Chapter 10
Trees & Serpents
 
This is the first time in human history (that we are aware of, at least) during which Planet X Nibiru could return and the whole world, via the Hubble Space Telescope and so forth, know about it all at once and in advance. It is unclear from the Sumerian records exactly when in the return voyage it becomes visible to the naked eye, but at some point this would happen because the Sumerian priests would go into the darkened deserts to watch for it. It would seem to me that there would be several years between the first sighting and the actual tethering process. But maybe not—it could happen very quickly, Velikovskian-style—“like a thief in the night”! In ancient times, after the dust had settled from all the concurrent cataclysms, polar axis shifts, etc., then there Planet X Nibiru would have been, up above the North Pole, like “Heaven”—Hyperborea, Mount Olympus, Mount Meru, The Cosmic Tree. It probably terrified the ancient common people! Perhaps a few scholarly priests expected it in advance, but for most people back then it would have been a complete and incomprehensible surprise.


This time we’ll see it coming, one hopes. It would certainly be astounding to watch the public reaction. Let us pray that we are so lucky! As for me, I am truly living in anticipation of this event; for if it does not occur by 21 December 2012-13, which is exactly 3,600 years after Exodus/Santorini in 1588-87 BCE, the last Velikovskian polar axis shift, then it becomes historically and mathematically impossible to predict it at any other future point in time. And as the future years/centuries would pass, they would automatically bring down the previous arrival date proportionately; and after another several centuries would have passed uneventfully, then the probability of its having arrived the last time much after 1588-87 BCE becomes less and less likely, because there would be absolutely no way to coordinate it with anything remotely “cosmic” after the year 687 BCE. We are at a definite “turning point” in historical cosmological analysis here, at least in terms of the Planet X Nibiru’s predictability. I hope that you can grasp the full significance of what I am stating.


Regardless of the precise number of “sunrise-to-sunrise” days that Planet X Nibiru actually has, they nevertheless have an orbit of 360° that lasts for 3,600 Earth Years. Thus, one of their “orbit-days” of one degree would equal ten of our years.

  • The Chinese Zodiac contains a sequence of 12 yearly animals.

  • The Year of the Dragon began in 2000, and the next Year of the Dragon will begin in the early part of 2012, so that 21 December 2012, the Mayan End-Time Date, falls in a Year of the Dragon.

  • Therefore, the Dragon Planet X Nibiru’s Year might actually contain 300 “sunrise-to-sunrise” day-units of 12 Earth Years each, with each such day-unit’s being equivalent to a full cycle of the Chinese Zodiac, with the Nibiruan “sunrise” or “midnight” coordinated to begin with the Chinese Year of the Dragon here on Earth.

These are questions for which there are not yet any definitive answers. See also Chapter 12.


By the Mayan End-Time Date of 2012-13, it will have been 3,600 years from the postulated Exodus/Santorini Date derived from the Velikovskian School, 1588-87 BCE. If Sitchin is to be believed, and I certainly believe him so far, then Nibiru’s orbit lasts for exactly 3,600 years. The Velikovskian Date and the Mayan Date have no common connection in any writing other than mine, that I am aware of. They were derived independently of one another by entirely different astroarchaeologists, and Dr. Velikovsky does not mention the Mayan End-Time Date in his writings. “It just so happens” that the difference between the Mayan End-Time Date and the Exodus/Santorini postulation is 3,600 years.
Some questions arise.

  • If Planet X Nibiru came and went in 1587 BCE and did not remain for a “season” as a “Cosmic Tree” or “Hyperborea”, then what caused the cataclysms between 762687 BCE, from “The Great Eclipse/Earthquake” to the destruction of the Assyrian Army at Pelusium in 687?

  • And, if Planet X Nibiru did not constitute “The Cosmic Tree”, then what did?

  • If Planet X Nibiru came and went between 762-687, then what caused the Polar Axis Shift of 1587 and the concurrent Exodus and Santorini Cataclysm?

  • And did this particular arrival and departure of Nibiru cause the destruction of “Hyperborea”?

  • If so, then why hadn’t previous arrivals/departures of Planet X Nibiru caused the destruction of this “Hyperborean Cosmic Tree” long before that?

  • Why was “the beginning of history” linked to the Trojan War which coincided with “The Great Eclipse/Earthquake”, the Greek Olympiads and the Founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, as well as the celebrated Era of Nabonassar in Babylon?

  • Why did these three important nations start their “modern” histories with this event, which can be both historically and astronomically documented and verified?

  • If something is inherently true, then all the miscellaneous details automatically fall into place, no?

The following is a good example. The Planet X Nibiru sits atop The Cosmic Tree. It is a planet of “serpents” or “reptiles”. Thus, the symbolic Serpent would entwine itself around The Cosmic Tree. R.A. Boulay’s book would have immensely fascinated Mme. Blavatsky!

“As a symbol, the Serpent had as many aspects and occult meanings as the Tree itself; the ‘Tree of Life’, with which it was emblematically and almost indissolubly connected. Whether viewed as a metaphysical or a physical symbol, the Tree and Serpent, jointly, or separately, have never been so degraded by antiquity as they are now, in this our age of the breaking of idols, not for truth’s sake, but to glorify the more gross matter.”

—The Secret Doctrine,

by Helena P. Blavatsky (Vol. I, p. 409)

And finally, why do we even know about this in the first place? We who do know are not very many people, and I sometimes think of us like the group of priests who used to go out into the darkened deserts to watch for the arrival of “the planet of the crossing”. Crossing from what? An unseen dimension, invisible even to the Hubble Telescope? What will it sound like when this “Rogue Planet” bursts through the dimensional “fabric of space”? Will it sound like the “Trumpet of Gabriel”? Will it signal to Wal-Mart Shoppers “the Second Coming” or “the end of the world”?

There is nothing more fascinating to contemplate, is there?!
 


 “DRAGON BALLS”

 

Appended below are several diverse references to The Cosmic Tree from various websites.


The following Chinese Legend of the Snake and the Pearl reminds me of two different, but related, stories. First of all, in the Sumerian Gilgamesh Epic, cited by Zecharia Sitchin and others, Gilgamesh travels to Egypt to recover a “magic talisman” recommended by the “Gods of Dilmun”; it was stolen by a “dragon” that resides on the banks of the Nile. Gilgamesh is successful. And this ancient Land of Dilmun was undoubtedly Planet X Nibiru, when it was tethered to Earth’s North Pole during the period 5187-4287 BCE; and the “Flood of Utnapishtim” (Noah), which marked the beginning of the previous “shar” in 5187 BCE, is mentioned in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was a “demi-god” and thus allowed to pass through the “mountains” via the “tunnel” to the celestial “Dilmun”. In Hamlet’s Mill de Santillana and von Dechend mention in Appendix 39 that the syllable “mesh” in Gilgamesh’s name refers to the “mes tree” or Cosmic Tree. This word “mes” also refers to those peculiar “magical tools” which are possessed by the Emperor and Empress of Planet X Nibiru, these days Emperor Anu and Empress Antu. Baron Marduk stole the “mes” from Anu and Antu and briefly took control of the Throne of The Council of Twelve. In the ensuing “Pyramid Wars” Baron Marduk was captured and imprisoned in the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and the “mes” were returned to Anu and Antu.

 

For more information, I refer to:

These topics are also discussed at length by Zecharia Sitchin in The Earth Chronicles and R.A. Boulay in Flying Serpents & Dragons.


“Dilmun” was the previous “Hyperborea”! If Bahrain or Lebanon is considered today to have been “Dilmun”, based upon remains of their civilization from about 3200-1600 BCE, then that “civilization” existed and flourished AFTER the previous departure sequence ended in 4287 BCE and perished with the destruction of 1587 BCE! They were not Dilmun, but they remembered Dilmun in their myths and legends! This is a most critical factor in my overall theory. In addition, the Old Testament Jacob had his vision of the “Ladder to Heaven” (“Stairway” to Heaven!) long before the time of Moses. Jacob saw “angels” ascending to and descending from “Heaven”, “climbing” this “ladder”, much like the “tomcat” or “squirrel” climbed the Golden Pole to the Golden Cage on top. And Jacob was, generally speaking, contemporaneous with Gilgamesh.

“In Dilmun the raven utters no cry, the lion kills not. The wolf snatches not the lamb, unknown is the grain-devouring bear. The sick-headed says not ‘I am sickheaded,’ the old woman says not ‘I am an old woman,’ the old man says not ‘I am an old man.’”

—Ancient Sumerian Poem

When I worked in the Peace Corps in Eritrea, I investigated all sorts of “occult” and “mythological” beliefs, one of which dealt with a Legend of the Snake and the Pearl (see below). Thus, it is most fascinating to discover this legend replicated, more or less, in a Chinese variation. If I had to guess what it means, I would say that it reflects the fact that, just as the serpentine Chinese Dragon chases a pearl-like “Dragon Ball” in Chinese New Year’s Day parades even today, the approaching Planet X Nibiru and its “host” of planetoids and moonlets, a serpent-like procession through the Heavens, resemble a snake chasing a pearl. Why else would we have such legends in at least 3 different cultures?

 

 

 

 

The Snake & The Pearl
By R. Solàrion


Once upon a time, somewhere in ancient Eritrea along the shores of the legendary Erythreum Sea, there lived an exotic serpent, the color of freshly polished ebony, a snake that slithered around the countryside from one village or town to the next. In order to find its way through life, the serpent carried in its mouth a lustrous white pearl that it had obtained somewhere from the depths of the ocean or on the sparkling shores of the Erythreum Sea.


Without that pearl the snake could hardly see, even during the light of day or at night during the times of a full moon. The snake would often become thirsty, though, and fatigued from its travels; and so upon coming to a pool of cool, clear water, it would place the pearl onto a stone or into a patch of soft green grass when it wanted to drink or to rest and refresh itself for a moment.


But if when that ebony-colored snake were at peaceful repose, a clever man would happen to amble quietly down a nearby path and spy the snake and its precious pearl left unattended on a stone or in a patch of soft green grass, he could scoop up a handful of fresh cattle dung and hurl it onto the serpent’s head. The cattle dung would momentarily totally blind the ebony snake, and the clever man could make off with the lustrous pearl.


The snake would eventually recover its wits and would hiss and then retrace its path, though more cautiously than before, back down the precipitous mountain slopes and across the parched littoral plain to the sparkling shores of the Erythreum Sea, where, if the serpent were lucky and still young enough, it might someday find yet another pearl to guide its way by night and day back up to the pool of cool, clear water and onto the patch of soft green grass.
 


http://www.polenth.demon.co.uk/myth/favmyth.html#N 


NIE LANG was a human boy who lived with his mother in the Szechuan province of China. There was a drought in Szechuan, and Nie Lang had to cut grass for his master’s horses every day. One day he could not find any grass. A white hare appeared and led him to a place of lush grass. Everyday he returned to cut more grass, and the grass regrew where he had cut it. One day he decided to take some of the grass home to plant, so that he did not have to walk so far everyday. When he dug the grass up, he found a pearl underneath which he also took. He planted the grass by his home, and put the pearl in an almost empty rice jar to cover its glow. The next day the grass was shriveled, but the rice jar was overflowing. The pearl gave Nie Lang and his mother more rice than they needed, so they shared it with their neighbours.


Nie Lang’s master, Lord Zhou, heard about the magic pearl and wanted it for himself. He and his guards came to Nie Lang’s house looking for the pearl. Eventually Nie Lang swallowed it to stop the guards finding it, and the guards were chased away by Nie Lang’s neighbours. The pearl felt hot inside him, so Nie Lang began drinking lots of water. Eventually he went down to the river to drink. When Lord Zhou and his guards returned to find him, Nie Lang rose out of the river—he had transformed into a dragon. He sent a great wave that washed Lord Zhou and his guards away. Nie Lang the dragon ascended to heaven, and still watches over Szechuan today.
 


http://www.institute.uni-bremen.de/~ushanas/


[As of the summer 2003, this website can no longer be found. Sorry, but that’s life on the Net sometime. But see Illustration 15 below. And regarding “madhu”, see Chapter 1. RS]

On the Indus seals the tree is replaced by a standard that is generally placed in front of the unicorn as already mentioned. The function of this standard is unknown so far. Its prototype is found together with a bull on a shard from Mehi in Baluchistan. The contrivance the bull is fastened to has roots here like a tree or plant. Its upper part has the appearance of a net normally, the lower part of a vessel. A small ivory sculpture of the standard, that has recently been excavated in Harappa, proves that it had a round form and holes in the lower part. On account of these features it could be a fire-drill, a mortar or a whim. Aladdin’s magic lamp in the story of 1001 nights is a variant of the fire-drill. When regarded as a whim the upper part could be a wind-blast. On the Mehi shard we simply find the frame. A Pipal Tree stands behind the standard here. The Pipal (ficus religiosa) has been venerated in India until today as the Cosmic Tree, though it suffocates other trees. Its fruits have berry-form and are sweet like dates. The purpose of the tree is to give shadow, but perhaps the standard was used for pressing these berries to get the sweet Soma juice or madhu.

Illustration 15: Baluchistan World Tree, with Horned Heifers

 


http://www.san.beck.org/Upan7-Shveta.html


SHVETASHVATARA UPANISHAD
English Version By Sanderson Beck


The beginning, the efficient cause of what is combined, it is to be seen as beyond the three times and timeless. Revere this as infinite, the origin of all being, the God of love who lives in one’s own thoughts, the primal. Higher and different than the Cosmic Tree, time, and forms is this from whom proceeds all phenomena.
 


http://bahai-library.com/books/hinduism/ch8.htm

 

As we have seen previously, Baha’u’llah has referred to the station of the Avatars and of himself in particular as the Tree of Life or the Tree beyond which there is no passing. In Hinduism there is also the concept of a cosmic tree. In the Bhagavad Gita it is written: There is an Eternal [Holy] Tree (Asvattha), with roots above in the highest and branches here below. Its leaves are sacred verses. He who knows it knows the Vedas.


In his Most Holy Book and his Book of the Covenant, Baha’u’llah refers to himself as the Ancient (Pre-existent) Root of the Divine Tree; while `Abdu’l-Baha is the Most Mighty Branch, to whom all must turn after the passing of Baha’u’llah: ‘When the ocean of My presence hath ebbed and the Book of My Revelation is ended, turn your faces toward Him Whom God hath purposed, Who hath branched from this Ancient Root.’ The object of this sacred Verse is none other except the Most Mighty Branch [`Abdu’l-Baha].


Thus in the Baha’i writings, as in the Hindu, there is the concept of a cosmic holy tree (beyond which there is no passing); its root (Baha’u’llah) is in heaven; its branches (`Abdu’l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi, see below) stretch down towards earth; from this tree come sacred verses. The passage from the Bhagavad Gita quoted above indicates the importance of knowledge of this tree (the Covenant). It is the foundation of all religious knowledge.


`Abdu’l-Baha passed away in 1921. He appointed his grandson, Shoghi Effendi as the Centre of the Religion. After Shoghi Effendi’s death in 1957, the Universal House of Justice was elected. This is now the Centre of the Religion and thus the focal point of loyalty to the Covenant for all Baha’is. Both `Abdu’l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi made every effort to spread the Baha’i Faith to all parts of the world. `Abdu’l-Baha sent numerous teachers from other parts of the Baha’i world to India in order to strengthen the Indian Baha’i community. He was planning to travel to India himself when unfortunately his death cut short these plans.


Just as in Hinduism, there is a concept of cycles and ages, there is a similar concept in the Baha’i Faith. Baha’is believe that the coming of Baha’u’llah has started a new cosmic cycle.


Although mankind has entered the Sat or Krta Yuga (Golden Age) foretold in Hindu prophecy, the full culmination of this Golden Age will only be achieved in stages similar to the Hindu ages. During this cycle, the Baha’i Faith will pass through various ages. At present, the Baha’i Faith is in its Transitional Age. This will lead in the end to the Baha’i Golden Age, the full expression of the Sat or Krta Yuga. This Golden Age will see mankind in a prosperous state, with no more war and the establishment of social justice. Eventually, Baha’u’llah teaches that there will come another Avatar, another Manifestation of God. But this will not occur for at least a thousand years. In the meantime, the responsibility of mankind is to put the teachings of Baha’u’llah into effect.
 

 

http://www.philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/indon/batak.html


Other symbols of Batak mythology include the baringin or banyan tree as the Cosmic Tree uniting the levels of the Batak cosmos, the hornbill, aboriginal boy-girl twins, star constellations, magic numbers, and the magic colours red, white, and black. Besides the traditional houses, these symbols are found on textiles, funerary masks, boats with hornbill figureheads, the wooden staffs of datu, and megalithic monuments.


Adherents: There are six major Batak societies around Lake Toba. These are the Toba Batak, Karo Batak, Pakpak and Dairi Batak, Simelungun Batak, Angkola and Sipirok Batak, and the Mandailing Batak. The Toba Batak are the only society which identifies strongly with being Batak. There are approximately 1.5 million Batak, of whom two-thirds are Christian, both Protestants and Catholics. The Protestants belong to the HKBP, which is the largest Christian community in Indonesia. The Muslim Batak mainly live in Mandailing.

 

Headquarters/Main Centre

The headquarters of the HKBP is at Tarutung in Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia.
 


http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/changing/lintault/uncoil.html


Evidence Of Paradise
By M. Joan Lintault
“Uncoiling Snakes”—1998, 97 x 86 in.


“Uncoiling Snakes” celebrates the tree of life, abundant with fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, insects, birds, and snakes that speak to the sanctity of life. It commemorates the “sacred tree”, alluding to the variety of ways the tree has been revered, including the tree in the Garden of Eden, sacred groves, the cosmic tree, the tree in blue-willow pottery, and even the Christmas tree.
 

 

Illustration 32: Ancient Korean Crown with Cosmic Tree

http://korea.insights.co.kr/see/see_2a.html


[This URL also can no longer be found; Korean Crown, which you can see in Illustration 32. RS] - But you can find it HERE


Gold Crown Shilla, Fifth-sixth century
Height 44.4cm
National Treasure No. 87, National Museum of Korea


This ornate crown is typical of the royal headdresses of Old Shilla. At front and rear are tree-like uprights decorated with gold spangles. Two antler-like uprights rise on the right and left. The tree and antler motifs are thought to originate in shamanism, symbolizing power and glory. The trees symbolize the cosmic tree which sustains the cosmos, and the antlers suggest sacred deer and the ancient worship of deer. From the base of the crown dangle pendants and clusters of leaflike gold spangles.
 

 

 


http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/popolvuh/pv-hp.htm

 

Illustration 27: Mayan Bird of Prey & Flying Serpent

Fortunately, this URL does still exist. Their Figure 7 is reproduced in this book as Illustration 16 below right. Take a look at their Figure 12 (this book’s Illustration 27), which resembles my cover drawing. All of these images are worth a look. The Mayan “monkey” is obviously the same “animal” as the Siberian “tomcat” and the Nordic/Alaskan “squirrel”, all of which climb up and down a “Sacred Tree” in the North! See Illustrations 23-24. And these minor tethered objects, Nibiruan planetoids and moonlets, perhaps gave rise to the legend of the Medusa with snakes for her hair.
 

Illustration 16: Mayan Sacred Tree

“Figure 7. The god of Heaven at the pinnacle of the cosmic tree, its ‘grace’ falling upon the earth from on high, from the Chumayel manuscript.” Notice how the shape of this Mayan drawing resembles certain of the Hyperborea Sky Views. See Illustrations 3-8. Also, note that there is a total of 13 “stars”, 6 on each side and a larger one at the top, in the station of the Mayan World Tree. Is it only coincidental that 21 December 2012 is day number 13.0.0.0.0 at the end of the current Tzolkin Calendar? By contrast, on the Korean Crown picture in Illustration 32 above right, there are only 3 “tree-branches” on either side of the upper “star”; and in the Baluchistan drawing (Illustration 15), there are 4 “leaves” below the uppermost “leaf”.
 


 The Dallas Morning News

15 November 1998
University of Texas McDonald Observatory

“A Mayan creation story says the world was formed when the Milky Way, which they called The World Tree, was raised into the sky. The Great Celestial Bird landed in its branches. This bird may be represented by Cassiopeia, which looks like a bird’s outstretched wings. Cassiopeia is high in the north this evening.”

 
 

THE MAYAN CALENDAR

by Peter Meyer

 

It is an excellent discussion of the mathematical “calendrics” or mechanics of the Mayan Calendar, so if you do not fully grasp the ideas of the “Long Count” and the “Short Count”, you are advised to refer to Peter Meyer’s essay. Unfortunately as of summer 2003, this essay is no longer available at its former URL. However, “The How and Why of the Mayan End Date in 2012 A.D.” by John Major Jenkins discusses the Short and Long Counts, and it can still be found here: http://www.levity.com/eschaton/Why2012.html


The first point that I must emphasize is that Jenkins, despite his extraordinary work otherwise, did not view this Mayan “Sacred Tree” in terms of a physical Cosmic Tree. NOTA BENE in footnote 4 that he cites Hamlet’s Mill by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, who wrote about the Finnish Kalevala and “Nail Of The North”! At least Jenkins was aware of their research, although nowhere does he include a mention of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s essay on the “Night Sun” or Zecharia Sitchin’s The Earth Chronicles and Planet X Nibiru. Thus, like I, you rather have to read between the lines to ascertain exactly what Jenkins’ ultimate conclusion might have been under such a circumstance. As did the authors of Hamlet’s Mill, Jenkins also concludes that the “Sacred Tree” or “Cosmic Millstone” referred only to the idea of the Precession of the Equinoxes. Theoretically, that is all well and good, but it misses the point entirely. “The Sacred Tree” (still symbolized even today as a formerly pagan “Paradise Christmas Tree”) reflects the electromagnetic tethering of the Hyperborean Planet Nibiru, Rogue Planet X, Planet of the Crossing, to the Earth’s North Pole. Whether the “crossing” point is affected by the separate phenomenon of Precession is, in essence, irrelevant. They are independent variables.


There is a lot of discussion by both Jenkins and Meyer regarding the “starting point” of the Mayan Calendar (0.0.0.0.0), its end point (13.0.0.0.0) and its proper correlation with our modern Gregorian Calendar. The “Thompson Calculation” is the most widely accepted, because it relies on evidence from contemporary Guatemala, although Meyer states that others have calculated the “starting point” and ended up with dates ranging from 200 years earlier to 500 years later than 2012, creating a 700-year “end window”, as it were. However, because Dr. Velikovsky’s dates of 1587 BCE and 762-687 BCE just “happen” to agree with the Thompson Calculation lends significant credence to it, at least in terms of a cycle relating to the orbital length in Earth Years of the Planet X Nibiru, i.e., 3,600 years. Thus, it rather takes one’s breath away to read in Jenkins’ essay that the most reasonable year for discerning the commencement of the Mayan “Tzolkin” Count is the year 679 BCE, only 8 years later than 687! The conclusion is forced automatically that the Mayas attempted to begin their Tzolkin Count at the time of the last dissolution of the “Sacred Tree”, when “Cosmic Forces” half a world away annihilated the Assyrian Army of King Sennacherib in the Sinai Battle of Pelusium. For quite sometime one of my own basic premises has been that there are exactly 2,700 years between 687 BCE and 2013 CE (end of 2012, to be exact). Here, however, was the first time that I had seen independent data to reinforce this comparison, and to me that is quite exciting.


Incidentally, in Assyrian history the year 679 BCE included the death of King Sennacherib and the accession of his son Esarhaddon, an event which marked an important turning point in Assyrian history, as well as in Egyptian history with the advent of their most important Dynasty 19, that of Seti The Great and Ramses The Great. See Dr. Velikovsky’s reconstructed chronology in the Ages In Chaos series for more information.


Also, Jenkins mentions a Mayan calendrical end-date “window” that lasts for 10 years, or 5 years on either side of 2012, i.e., 2007-2017. See also Chapter 12. Regarding “The Sacred Tree” itself, it is not simply a point at which on some future date the Sun or Moon might happen to “cross” the Ecliptic’s intersection with the Galactic Equator (or Milky Way). It is fundamentally different. The point at which these two lines intersect—the “Dark Rift” or “Black Road”—undoubtedly marks the “point of the crossing”! Sitchin himself, in deciphering the Sumerian ENUMA ELISH, states that this Planet first appears in the Constellation of Sagittarius where this Mayan “Dark Rift” is located.


Jenkins determined that the overall Mayan Calendar is designed to pinpoint some future date connected with the Winter Solstice. Even though Mayan/Olmec civilization itself might not be so old as the retrograde projections of their historical calendar, the ultimate construction of the calendar was intended to designate an END DATE, or a PREDICTION DATE, for a future event—as if to warn the future of this deadly eventuality. Think about that! Planet X Nibiru “crosses” over from some as yet unidentifiable area of Space at the point where the Galactic Equator intersects our Solar System’s Ecliptic, in the “Dark Rift” of the Constellation of Sagittarius. At the time of the Winter Solstice, our Sun is aligned with this region of Space; thus, the brightness of the Sun will obscure our visibility of Sagittarius.

 

Note that Jenkins writes that just prior to sunrise around the Winter Solstice, if one were to look eastwards, one might see an “object” rising slightly higher and in conjunction with the rising Sun itself. Then recall from Sitchin that the Sumerian (Assyrian or Babylonian) priest-astronomers would go out into the darkened deserts to watch for the “first sighting” of the arrival of Nibiru. Not having the technology of a Hubble Telescope, these ancient Sumerians would have looked at the dawn winter sky for evidence. Then, according to Jenkins, this “Sacred Tree” makes its way upwards and northwards from Sagittarius towards the “Heart of the Sky” or the North Polar Region, where “Santa Claus” is still said to abide. Polaris is at the “Heart of the Sky”! And as Jenkins concludes, “the Sacred Tree is, in fact, at the center of the entire corpus of Mayan Creation Myths”!


John Major Jenkins’ essay can also be read HERE:
 

 


http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=79578


ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA ONLINE


World Tree, also called Cosmic Tree, centre of the world, a widespread motif in many myths and folktales among various preliterate peoples, especially in Asia, Australia, and North America, by which they understand the human and profane condition in relation to the divine and sacred realm. Two main forms are known and both employ the notion of the world tree as centre. In the one, the tree is the vertical centre binding together heaven and earth; in the other, the tree is the source of life at the horizontal centre of the earth. Adopting biblical terminology, the former may be called the tree of knowledge; the latter, the tree of life. In the vertical, tree-of-knowledge tradition, the tree extends between earth and heaven. It is the vital connection between the world of the gods and the human world. Oracles and judgments or other prophetic activities are performed at its base.


In the horizontal, tree-of-life tradition, the tree is planted at the centre of the world and is protected by supernatural guardians. It is the source of terrestrial fertility and life. Human life is descended from it; its fruit confers everlasting life; and if it were cut down, all fecundity would cease. The tree of life occurs most commonly in quest romances in which the hero seeks the tree and must overcome a variety of obstacles on his way.
 


It is not within the scope of this book to discuss the physiology of the beings who inhabit Planet X Nibiru. This is presented in great length, where you can find a complete transcription with commentary, of Flying Serpents & Dragons by R.A. Boulay. Suffice it to say here that these beings are “saurian” or “reptilian” in nature—hence the ubiquitous use of serpents as symbols all across the globe. That these symbolic serpents are often connected with a “tree” or “pole” indicates simply that this “tree” or “pole” represented the “home” of these “serpent gods”. The ancient Caduceus, or Winged Staff of Mercury, has two serpents entwined around it. This ancient Caduceus was redesigned into the Winged Staff with serpents to become the symbol of the American Medical Association. See Illustrations 28-29 below.

On 26 July 2003 I drove to Fort Worth, Texas, to view an exhibit at the renown Kimball Art Museum. This exhibit was touring under the title “The Quest for Immortality—Treasures of Ancient Egypt”, and it included over 100 items from the
New Kingdom, including a large stone bust of Ramses II, The Great, and a black stone pyramid from the tomb of Thutmose III, at the apex of which on all four sides was carved the Winged Disk. It is/was the largest collection ever allowed to leave Egypt on tour, larger even than the King Tut exhibit which toured the USA a decade or so ago.


One of the relics was a sarcophagus which had been disassembled and was displayed upright so that one could see all sides of it. On the underside of the coffin lid was an almost lifesize painting of the God Osiris depicted with green skin. The university professor on the pre-recorded exhibit tape (via headphone sets) noted that Osiris was a “fertility god” and represented the “fertile green earth”, which was the reason for his green skin in the painting. I beg to differ because I don’t think so!

 

Go Back

 


Chapter 11
Rogue Planet Crossings

Until 1996, the hitherto hypothetical existence of “Rogue Planets” had never been proven. But as Astronomy magazine reported in its December 1997 issue, finally evidence of “Rogue Planets” had been officially documented. Provided below are excerpts from this article. Speculation: what if Planet X Nibiru does not “appear” from another “dimension” (as some have speculated) and what if, as Sitchin postulated, it does not operate like a “super-comet” with an aphelion at the Oort Cloud, then could it be a “Rogue Planet”? Could it be travelling through Deep Space “on its own”, perhaps even spending a second “season” in the Sirius System from whence it originated, bouncing back and forth between systems as “the custodial gods” of both?

 

If so, then it might spend 900 Earth Years here, 900 years travelling like a “Rogue Planet” back to the Sirius System, another 900 years there, and a final 900 years returning here, to begin the periodic cycle over again. The Sirius System is 8.7 Light-Years from here. If we round this “travel period” off to 9 Light-Years, then we have a roundtrip of 18 Light-Years in (3,600 - 900 - 900 =) 1,800 Earth Years. Then “Rogue Planet” Nibiru would have to travel—going one-way—(900 years / 9 Light-Years one-way =) 1 Light-Year per 100 years of Earth Time. A hundred of our years would seem like less than a fortnight to a nomadic Nommo Nibiruan.


See Chapter 12 for additional mathematical details.


QUOTE

Astronomy Magazine, December 1997
“On The Trail Of Rogue Planets”

By Peter Catalano


Even science has its folklore and myths—among them “rogue” planets. For years a few astronomers theorized that these objects—about the size of Earth or Uranus— wandered freely on the peripheries of galaxies and interstellar space unfettered by the gravitational leash of shepherding stars. Undetectable and unobservable, rogue planets existed in a nebulous theoretical limbo.


Little by little they slipped unconsciously into the lexicon of astro-talk. “The phrase came into use about 30 years ago,” explains physicist Freeman Dyson from his office at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. “I’m not sure who first started talking about them. The idea was just something in the air. As far as I know, there is no evidence that so-called rogue planets exist.” Until now.


In June 1996, Rudy Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, published observational data accumulated over 10 years that seemed to show that rogue planets could not only be demonstrably real, but could be ubiquitous, even essential species on the taxonomic tree of astronomical objects. Schild’s gone even further: He thinks rogue planets are virtually a cosmic Rosetta stone, the key to understanding some of the most vexing enigmas in astrophysics.
Schild reported in the June 10, 1996, Astrophysical Journal that he and his collaborator, statistician David Thomson of Lucent Technologies, found the gravitational signature of at least 50 Earth-to Uranus-mass objects maundering on the fringes of an elliptical galaxy one to two billion light-years away. This galaxy is catalogued simply as G1.


[COMMENT: This Galaxy G1 is located near the northern Constellation of Cassiopeia, so these “Rogue Planets” are in our northern sky and may not be related at all to the Planet X Nibiru itself. RS]


By any measure, this could be a big discovery—a big discovery few astronomers are buying. Critics concede, however, that the observations themselves are unimpeachable. In fact, multiple observatories all detect the same phenomena Schild reports seeing on his own 1.2-meter telescope at the Mt. Hopkins Observatory in Arizona. When you get right down to it, this rogue planet dispute is not over facts, but interpretation…

“Here’s the key for understanding these objects,” says Schild. “For stars, the cycle of waxing and waning lasts for decades; for rogue planets, brightness and dimming cycles run their course in a matter of weeks. These short-lived ‘flickers’ imply that the passing object in the lensing galaxy is about a millionth the mass of the sun because we know the square root of the mass is proportional to the duration of the brightness cycle. When you solve the equation, the mass of the microlensing object [rogue planet] is something like a medium-sized planet in our own solar system.”…

[COMMENT: Compare this idea of a “microlensing rogue planet” to that mysterious microlensing object found to be aligned with M22, the Galactic Center, and reported by NASA in June 2001. See below. RS]

“The packs of rogue planets must be enormous,” says Rudy Schild. “Basically what I’m seeing is a parade of one planetary body after another passing by my telescope all the time.”…

Projecting Schild’s findings in G1 onto the rest of the observable universe implies the existence of at least 10 to the 24th power rogue planets. Schild is either on to something very significant that has monumental implications, or he’s the butt of a sardonic cosmic joke…


If massive populations of rogue planets are as ubiquitous as Schild claims, why don’t we see them in our own Milky Way Galaxy? Two projects, an American one called MACHO and a French one called EROS, were designed to detect gravitational lensing effects in our home galaxy. While the MACHO group has possibly detected two rogue planets in the Milky Way Galaxy, MACHO team-member David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame says they could also be planets in distant orbits around low-mass stars. Bennett adds,

“Both the EROS and MACHO collaborations have set upper limits on the contribution of rogue planets to the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy. They must be considerably less than 10 percent of the total mass. If we assume that our galaxy has the same composition as the galaxy that lenses the quasar, then our results indicate that Rudy’s interpretation must be wrong.”

Schild thinks there’s every reason to believe there are lots of rogue planets in the Milky Way. MACHO and EROS haven’t found them because he believes these programs aren’t optimized to detect planet-mass objects. “Their focus is finding low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, which are hundreds or thousands of times the mass of rogue planets. The lensing set-up with Q0957 and G1 is the best configuration we have for finding low-mass, planetary objects,” he says. Schild expects that his rogue planets would be gaseous bodies formed around a core of hard rock or ice, such as Uranus. At the atomic level, the elements found in both gas, ice, and rock consist of ordinary protons and neutrons—“baryonic” matter. Astrophysicists contend, however, that the Big Bang couldn’t possibly have created enough baryonic matter to account for that much dark matter. That’s why they have been theorizing and searching for non-baryonic matter called WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) and other exotica such as massive neutrinos to account for the dark matter.


Of course, the weightiest question Schild confronts is simply: Where do all these rogue planets come from?  Schild himself has proposed that rogue planets are hatched in enormous numbers, a million for every star, in the accretion disk cocoon out of which stars themselves are formed…

“It may not immediately bring us closer to discovering alien life, or even raise the probabilities of life elsewhere in the universe. But rogue planets, I predict, will eventually explain a lot about the cosmic terrain and point the way to answering some big questions. After the discovery of rogue planets, the sky seems a bit less spooky. At least it does to me.”

UNQUOTE


This is a lengthy and technical article, and I have quoted only a portion of it, merely in order to present the possibility that the currently “invisible” Planet X Nibiru may indeed be a Rogue Planet wandering in a predictable orbit amongst nearby Stars and our Sun. And this discussion sets the stage for the news story that follows. Have 18 Rogue Planets Been Discovered In Orion?


QUOTE

Knight Ridder Newspapers,

By Robert S. Boyd,

6 October 2000


WASHINGTON—Astronomers have discovered a nursery of 18 young planet-sized objects unattached to any mother stars, wandering through space like orphans. The bodies are challenging theories on the formation of stars and planets.

“If these observations are confirmed, this means we’re really going to have to rewrite the textbooks on how planets form,” said Ronald Greeley, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University. “This opens a whole new realm of objects in the universe.”

The mystery objects are dim red balls of gas, estimated to be five to 12 times more massive than Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. They are drifting freely in a cluster of stars in the Constellation of Orion, about 1,500 light-years (about 9,000 trillion miles) from Earth.


The cluster, known as Sigma Orionis, dangles from Orion’s belt, a prominent feature of the winter sky. The cluster formed 1 million to 5 million years ago, making it a veritable baby compared with our Sun, which is 5 billion years old. According to standard astronomical doctrine, planets condense out of disks of gas and dust swirling around newborn stars. That process produced the nine planets in our own solar system, as well as the more than 50 giant planets that have been detected in the last five years orbiting other stars.


But the 18 strange objects reported by an international team of scientists in Friday’s editions of the journal Science don’t fit this pattern. “We might have to give them a new name,” said Alan Boss, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution.


Because they lack a central star, the new objects aren’t really planets, Mr. Boss and other scientists contend, but smaller versions of other recently discovered freefloating space travelers known as brown dwarfs. These so-called failed stars, weighing 13 to 75 times as much as Jupiter, are too small and too cool to ignite the nuclear fires that fuel stars.


The mass of the objects in Orion puts them in the planetary range, below the currently accepted minimum for brown dwarfs. Consequently, the lead author of the Science paper, Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio, a Spanish astronomer based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, described them as “young giant planets”.


Mr. Boss said that the definition of a planet, as approved by the International Astronomical Union, is “a round object that goes around a star”. Location, not size, is the determining factor.


“People want to find planets,” Mr. Boss said. “They want to use the P-word—that’s how you make a name for yourself.”


Ms. Zapatero Osorio acknowledged that,

“if planets can only exist around a star, then our candidates are very low-mass brown dwarfs. But if planets must be a certain mass, then these objects are planets. This is only a problem of terminology”.

Where the objects came from also remains a mystery. The most probable explanation, Mr. Boss said, is that they formed when a huge cloud of interstellar gas broke apart and the fragments condensed into the gas balls. This is similar to how stars are created, but on a smaller scale. Another theory is that the objects formed like planets around a central star and were later ejected into empty space by gravitational instability. The celestial orphans are the first planetary-sized objects outside our solar system to be seen directly from Earth. Until now, planets have been detected indirectly by careful observation of tiny wobbles in the motion of their host star, caused by the tug of the planets’ gravity.


This time, astronomers used sensitive visible and infrared light-detecting telescopes in Spain, the Canary Islands and Hawaii to explore a region in the Sigma Orionis cluster.

UNQUOTE


There were also a couple of posts of other versions of this report to the Fortean Times Mailing List. I include them here as they appeared, email addresses deleted.


QUOTE

From: Tim C.
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 11:01:17 +0100
Subject: Mystery Of Free-Floating ‘Planets’
Thursday, 5 October, 2000, 18:06 GMT 19:06 UK
Mystery Of Free-Floating ‘Planets’
By BBC News Online
Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse

Astronomers have discovered 18 planet-like objects, drifting through space in a part of the constellation of Orion.


If they are planets, these “free floaters” will pose a challenge to theories about how planets form.
Planets are thought to arise as gas and dust in the disc swirling around a young star condenses and clumps together.


But the newly-discovered objects seem to have a different origin and evolution. They lack a central star and they form part of a star cluster called Sigma Orionis, which is no more than five million years old.
“The formation of young, free-floating, planetary-mass objects like these are difficult to explain by our current models of how planets form,” said Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, in Tenerife, Spain.


Young And Cool


The researchers chose the Sigma Orionis star cluster for their planet hunt because it is nearby, young, and largely free of dust and gas clouds that might obstruct the view.


Using visible and infrared light-detecting sensors on telescopes in Spain, the Canary Islands, and Hawaii, they found 18 objects whose relatively dim, reddish light suggested they could be planetary.


The team used measurements from spectrographs on the Keck telescopes in Hawaii to study the range, or spectrum, of energy emitted by three of their candidates. This confirmed the new objects were cool with planet-like temperatures. “The spectrographic results corresponded to our expectations that these were young giant planets,” said Zapatero Osorio.


The researchers say that their estimates of the masses of the objects are well within the range for planets.
Brown Dwarf Stars


Sigma Orionis is probably five million years old, so if the objects are equally old, they are probably 8-15 Jupiter masses in size.


If they are only one million years old then the fainter ones could be as small as five Jupiter masses.
It is still a possibility that the scientists have found unusually small, cool, brown dwarf stars.


But the astronomers say that judging from previous sky surveys, to find 18 brown dwarfs concentrated in such a relatively small area would be unlikely.

“The most intriguing question now is how can we explain the formation and evolution of planetary-mass objects outside the Solar System?” said Zapatero Osorio.

The research is published in the journal Science.
 


From: Robert C.
Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2000 10:15:11 +0100
Subject: Balls The Size Of A Planet
Scientists Find Planet-Sized Balls


WASHINGTON (AP)—Scientists are rethinking some basic theories about planets after astronomers found 18 planet-sized gas balls drifting free in a star field some 1,200 light years from Earth. Experts wonder whether faint objects of this size, which have never before been detected, are failed stars or planets without a sun, said Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio of California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. The objects don’t meet the classic definition of a planet because they are free-floating and nomadic instead of being locked into the orbit of a star, like the Earth and its sister planets in the solar system.

 

See: http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2570387815-d9a

UNQUOTE

 

These 18 Orion Objects sound suspiciously like Rogue Planets. This time, however, we are able to actually see them with our own eyes by the use of telescopes, rather than merely predict them mathematically by environmental or microlensing measurements.


A diagram accompanies this Dallas newspaper article, comparing the sizes of these objects with the sizes of other known celestial bodies. If the Planet Jupiter were about the size of a ping-pong ball, then these Orion rogue objects would be about the size of tennis balls. Larger Brown Dwarfs would range in size from baseballs to basketballs, and our Sun would be the size of a jumbo beachball. If the Earth were added to the comparison, it would be about the size of a papaya seed or a BB-Gun pellet.


This discovery may be notable for another reason: Nibiru and its “host” of attendant cosmic bodies may come from the region of Orion and Sirius. Have our astronomers finally seen “The Twelfth Planet”?  As for the assertions about the actual distance from Earth of these rogue objects and their method of formation, such ideas are debatable.
Here in this discovery, importantly, we find the idea that the explosion of a red giant star, for example, could result in the “ejection” of its planets into empty space as wandering rogues. That is obviously the correct assumption to draw for the original reason that the Planet X Nibiru drifted into our system and was subsequently gravitationally captured by our Sun approximately half a million years ago, some would say even longer.


 

 


NASA Science News, 29 June 2001
Wandering Mystery Planets


NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted what seem to be strange planet-sized objects wandering loose in globular cluster M22.


June 29, 2001—Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have spotted something extraordinary. Apparently there are planet-sized objects wandering through a distant globular cluster of stars. Unlike the planets in our own solar system, however, these objects are loners—they have no central star of their own. Because the findings are so surprising, researchers caution that they must be confirmed by follow-up observations. But if this discovery is verified, it could change the way astronomers think about stars and planets, and how the two are related.


[COMMENT: M22 is located in the Constellation of Sagittarius where it intersects the Galactic Center at what the Mayas called the “Dark Rift” from which a cometary object emerges to travel along the “Black Road” to its position atop the “Sacred Tree”. This NASA discovery is significant in that said unusual microlensing objects could possibly be related to the impending arrival of Planet X Nibiru. RS]


See full Report HERE


What’s next? More observations!
 


http://www.seds.org/billa/tnp/hypo.html


Hypothetical Planets
By Paul Schlyter

(pausch@saaf.se)


Nemesis
Suppose our Sun was not alone but had a companion star. Suppose that this companion star moved in an elliptical orbit, its solar distance varying between 90,000 a.u. (1.4 light years) and 20,000 a.u., with a period of 30 million years. Also suppose this star is dark or at least very faint, and because of that we haven’t noticed it yet.


This would mean that once every 30 million years that hypothetical companion star of the Sun would pass through the Oort cloud (a hypothetical cloud of proto-comets at a great distance from the Sun). During such a passage, the proto-comets in the Oort cloud would be stirred around. Some tens of thousands of years later, here on Earth we would notice a dramatic increase in the the number of comets passing the inner solar system. If the number of comets increases dramatically, so does the risk of the Earth colliding with the nucleus of one of those comets. When examining the Earth’s geological record, it appears that about once every 30 million years a mass extinction of life on Earth has occurred. The most well-known of those mass extinctions is of course the dinosaur extinction some 65 million years ago. About 15 million years from now it’s time for the next mass extinction, according to this hypothesis.


This hypothetical “death companion” of the Sun was suggested in 1985 by Daniel P. Whitmire and John J. Matese, University of Southern Louisiana. It has even received a name: Nemesis. One awkward fact of the Nemesis hypothesis is that there is no evidence whatever of a companion star of the Sun. It need not be very bright or very massive, a star much smaller and dimmer than the Sun would suffice, even a brown or a black dwarf (a planet-like body insufficiently massive to start “burning hydrogen” like a star). It is possible that this star already exists in one of the catalogues of dim stars without anyone having noted something peculiar, namely the enormous apparent motion of that star against the background of more distant stars (i.e. its parallax). If it should be found, few will doubt that it is the primary cause of periodic mass extinctions on Earth. But this is also a notion of mythical power. If an anthropologist of a previous generation had heard such a story from his informants, the resulting scholarly tome would doubtless use words like ‘primitive’ or ‘pre-scientific’.

 

Consider this story:

“There is another Sun in the sky, a Demon Sun we cannot see. Long ago, even before great-grandmother’s time, the Demon Sun attacked our Sun. Comets fell, and a terrible winter overtook the Earth. Almost all life was destroyed. The Demon Sun has attacked many times before. It will attack again.”

This is why some scientists thought this Nemesis theory was a joke when they first heard of it—an invisible Sun attacking the Earth with comets sounds like delusion or myth. It deserves an additional dollop of skepticism for that reason: we are always in danger of deceiving ourselves. But even if the theory is speculative, it’s serious and respectable, because its main idea is testable: you find the star and examine its properties.


However, since the examination of the entire sky in the far IR by IRAS with no “Nemesis” found, the existence of “Nemesis” is not very likely.


[COMMENT: The problem that I personally have with reports like the foregoing is their use of such extremely long and distant time-periods. They refuse to consider that such events can happen within their own lifetimes. They are victims of what Dr. Velikovsky referred to as “mankind’s collective amnesia”. RS]
 


QUOTE

Genesis Revisited

By Zecharia Sitchin

(New York, 1990),

Pages 318-321 (Avon edition)


The transformation of the search for Planet X from an academic pursuit to one principally involving the U.S. Naval Observatory (an entity of the U.S. Navy) and overseen by NASA took place concurrently with the intensified use of manned spacecraft for the search. It is known that on various secret missions of the U.S. space shuttles, new telescopic devices for scanning the distant skies were employed, and that Soviet cosmonauts aboard the Salyut space station were equally engaged in secret searches for the planet.

Among the myriad dots of light in the heavens, planets (as well as comets and asteroids) are distinguished from fixed stars and galaxies because they move. The technique is to take photographs of the same portion of the sky several times and then “blink” the photos on a comparing viewer; to the trained eye this reveals whether some point of light has moved. Clearly, this method would not work too well for Planet X if it is so distant and if it moves very slowly. Even when the role of the Pioneer spacecraft in the search for Planet X was announced in June 1982, John Anderson himself, in a review prepared for the Planetary Society, stressed that in addition to the answers the Pioneer spacecraft might provide, the enigma of the unknown planet might be resolved through the “infrared search of the solar neighborhood” by the “all-sky survey of the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS).” He explained that IRAS “will be sensitive to the heat trapped in the interiors of substellar bodies”—heat that is slowly lost to space in the form of infrared radiation.


This heat-sensing satellite, IRAS, was launched into orbit 560 miles above the Earth at the end of January 1983 as a joint U.S.-British-Dutch endeavor. It was expected to be able to sense a planet the size of Jupiter at a distance of 277 AU. Before it ran out of the liquid helium that cooled it, it observed some 250,000 celestial objects: galaxies, stars, interstellar dust clouds, and cosmic dust, as well as asteroids, comets, and planets. The search for a tenth planet was one of its declared objectives. Reporting on the satellite and its mission, The New York Times of January 30, 1983, headlined the article “Clues Get Warm In The Search For Planet X”. It quoted astronomer Ray T. Reynolds of the Ames Research Center as saying,

“Astronomers are so sure of the 10th planet that they think there’s nothing left but to name it.”

Did IRAS find the tenth planet?
Although specialists admit it will take years to sift through and “blink” the more than 600,000 images transmitted by IRAS in its ten months of operations, the official response to the question is no—no tenth planet was found. Having scanned the same part of the heavens at least twice, IRAS did make it possible to “blink” images; and, contrary to the impression given, moving objects were discovered. These included five previously unknown comets, several comets that astronomers had “lost”, four new asteroids—and “an enigmatic comet-like object”.


Was it perhaps Planet X?
[COMMENT: I myself remember reading about this discovery in 1983 in either The Dallas Morning News or Newsweek magazine. I can personally verify the accuracy of this odd news report, for which there was never any follow-up information, just as there has been no follow-up information regarding the microlensing object found at M22. RS]


In spite of the official denials, a disclosure did leak out at the end of the year. It came in the form of an exclusive interview of the key IRAS scientist by Thomas O’Toole of the science service of the Washington Post. The story, generally ignored—suppressed, perhaps—was carried by several dailies, which variously headlined it “Giant Object Mystifies Astronomers”, “Mystery Body Found In Space”, and “At Solar System’s Edge Giant Object Is A Mystery” (Fig. 104).

 

The opening paragraphs of the exclusive story began thus.

WASHINGTON—A heavenly body possibly as large as the giant planet Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this solar system has been found in the direction of the Constellation Orion by an orbiting telescope called the IRAS. So mysterious is the object that astronomers do not know if it is a planet, a giant comet, a ‘protostar’ that never got hot enough to become a star, a distant galaxy so young that it is still in the process of forming its first stars, or a galaxy so shrouded in dust that none of the light cast by its stars ever gets through. “All I can tell you is that we don’t know what it is,” said Gerry Neugebauer, chief IRAS scientist.


But could it be a planet—another member of our Solar system? That possibility seemed to have occurred to NASA. According to the Washington Post, “When IRAS scientists first saw the mystery body and calculated that it could be as close as 50 billion miles, there was some speculation that it might be moving toward Earth.


“The mystery body,” the report went on, “was seen twice by IRAS.” The second observation took place six months after the first and suggested that the body had hardly moved from its spot in the sky. “This suggests it’s not a comet because a comet would not be as large as we’ve observed and a comet would have probably moved,” said James Houck of Cornell’s Center for Radio Physics and Space Research and a member of the IRAS science team. Could it be a slow-moving and very distant planet, if it is not a faster-moving comet?


“Conceivably,” the Washington Post reported, “it could be the 10th planet that astronomers have searched for in vain.”

UNQUOTE


“Crossover” is coming. Are you ready for “Crossover”?
 

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