Phaeton (hypothetical planet)

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Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, who formulated the planet Phaeton hypothesis

Phaeton (or Phaëton, less often Phaethon) is the hypothetical planet posited to have existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter whose destruction supposedly led to the formation of the asteroid belt. The hypothetical planet was named for Phaëton, the son of the sun god Helios in Greek mythology, who attempted to drive his father's solar chariot for a day with disastrous results and was ultimately destroyed by Zeus.

The asteroid 3200 Phaethon, sometimes incorrectly spelled Phaeton, is a Mercury-, Venus-, Earth-, and Mars- orbit crossing Apollo asteroid with unusual properties.

The Phaeton hypothesis

According to the discredited Titius–Bode law, a planet was believed to exist between Mars and Jupiter. Johann Elert Bode himself urged a search for the fifth planet. When Ceres, the largest of the asteroids in the asteroid belt (now considered a dwarf planet), was serendipitously discovered in 1801 by the Italian Giuseppe Piazzi and found to match the predicted position of the fifth planet, many believed it was the missing planet. However, in 1802 astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovered and named another object in the same general orbit as Ceres, the asteroid Pallas.

Olbers proposed that these new discoveries were the fragments of a disrupted planet that had formerly orbited the Sun. He also predicted that more of these pieces would be found. The discovery of the asteroid Juno by Karl Ludwig Harding and Vesta by Olbers buttressed the Olbers hypothesis.

By the twentieth century, the hypothetical disrupted planet was named Phaeton,[1] on the suggestion of a scientist from the Soviet Union.[2]

Theories regarding the formation of the asteroid belt from the destruction of a hypothetical fifth planet are today collectively referred to as the disruption theory. This theory states that there was once a major planetary member of the solar system circulating in the present gap between Mars and Jupiter, which was variously destroyed when:

  • it veered too close to Jupiter and was torn apart by its powerful gravity
  • it was struck by another large celestial body
  • it was destroyed by a hypothetical brown dwarf, the companion star to the Sun known as Nemesis
  • it was shattered by some internal catastrophe

Today, the Phaeton hypothesis has been superseded by the accretion model.[3] Most astronomers today believe that the asteroids in the main belt are remnants of the protoplanetary disk, and in this region the incorporation of protoplanetary remnants into the planets was prevented by large gravitational perturbations induced by Jupiter during the formative period of the solar system.

Fringe theories

The hypothesis continues to be advocated by some non-scientists and fringe scientists. One notable proponent is Zecharia Sitchin, who has proposed, based on his reading of ancient Sumerian mythology, that the planet known to the Sumerians as Tiamat was destroyed by a rogue planet known as Nibiru. However, his work is widely regarded as pseudoscience.

The astronomer and author Tom Van Flandern held that it exploded through some internal mechanism. In his "Exploded Planet Hypothesis 2000", he lists as possible reasons for explosion, either a runaway nuclear reaction in uranium in the core, or a change of state as the planet cools down creating a density phase change (like water to ice) causing it to implode or explode, or through continual absorption of heat in the core from gravitons..[4][5][6]

Phaeton in literature

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See also

Sources

Books

  • Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainLua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. – see, for instance, "Olbers," Britannica
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References

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  3. http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980810a.html
  4. Van Flandern, Tom. org/solar% 20system/eph/eph2000. asp "The Exploded Planet Hypothesis 2000." Meta Research, (2000).
  5. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. Van Flandern, Tom. Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets: Paradoxes Resolved, Origins Illuminated. North Atlantic Books, 1999.

External links