronomers, according to the Wikipedia entry on the comet.

Comet Hale-Bopp became quite spectacular in the night sky during the early months of 1997. At that time, I was deployed to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California (one of many times). I distinctly remember walking out late one night to catch a couple hours of sleep on the hood of my HMMWV (I was a battalion supply officer at the time, and thus was not sleeping out on the ground with a line company the way you do when you are a platoon leader, company commander, or company executive officer) and seeing the gorgeous comet hanging high in the night sky over the desert. I said out loud, "That has to be a comet!" (I was alone in a remote logistics point; there was no one else around to hear me).

Amazing as it may seem, I had not heard of the impending arrival of the comet, having been consumed in the prior months with uploading a battalion's worth of Bradley Fighting Vehicles and other large equipment for the deployment, which was a fairly unusual deployment in that we were taking special "Force XXI" vehicles to the desert for full-speed maneuver testing. Also, the internet at that time was nothing like the internet and web of today, and was not something I was regularly visiting, especially during the full-time activity of being a Battalion S4 in the Force XXI Brigade preparing for an NTC rotation.

After various "battles" and training exercises, members of the leadership of the task force and Brigade Combat Team would regularly report to portable trailers that would be moved about in the desert and hooked up to generators, where we could review the successes and failures and discuss them in a formal "after-action review" (AAR), and at the beginning of these, the observer-controllers from NTC would often put together a short video clip of the news that was taking place in the outside world. Shortly after the night on which I noticed the comet for the first time, we were horrified to learn in one of these AAR clips about the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult members, who believed they were leaving the earth to join a spacecraft which they thought was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.

The origins of comets are a great mystery, and the conventional theories for their origin are fraught with problems, as hydroplate theory author and West Point graduate Walt Brown explains in this section of his website. For one thing, comets tend to be "swept" out of solar orbit by the massive planets of Saturn and especially Jupiter over the centuries (either sucked into those planets or ejected right out of the solar system by the slingshot effect of Jupiter's tremendous gravity), and if comets we see today have really been in action for billions of years, many of them would likely have been swept up long ago. Based on some calculations, comets are either being resupplied by some unknown activity, or their current numbers suggest that they originated less than 12,000 years ago.

Another problem Dr. Brown discusses is the fact that most near-parabolic comets falling toward the sun appear to be doing so for the first time ever. Dr. Brown discusses the evidence for this observation, which involves the speeds of comets and the number of comets that fall into categories of different speeds (see discussion and diagram labeled Figure 155 on this page).

In order to try to explain these problematic features of the comets we find in our solar system, astronomers invented a speculative solution known as the Oort Cloud, a hypothetical cloud of dust at some distance outside the solar system from which comets must be ejected by the perturbations caused by other stars in the galaxy. This solution has several problems, including the fact that it has difficulty explaining short-period comets, whose orbits do not go past Jupiter at their furthest point (aphelion).

As with so many other difficulties of geology, the hydroplate theory explains the origins of comets quite satisfactorily. In fact, Dr. Brown demonstrates that almost all of the characteristics of comets are consistent with the theory that they originated from the violent ejection of massive amounts of water on earth at the initiation of the cataclysmic flood event, within 12,000 years ago.

Comets are just another data point which seem to indicate the accuracy of the hydroplate theory versus its competitors. The Mathisen Corollary book examines the ways in which this innovative geological theory may also explain many mysteries of mankind's ancient past as well.

The image above shows Comet Hale-Bopp in April of 1997, above the desert of California's Death Valley, very close to the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, California, where I was when I first noticed it.

Meteor shower tonight, and why they have calendar dates and constellation-names

Tonight (June 15) is the peak of this year's June Lyrid meteor shower, which is not necessarily the most spectacular meteor shower or the brightest, but does tend to produce up to fifteen faint meteor streaks per hour, which is nothing to sneeze at (for comparison, a list of meteor showers throughout the year can be found here).

Here's a link to a short writeup from Universe Today, which is also the source for the video above showing images of the meteors from last night.

Meteor showers take place around the same day each year because they are caused by the passage of the earth through debris in space along its orbital path. The current consensus is that this debris is most often the particles of frozen ice and other frozen elements such as ammonia that detaches from comets on their orbit of the sun. These detached particles of "comet dust" continue to orbit the sun as well, along the same general path that their "parent comet" took, except more slowly. Therefore, when the earth comes across one of these "comet trails" of debris, the particles enter the atmosphere and burn up, creating visible streaks across the sky.

Since these trails are located at specific points on the earth's orbital path, they can be seen on the specific day each year that the earth begins to pass through that location. Also, they are associated with a constellation that is visible from that point in earth's orbit where the meteors will seem to originate each year (the June Lyrids originating from a point in the constellation of the Lyre, and the spectacular August Perseids originating from the constellation of Perseus, for example).

If you think about the mental model of the earth orbiting the sun inside your dining room, which was described in this previous post on Orion, as well as in the recent interview on Red Ice Radio, you will remember that at certain points on its orbit, the walls visible at night to the observers on that earth would have different pictures on them depending on where in the room the earth was on that night. If you took two chalkboard erasers and clapped them together at a certain point in your dining room, then when the earth that was circling inside your dining room reached that cloud of eraser dust, the inhabitants on it would see a meteor shower that night when they were facing away from the sun (which is located in the center of your dining room, in the middle of the dining room table, perhaps in the form of a candle or a flaming ball of cotton).

It stands to reason that if there was a picture of a lyre on your wall in the direction that the observers would be looking when the earth entered the eraser dust cloud, then they would see that meteor shower emanating from that picture of a lyre (perhaps it is a Guinness poster on your wall that they would see, which features a harp rather than a lyre). The point from which the meteors appear to emanate is know as the "radiant" because they radiate from that location in the sky.

When the earth in your dining room passed out of the cloud and proceeded onward, it would pass through other clouds that are located along its track, but when it got back to the same point a year later, the eraser chalk dust would still be there, lingering in the air, and the inhabitants of the tiny earth in your dining room would see it originating from the region of the harp or the lyre on the wall of your dining room again.

The constellation of Lyra (the Lyre, not to be confused with the zodiacal constellation of Libra, the Scales) contains the brilliant star Vega, the fifth brightest in the sky and the first star ever photographed (in 1850), according to H.A. Rey (38). It is part of the easily-located "Summer Triangle" visible high in the summer sky in the northern hemisphere during the months May to October or so, and which consists of the stars Vega, Deneb (in the Swan) and Altair (in the Eagle). Both the Swan and the Eagle are in the Milky Way. Deneb can be found using a line from the back two stars in the bowl of the Big Dipper as "pointers," rather than the front two stars of the bowl (which are used as pointers to the North Star, Polaris).

Although the moon is full again and will be doing its best to drown out the stars in the night sky around it, try checking out the June Lyrid meteor shower tonight.