DARK STAR

(A Response to Bill Laurune’s “Monmatia Revisited”)

by Dale E. Essary

For some, one of the more appealing features of The Urantia Book (The UB) is its penchant for providing detailed explanations for all manner of things scientific in what seems at first blush to be an appeal to modern enlightenment. Indeed, one of The UB’s stated purposes is to harmonize science with religion so as to provide mankind with an all-encompassing and coherent belief system, touting itself as a revelation that “does synthesize the apparently divergent sciences of nature and the theology of religion into a consistent and logical universe philosophy, a co-ordinated and unbroken explanation of both science and religion, thus creating a harmony of mind and satisfaction of spirit . . .” (101:2.1).

As it turns out, though, such ruminations have left The UB encumbered with one of its more glaring shortcomings—the copious amounts of apparently outdated and/or incorrect scientific information contained therein. Such misgivings tend to garner support for those (yours truly among them) that hold The UB to be a literary effort not of superhuman authors hailing from far-flung celestial spheres as claimed, but of mere mortals from the terrestrial realm. When pressed about this apparent problem, Urantian apologists are quick to point out a convenient disclaimer found in Paper 101 of The UB, entitled “The Limitations of Revelation,” which “explains away” any science contained therein that would otherwise be deemed “outdated” by some. The claim is made that the “celestial revelators” were not permitted to provide us with unearned science, so as not to advance our scope of knowledge beyond our years. This “prime directive” begs the question as to why these “celestial revelators” would endorse inaccurate scientific information, if they already knew the information was incorrect in the first place.

This conundrum aside, many of the inherent scientific inaccuracies are couched within The UB’s discourse on the natural history of planet Urantia (Part III) and are, by virtue of the authors’ own reckoning, exempt from coverage under their disclaimer: “We will use the nearest whole numbers as the better method of presenting these historic facts” (57:0.2; emphasis added). Many Urantians consequently find themselves having to scramble to arms in a desperate attempt to reconcile that which is not congruent with the current span of earned human scientific knowledge.

One such misaligned historic treatise pertains to the origin of our Solar System, which is the subject of Mr. Laurune’s article entitled “Monmatia Revisited” (MR), recently posted on Matthew Block’s Square Circles website.[1] “Monmatia” is the name given our Solar System in The UB, its described origin resembling a theory once popular among early 20th century astronomers. The Tidal Theory, advanced by Sir James Jeans in 1916, hypothesized that another star had passed close enough by our Sun to draw out a string of gaseous bodies from the Sun that later condensed into the planets of our Solar System. (The UB calls the astronomic body that had passed by our Sun “Angona.”) Jeans presented the Tidal Theory in an effort to overcome perceived problems associated with the previously accepted Nebular Hypothesis, which held that the Solar System formed from a collapsing gas nebula. The Tidal Theory, in turn, has since lost its once popular support in light of other theoretical and observational considerations that favor a revised version of the Nebular Hypothesis.

Before we begin our assessment of MR, a crash course on the history of Solar System origin theories is in order. What follows is a brief synopsis of the major competitors that have been proposed within the span of the modern scientific age.

Origin of the Solar System

The question of the origin of the Solar System is one which mankind has long strived to answer. Throughout history, several theories have been suggested, many of which have waned in popularity in light of increasingly sophisticated theories and observations. Besides explaining the birth of the sun, planets, moons, asteroids, and comets, a theory of the origin of the Solar System must explain the chemical and physical differences of the planets; must attest to their orbital regularities, i.e., why they lie almost on the same plane and revolve in the same direction in nearly circular orbits; and also must account for the relative angular momentum of the sun and planets arising from their rotational and orbital motions.

The Nebular Hypothesis

In 1755 the German philosopher Immanuel Kant developed the Nebular Hypothesis, which suggested that the Solar System had formed out of a nebulous mass of rarefied matter that contracted into a flat rotating disc. As the disc rotated faster and faster, it cooled and contracted further until it started throwing off masses of gas. These masses cooled to form the planets, while the core of the disc condensed to form the Sun. The objections to this hypothesis were based on observations of angular momentum that conflicted with the theory. Kant’s theoretical nebula only started to rotate as it contracted, which contravened the law of conservation of angular momentum. In 1796, however, the French mathematician Pierre Laplace independently published a more rigorous theory similar to Kant’s, in which the original nebula was rotating before it started cooling and contracting. When the angular velocity became too fast for the nebula to remain stable, the matter near the outer edge separated and formed a ring, which eventually coalesced to form the outermost planet. This process continued as the nebula further contracted and sped up, thus producing ring after ring that eventually formed more planets. Laplace suggested that the planetary moons formed in similar fashion from condensing rings of material that were thrown off as the protoplanets contracted and sped up.

Because Laplace’s theory could not explain the fact that Uranus spun on its side or the apparent retrograde spin of Neptune, it was suggested that these anomalies could be explained by some other event after the planets had been formed. Laplace’s theory had other problems, but it was the best theory available prior to the turn of the twentieth century and was thought to be essentially correct.

The Planetesimal Theory

Toward the end of the nineteenth century doubts began to emerge about Laplace’s nebular contraction theory. Calculations of the various tidal effects between the planets and the Sun showed that the planets could not have spun off from the early Sun. Encounter or collision theories, in which a star passes close by or actually collides with the sun, try to explain the distribution of angular momentum. Thomas Chamberlain and Forest Moulton of the University of Chicago proposed an alternative stellar encounter idea in 1905, known as the Planetesimal Theory. They theorized that the Sun originally had much larger prominences than now, and some were amplified by a passing star, causing the Sun to eject a great number of gaseous clouds that were thrust into elliptical orbits around the Sun. The smaller masses quickly cooled to become solid bodies called planetesimals. As their orbits crossed, the larger bodies grew by absorbing the smaller planetesimals which, in turn, cooled and coalesced to form the present planets. However, Jeans showed that the clouds of gas would have been too small and would have dissipated before they had time to cool and form the planetesimals.

The Tidal Theory

The Tidal Theory, proposed by James Jeans and Harold Jeffreys in 1918, is a variation of the planetesimal concept. In 1901, Sir James Jeans suggested that the Solar System had been formed when another star had passed close by the Sun and had drawn out a large amount of material by tidal attraction. Working out the mathematics in 1916, Jeans demonstrated how a long tongue of gas pulled out of the Sun would break up into individual gas clouds. These clouds would condense into a series of gaseous spheres that would have masses comparable with those of the Solar System. Their initial highly eccentric orbits allowed the Sun to pull material out of these gaseous planets that would in turn have condensed to form planetary satellites. The current configuration of the relative sizes of the planets suggested to Jeans that the tongue of gas pulled out of the Sun was thickest in its middle than at either end. Moreover, the encounter with the star took place in a plane a few degrees from the Sun’s equatorial plane, which also explains why the planetary orbits are not quite in the plane.

It is this very theory that finds full endorsement by the “revelators” as their “eye-witness account” of how our Solar System was formed. As though snatched from the annals of the pursuit of human knowledge and ratified for all time, Jeans’ Tidal Theory finds itself reworked as a true and accurate account under authority of the celestial historians (see 57:5).

Unfortunately for the “celestial” authors, Jeans’ close encounter theory soon met with serious difficulty, beginning with American astronomer Henry Norris Russell in 1935. Russell pointed out that, for material pulled out of the Sun, the perihelion[2] distance cannot be greater than the Sun’s radius and hence this imposed a tight constraint on the material’s intrinsic angular momentum. Even allowing for some extra angular momentum imparted to the ejected material by the gravitational attraction of the passing star, it is not possible to fully explain the orbits of the outer planets. To obtain ejected material in orbit around the Sun at a substantial distance, there must be some appreciable disturbance (beyond gravity) of the initial ejecta orbits; otherwise, the material would be reabsorbed by the Sun.[3] This objection remains against all encounter theories in that the angular momentum problem is not fully explained, since they cannot provide enough angular momentum to put the planets where they are needed. Another telling objection to Jeans’ Tidal Theory was made in 1939 when the American Lyman Spitzer had analyzed it and demonstrated that the filament of gas drawn out of the Sun would not have condensed, but would have formed a permanent gaseous nebula surrounding the Sun. By Spitzer’s estimate, the minimum mass of the material pulled out of the Sun required to have formed Jupiter would have to be on the order of about 100 times the current mass of Jupiter.[4]

The Solar Nebula Theory

Kant’s condensing nebula hypothesis of 1755 had been dismissed primarily because a static nebula would not begin to rotate as it contracted, which would violate the law of conservation of angular momentum. The currently prevailing theory, an amalgamation of several corollaries collectively known as the Solar Nebula Theory, returns to a form of the old nebular hypothesis to explain the transfer of momentum from the central mass to the outer material. The nebula is seen as a dense nucleus, or protosun, surrounded by a thin shell of gaseous matter extending to the edges of the Solar System. It became known later in the twentieth century that star-forming nebulae consist of turbulent streams of gas moving at velocities on the order of 10 km/s. The Irish mathematician William McCrea showed that a dense nebula with streams of gas would have had more than enough angular momentum to produce the Solar System that we see today. Carl von Weizsäcker suggested in 1943 that cells of circulating convection currents formed in the solar nebula after the Sun had condensed which later condensed into planetesimals. The planetesimals grew to form the planets by accretion. The planetary satellites were formed from nebulae surrounding the planets in similar fashion.

The Capture Theory

A lesser known theory of Solar System origins, but one that is growing in popularity and empirical support, known as the Capture Theory, is given honorable mention by MR, if only to point out its “shortcomings,” which are naturally overcome by the “Angona” hypothesis. The Capture Theory was originally proposed by M. M. Woolfson in 1964[5] to address the angular momentum problem. Woolfson proposed that a two-body encounter may cause a compact star (i.e., the Sun) to draw out a filament of material from a less massive and more diffuse star, or protostar, in such a way that a part of the filamentary material drawn from the protostar is captured into orbit about the compact star. Gravitational instabilities within the filament lead to its fragmentation into several protoplanetary condensations that eventually form the modern planets and satellites.

Despite the fact that most of the kinks of the Capture Theory have been worked out through subsequent research by Woolfson and others,[6] MR finds two “irresolvable” difficulties therein:

“Although a protostar’s dust cloud would be far larger than the diameter of a star—roughly the diameter of our solar system—it is still unlikely that our sun would pass that close to a protostar, given that such a protostar would still be orbiting the galaxy in concert with other stars.”

This “argument” is baseless, as we know (and as MR asserts elsewhere) that our very own Sun is currently traveling at a trajectory not in concert with its neighboring stars. Just as established solar systems are thrown about by the winds of supernovae, so too can protostars be displaced. But more than this, the Capture Theory points out that an encounter between two stars is not as unlikely as was once believed. It is now thought that stars form in dense clusters, which increases the likelihood that close encounters between them may be common.[7]

The capture Theory’s other “irresolvable” difficulty according to MR reads as follows:

“A protostar does not remain in the protostar phase very long relative to the lifetime of a star or relative to the time it would take the protostar to move about the galaxy relative to other stars. Once the gravitational collapse begins, it proceeds quickly relative to astronomical time scales [67].”

First, let us take note that MR’s second “objection” contradicts what is stated in the first “objection.” Whereas the first objection states that the processional orbit of a protostar around its galaxy would hold it in a fixed position relative to other stars, the second objection states that a protostar would indeed “move about the galaxy relative to other stars”!

But let’s get back to the point at hand. The second objection claims that a protostar does not last long enough to permit a sufficient window of opportunity for an encounter with another star. This time we have a reference to look up that should confirm MR’s contention (or so one would think). Unfortunately, MR’s offering disappoints. The reference cited by MR discusses the various stages in the life of giant stars, the first of which is the protostar stage:

“A giant star will start its life out, like so many other stars, as a protostar. . . . It contracts in on itself due to the gravity created by its enormous mass, and quickly heats up. In a matter of a few thousand years, the protostar becomes a Blue Giant.”[8]

But the Capture Theory has nothing to do with giant protostars which, by virtue of their intense gravitational field, would naturally collapse on themselves relatively quickly. Instead, the Capture Theory involves a protostar of a much smaller variety. In fact, the very reference that MR cites to introduce the Capture Theory tells us that the protostar encountered by our Sun would have been only about 15 percent the mass of the Sun, and that its dust disk would have lasted on the order of several millions of years before collapsing and forming its solar system,[9] thus allowing plenty of time for an encounter.

We should also point out at this juncture that the astronomical body referred to as “Angona” that The UB claims encountered our Sun and was responsible for causing the birth of our Solar System does not even remotely fit the description of a protostar. For one thing, Angona’s description (“a dark giant of space . . . possessing tremendous gravity pull” [57:5.4]) makes it much too massive to be considered a protosun, which is smaller in mass than our own Sun. Secondly, Angona supposedly already had a developed planetary system orbiting around it, which a protosun would not exhibit.

Dark Star

And now, with our astronomy primer out of the way, it is time to delve into MR’s attempt at resolving the current state of historic dissonance in which the “celestial” author of Paper 57 currently exists.

The Angona Hypothesis

The introductory section of MR informs us that “new observations that are causing problems for the Solar Nebula Theory can be shown to be compatible with a close encounter with a black hole, which is what the Urantia Book actually describes (not a close encounter with a large star otherwise like our own sun, as in the old Tidal Theory).” We also learn of the existence of what are referred to as stellar-mass black holes, several of which have been spotted recently in our galaxy. However, the reference cited by MR in support of these recently observed phenomena states that stellar-mass black holes are only 3.5 to 15 times the mass of our sun, and are therefore likely to be quite small in volume. The UB defines the Angona center as a “dark giant of space, solid . . ., and possessing tremendous gravity pull” (57:5.4; emphasis added). Another reference indicates that stellar-mass black holes would range from about 5 to 100 times the mass of the Sun, thus giving them a diameter of only 20 to 400 miles.[10] Such a minuscule object would hardly qualify as a “giant of space” relative to the astronomical scale! The only type of black hole that would qualify as a “giant of space” would be of the super-massive variety, which forms via accretion from smaller bodies in the centers of galaxies. These mammoths exert one million to one billion times the mass of the Sun and would be about the size of our Solar System. However, because they form at the centers of galaxies, they are not prone to wandering like their smaller, stellar-mass counterparts.

Not only does a stellar-mass black hole not match The UB’s description of Angona, but MR also relies on a very subtle yet grossly misleading inference regarding the number of known stellar-mass black holes. According to MR, “Several stellar-mass black holes have been observed in the past few years . . ., thus making an encounter with a black hole more likely than an encounter with another star.” But once again, the cited reference says otherwise. Although it is acknowledged that astronomers have known about the existence of stellar-mass black holes since the early 1970s (from a theoretical standpoint), the cited article states that the object under discussion “is only the second [stellar-mass black hole] discovered in our galaxy.”[11]

(Special Note: Evidence of the only other type of black hole known to exist on the astronomical scale, known as a middle-mass black hole, was recently reported.[12] Spotted about 600 light years away from the center of the galaxy M82, the mid-mass black hole packs the mass of at least 500 Suns into a region about the size of the Moon. Possible explanations for the object include the merger of stars to form a hyperstar that collapsed, or growth of a black hole through mergers with other nearby black holes and neutron stars. Again, however, an object the size of the moon would hardly qualify as a “giant of space.”)

None of the Above

So if the “dark giant of space” also known as Angona does not fit the description of a black hole, what could this mysterious wanderer of the cosmos be? As it turns out, the celestials have already provided us with the premise to this dark subject:

“When a sun is born of a spiral or of a barred nebula, not infrequently it is thrown out a considerable distance. Such a sun is highly gaseous, and subsequently, after it has somewhat cooled and condensed, it may chance to swing near some enormous mass of matter, a gigantic sun or a dark island of space. Such an approach may not be near enough to result in collision but still near enough to allow the gravity pull of the greater body to start tidal convulsions in the lesser, thus initiating a series of tidal upheavals which occur simultaneously on opposite sides of the convulsed sun. At their height these explosive eruptions produce a series of varying-sized aggregations of matter which may be projected beyond the gravity-reclamation zone of the erupting sun, thus becoming stabilized in orbits of their own around one of the two bodies concerned in this episode. Later on the larger collections of matter unite and gradually draw the smaller bodies to themselves. In this way many of the solid planets of the lesser systems are brought into existence. Your own solar system had just such an origin.” (15:5.5; emphasis added)

Angona, then, must be one of these “dark islands of space” described above. But this leads us to the obvious question, what is a “dark island of space”? The celestials provide an answer to this question, as well. In actuality, The UB states that the dark islands of space fall into three categories:

(a) “Some of the dense dark islands are the direct result of the accretion of transmuting energy in space.” (15:5.10)

(b) “Another group of these dark islands have come into being by the accumulation of enormous quantities of cold matter, mere fragments and meteors, circulating through space. Such aggregations of matter have never been hot and, except for density, are in composition very similar to Urantia.” (15:5.10)

(c) “Some of the dark islands of space are burned-out isolated suns, all available space-energy having been emitted. The organized units of matter approximate full condensation, virtual complete consolidation . . . .” (15:5.11; emphasis added)

We can ignore category (a) above as a candidate for a dark giant of space because its description (the transmutation of energy into dense matter) is militated against by Einstein’s general relativity theory and the laws of thermodynamics, which would at best allow for the creation of some form of unstable (and therefore short-lived) matter. Of course, we could appeal to a metaphysical argument such that the “accretion of transmuting energy in space” is a description of some as yet unobservable phenomenon. However, such an appeal would be useless for our purpose, since it is MR’s intent to attribute physical reality to Angona and its influence on our Solar System. Furthermore, an explanation such as this would place the celestial authors in violation of their self-imposed mandate not to disclose unearned knowledge to us mortals.

Category (b) would fit under the realm of plausibility, since both common sense and direct observation (comets, meteors, asteroids, etc.) tell us that some of this type of matter exists as remnants of the birth of solar systems. It was easy enough to theorize the existence of these material remnants during the early part of the twentieth century, and to even envision the possibility of whole planets being formed in deep space from the accumulation thereof. Indeed, The UB contends that a dark island of space composed of this type of material would be formed by the “accumulation of enormous quantities of cold matter” (15:5.10). Some of these dark islands are even said to be “enormous in mass,” their density being “well-nigh unbelievable,” exerting a powerful gravitational influence such that they act as “powerful balance wheels, holding large neighboring systems in effective leash” and in fact holding the “gravity balance of power in many constellations” (15:6.6). Here, then, is a viable candidate worthy of Angona contention. However, it would seem reasonable to assert that the early 20th century human astronomers would be capable of detecting the presence of such unseen local space bodies by virtue of their localized gravitational influence. The relatively tiny planet known as Pluto was discovered in 1930 because astronomers knew where to look by virtue of its gravitational influence on the Solar System’s outer planets. But because no enormous dark space bodies that hold several suns in their place have been detected to date, their existence has so far not been taken under serious consideration.

We also have the enormous problem of finding sufficient material or the necessary kinematics to form a roving terrestrial planet large enough to qualify as a heavyweight encounter of the Angona kind. It is highly unlikely that sufficient quantities of heavy element material could form beyond existing or forming solar systems, or could escape the gravitational grasp of its parent star. Any body of significant mass would likely attract more hydrogen than any other element, which in turn would either become a gas planet or a star in its own right. Tangible evidence of this theoretical outcome has recently been discovered. The young Trapezium star cluster in the Orion Nebula is host to what astronomers have identified as over 100 extremely low mass objects, most of which are candidates for brown dwarf stars (to be discussed in more detail below), but many of which show evidence of falling in a range more commensurate with giant planets. These drifting, “free-floating planets” are perhaps as little as eight times as massive as Jupiter and likely formed along with the cluster stars a million or so years ago. They are detectable in the infrared because they are still hot from formation, but will eventually cool and fade. If Trapezium is typical of young star clusters, then the survey results suggest that free-floating planets may be fairly common.[13] Note, however, that the mass of these free-floating planets is constrained to a small fraction of the Sun’s mass, and therefore would not meet our criterion as a “dark giant of space.”

Which leaves us with the last of the three categories of dark islands of space to consider. But what are these “burned-out suns” the revelators are referring to specifically? One might immediately think of white dwarfs, which are the remnant cores of main sequence stars, such as our Sun, after they have exhausted all their nuclear fuel. White dwarfs were well-known and some even catalogued by human observers beginning in the 1920s. But we can eliminate white dwarfs as candidates for “burned-out suns” because they are still luminous objects that emit enough thermal radiation not to be considered completely “burned-out isolated suns, all available space-energy having been emitted.” This lack of congruity is affirmed elsewhere in The UB by a description of the behavior of white dwarfs that actually refers to them by their very name (41:8.2).

We can also ignore the more recently-discovered brown dwarfs, which are not “burned-out suns” but proto-suns that do not contain enough mass to induce nuclear fusion, and thereby have not burned any nuclear fuel whatsoever. On the contrary, brown dwarfs serve as a category of space body that the divine revelators were either unaware of or chose not to reveal, for nowhere in The UB is such phenomenon described. (It would be nonsensical to assert that brown dwarfs serve as a demonstration of the celestials’ predictive prowess if the “prophets” failed to mention their existence in the first place!) Brown dwarfs are failed stars with masses so low (about 8% of the Sun’s) that they cannot sustain nuclear hydrogen burning, although brown dwarfs are thought to be still massive enough to burn deuterium for energy. And though many brown dwarfs have recently been found in places like the Orion nebula, their very low masses disqualify them from being considered a “dark giant of space.”

What the term “burned-out suns” most likely refers to is the “black dwarf” hypothesis postulated by Ralph Fowler of Cambridge University in 1926. Fowler theorized that as a white dwarf cools near the end of its life, it slowly becomes a cold and inert stellar remnant that no longer emits detectable radiation, finally reaching a temperature of absolute zero.[14] But just as stellar black holes do not qualify as “dark giants of space” on account of their unimpressive size, so these theoretical “ashen suns” also do not meet the criterion.

We must surmise, then, that the celestial authors have painted themselves into a descriptive corner when it comes to their attempt at explaining just what type of astronomical phenomenon Angona is. The “dark giant of space” could not be any type of black hole, based on what we know about black hole physics. Neither could it be a “burned-out sun” of any sort by virtue of their insignificant size. Nor is it a giant terrestrial planet due to a lack of sufficient raw materials. We are therefore out of options for understanding what it is the “celestial” author is referring to upon mentioning “Angona” that would resemble anything scientifically plausible.

Misquotes

MR asserts that very recent observations of our Solar System, in concert with unexpected properties of newly discovered extrasolar planetary systems and with new computer models, “have led some scientists to declare that ‘the standard model cannot work,’” supposedly quoting a specific source. But nowhere does the “quoted” source state this, nor does it infer that the standard model cannot work. Instead, Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington proposes to augment the standard model by introducing a new theory for explaining how the gas planets were formed. The article explains: “Clumps of material develop in regions of gravitational instability in the disk of gas and dust that orbited the newborn Sun, and the dust settles for [sic] form central cores.”[15] The theory also involves a nearby star, hotter and larger than our own, that bathed the outer regions of our primordial Solar System with ultraviolet radiation before dying off and pushing our Solar System into a more stable region of the Milky Way galaxy. Boss’s model is used to explain the differences observed between the composition of the two inner gas planets (Jupiter and Saturn) and that of the outer two (Neptune and Uranus). However, the model is derived within the parameters of the Solar Nebula Theory and altogether ignores the tidal hypothesis of old (and all derivatives thereof).

Later on, MR acknowledges that Boss’s theory asserts the formation of our Solar System in a more chaotic region of the galaxy, followed by its being pushed out of the region by a supernova. But MR finds fault with Boss’s theory only in that “our sun is not presently moving very fast relative to nearby stars, so it is difficult to see how our sun could have been pushed out of a more active region but then slowed down . . . .” However, the article on Boss’s theory does not discuss velocity rates of the Solar System whatsoever, and MR’s statement in this regard must therefore be viewed as either pure speculation at best, or whole invention at worst. The apparent intended outcome here is that the statement is used as a segue, as if said “problematic observation” requires rescuing by the so-called “Angona hypothesis”!

Get Your Facts Straight

Upon introducing the concept of the Solar Nebula Theory, MR lists some inherent “problems” with the theory, which are addressed individually below.

“In some computer simulations, the dust does not condense at all, but remains as rings that may in fact disperse rather than condense [28].”

Contrary to what the above statement infers, the cited reference is not describing a problem associated with the Solar Nebula Theory. Rather, it is describing a flaw pertaining to the older Nebular Hypothesis. As it turns out, many of the old nebular theory problems are resolved with the modern Solar Nebula Theory and with other modern theories, including the “problem” cited above. According to the reference cited by MR, new insight provided only within the past decade or so has revealed that the dust grains comprising the interstellar medium are amenable to condensing and coalescing with gas to form protoplanets.[16]

“Recent analysis of Jupiter by the Galileo probe indicates that the Jovian atmosphere has far more inert gas—xenon, argon, and krypton—than does the sun or Earth. If the sun, the Earth, and Jupiter formed from the same nebula, they should have the same proportion of inert gases, or the sun should have more due to fusion of lighter elements into inert gases [7].”

In 1995, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft dropped a probe on a self-destruct mission into Jupiter’s atmosphere. Continuing analysis of the data from that probe shows that Jupiter must have formed in a much colder place than where it now resides.[17] The probe did indeed find high levels of argon, krypton, and xenon in Jupiter’s atmosphere,[18] as MR indicates. This discovery presented a problem: heat drives off these noble gases during planetary formation. Huge quantities of argon, krypton, and xenon in the present Jovian atmosphere indicate that Jupiter formed in a region with temperatures below -406 ⁰F. Temperatures that cold exist only beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Jupiter’s cold origin means that the Solar System’s largest planet may have migrated a long way inward, starting more than four billion miles from the Sun and ending up just 465 million miles from the Sun. There it steadily maintains a nearly circular, coplanar (aligned with the Sun’s equator) orbit. Jupiter’s great migration distance came as no surprise to some planetary astronomers. Significant quantities of dust in the early Solar System would have interacted with Jupiter, causing it to drift in toward the Sun.[19] Indeed, nearly all of the 80 extrasolar gas planets discovered thus far also show evidence of substantial drift from their birth sites.[20]

The reference on which MR relies for exposing the Jupiter “problem” concedes the popularity of the scenario that Jupiter wandered into its present orbit sometime after having formed. Another possibility mentioned is that the developing solar nebula was far colder than current models estimate. A third possibility, and the one considered most likely by one of the phenomenon’s discoverer, is that planetesimals began forming earlier and more rapidly, before the presolar disk had warmed up.[21] Contrary to MR’s assertion that “There really seems to be no good explanation for this observation,” all three of these possibilities mentioned in the article cited, while casting new light on the prevailing Solar Nebula Theory, are still compatible within the context of said theory. No mention is made in the article for the need to reconsider the planetesimal theory (or any variation thereof).

“The orbital plane of the planets is not exactly in the plane of rotation of the sun; the orbit of the Earth is off by 7.25 degrees. A rotating nebula should have been fully symmetric around the central plane, unless something huge collided with the sun or uniformly pushed the planets into inclined orbits. However, in the Solar Nebula Theory, this difference is considered small enough to ignore, or even to be evidence in support of the theory.”

One wonders why this “problem” has even been brought up, as most astronomers concur (and as MR concedes above) that the difference is not significant enough to cast serious doubt on the Solar Nebula Theory. In fact, the orbital planes of the various planets are not consistent, and their variations are easily explained by minor collisions and/or encounters that would have likely taken place during a Solar Nebula formation scenario.

But upon reading a pertinent passage from The UB, it becomes clear why the position asserted by MR is taken:

“The planets do not swing around the sun in the equatorial plane of their solar mother, which they would do if they had been thrown off by solar revolution. Rather, they travel in the plane of the Angona solar extrusion, which existed at a considerable angle to the plane of the sun’s equator.” (57:5.12)

In other words, the orbital plane of the planets relative to the Sun’s equator becomes a “problem” only because The UB says so! The UB cites the “skewed” orbital plane of the planets as evidence that the Angona system must have passed by our sun at this very angle, upon which the planetary material was extruded. But within the very same paragraph that declares this Angona connection can be found the fatal flaw upon which this position is founded.

Note very carefully the wording of the first sentence cited above: “The planets do not swing around the sun in the equatorial plane of their solar mother, which they would do if they had been thrown off by solar revolution.” In other words, the passage from The UB is stating emphatically that the orbital plane of the planets would be aligned with the Sun’s equator had the Solar System been formed by the only other competing theory that was in existence at the time of its writing, which was the old Nebular Hypothesis. As it is regaled in textbooks, the Laplacian Nebular Hypothesis suggested that the Solar System was formed out of a huge, rotating, gaseous nebula undergoing slow contraction and condensation. As the nebula contracted, its rotational velocity increased by virtue of the conservation of angular momentum. The outer portions of the nebula eventually flattened out into an equatorial disk. When the centrifugal force acting on the outer rotating edge of the solar disk exceeded the inward gravitational force of the nebular mass, a ring of gaseous matter was expelled, which eventually coalesced into a planet. The process repeated itself, giving rise to a series of concentric rings that formed into the planets, while the main central portion condensed to become the Sun. The passage cited above from The UB describes the expelling of these gaseous rings as having “been thrown off by solar revolution,” which would thereby have retained their original equatorial orbit. And such would be the case, had the Nebular Hypothesis rang true. However, the rotational angle of the planets is in itself problematic for the old Nebular Hypothesis, while the issue does not provoke a serious challenge to the modern Solar Nebular Theory, and is done away with completely by the modern Encounter Theory. The author of Paper 57 apparently did not foresee the demise of the old Nebular Hypothesis by virtue of more viable theories, but instead staked a claim on one of its inherent weaknesses as the definitive argument in support of the flawed Angona encounter.

As MR rightly asserts, a major point of contention with the Solar Nebula Theory is the very small amount of angular momentum of the Sun relative to the planets. This problematic divergence must be explained in one of two possible ways: either the Sun must have somehow lost most of its original momentum, or the planets somehow gained momentum. The above passage makes note of a concept involving the Sun’s electromagnetic field having transferred momentum to the planets; however, I could not access the reference cited for evaluation. With this meager offering for an explanation, MR informs us that most sources referenced still consider this to be an unsolved problem. Contrary to MR’s pessimistic outlook, however, there are sources available that provide a tenable explanation to the angular momentum problem, one of which is the concept known as “solar braking.” Some researchers speculate that the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that radiates outward from the Sun, could have robbed the Sun of some of its initial angular momentum. The magnetic field of the Sun also reaches outward, but is twisted due to the rotation of the Sun. As the rapidly rotating magnetic field of the early Sun tried to drag the charged particles of the solar wind with it, the ionized gas may have acted as a brake on the Sun’s spin.[23]

“The one hundred or so other solar systems that have been observed thus far differ from our own in that their gas giant is usually in close orbit around the star and/or in a very elliptical orbit rather than nearly circular like that of Jupiter [71].”

In this case, MR fails to indicate what the point is in bringing up this observation. If the issue at hand is that our Solar System is relatively unusual so far as the near-circular orbits of its planets goes, then the onus is on MR to explain why this observation is not compatible with any of the currently popular origin theories. If the point to be made is that the Angona encounter theory better explains the unique orbital patterns of our Solar System’s planets, then the point is lost by virtue of the very reference provided by MR in the above passage. The reference describes the recent discovery of another solar system that exhibits two gas giants orbiting in near-circular patterns.[24] If the uniqueness of our Solar System is governed by the fact that it was formed by the Angona encounter as opposed to the Solar Nebula Theory, then how does MR explain the formation of the solar system described in the cited reference? Did this solar system undergo an Angona-like encounter as well? If MR is asserting that the formation of solar systems with near-circular orbits can only be explained by an encounter theory, whereas the vast majority of all other solar systems discovered with their erratic orbital patterns are relegated to the Solar Nebula Theory, then the implied exclusivity has yet to be meted out.

A Theory for All Reasons

Now that all these supposed “problems” associated with the current theories have been lined up, MR sets out to knock them down with a comprehensive solution that apparently nobody in the astronomical community had ever previously considered. Notwithstanding that we have already pulled the rug out from under the premise of a stellar-mass black hole standing in for the “dark giant of space,” let us nevertheless humor MR and give it due course.

“When a supernova forms a black hole and sets it in motion, the black hole would eventually move through its own debris field. Some of that debris would fall into the black hole, but some would also go into orbit. The larger pieces of rocky debris from the outer layer of the black hole might quickly form planets: they would initially be hot and molten, but would be exposed to interstellar space and so radiate heat until they reached the temperature of interstellar space. Thus a traveling black hole can be the center of a system of planets, dust, ice, and gas. As the system traveled through interstellar space, it would lack any source of heat once dust stopped falling into the black hole, and so the system would be very cold, and even inert gases could freeze.”

It is at this point that MR begins to rely on nothing more than pure speculation. Note that MR provides no reference from which the above information is summarized. That’s because there is no known resource that would corroborate such a scenario which, if it were plausible, would serve to set up the so-called Angona hypothesis very nicely! But it is clear from reading the above description that MR either does not understand the physics of supernovae and their attendant stellar black holes, or is deliberately attempting to hoodwink the reader. This is going to take a while to unravel, so please bear with me.

And what if a wandering stellar black hole were to encounter a star such as our Sun? One of two things would happen: either the black hole would not come close enough to have any significant effect on the star, or the black hole would gravitationally capture the star, pulling it into orbit. The orbital radius of the star may remain relatively fixed for the life of the star, thereby sentencing it to a quiescent existence until it dies of natural causes. Or, the orbital radius of the star might decrease due to the emission of gravitational radiation over the course of billions of years. Eventually, the star would pass close enough to the black hole such that the gravitational forces of the black hole will deform the star into a football-shaped object. The difference in the gravitational force between the side nearest the black hole and the back side of the star will be so large that the star can no longer hold itself together. The black hole will then begin to pull stellar matter into an accretion disk that, well, you already know the rest of that story.

Final Approach

The Angona Encounter Theory presented by MR as the “all-encompassing” theory gives us an overview of what happens as the “Angona System” (what MR wrongly interprets to be a stellar black hole and its orbiting “debris field”) approaches our primordial Sun. Accordingly, the problems inherent in all other theories that have been passed down through the annals of scientific inquiry are checked off one-by-one:

“The Angona Theory solves the problem of angular momentum, in part, by asserting that the material that formed the planets was extracted from the sun (as large solar flares) over a period of time during which it picked up angular momentum from the passage of Angona.”

This assessment is riddled with problems. First of all, the statement is based solely on circular reasoning, and hence has no scientific merit whatsoever. To put it another way, the Angona encounter theory is (supposedly) validated because the material that was extracted from the Sun as a result of the Angona encounter gained angular momentum because of its encounter with the Angona system! How does the Angona encounter introduce any more angular momentum than would, say, an encounter with any ordinary star of the galactic realm? Secondly, the illustration provided in MR depicting Angona’s encounter with the Sun suggests that the Sun’s burgeoning Solar System gained angular momentum by virtue of the existence of Angona’s appurtenant outer planets, which are seen orbiting clockwise. The problem with this scenario is twofold: 1) the outer planets of Angona would not have sufficient mass to permit the exchange of angular momentum to the Sun’s planets, unless the Angona planets were as massive as stars themselves; and 2) the theory rests on the purely conjectural assumption that Angona’s outer planets were orbiting clockwise as opposed to counterclockwise, which would have caused our Solar System’s planets to orbit in a clockwise fashion. (The vast majority of our planets orbit counter-clockwise; however, Venus, Uranus, and Pluto have a retrograde rotation, or a rotation that is in the opposite direction from the other planets.) Moreover, the Angona “system” with its “debris, planetoids, and outer planets” simply would not exist, for reasons explained earlier. Thirdly, and foremost, the Angona theory does not rid itself of the primary objection attributed to all encounter theories: the solar filaments that accreted out of the Sun as a result of an encounter with a large body such as another star (or even a black hole, for that matter) would likely not have formed planetesimals, but would have dissipated into empty space. Nothing in MR provides so much as a hint as to how the Angona encounter would change that outcome.

“The Angona Theory solves the problem of the composition of Jupiter (with respect to inert gases) by asserting that the extra gas came from ice that originated in the supernova and was carried here by Angona. . . . Jupiter may also have picked up an entire frozen planet, and thereby acquired its gases.”

As MR correctly asserts, our Solar System is orbiting the galactic center at a rate faster than nearby stars, and is migrating toward the galactic center and out of the galactic plane, in the general direction of the local star Vega. But these observations do not substantiate the Angona hypothesis over any other means that could have caused our Solar System to travel in its current trajectory. This point therefore does not provide testable evidence of the Angona encounter hypothesis, as MR also correctly asserts upon further elaboration:

“However, given that most stars have their own motions, it cannot be claimed that this is proof, only that a necessary condition is fulfilled.”

In other words, the proof is in the pudding, for which MR is in want of. Many other observable phenomena are readily available to explain the movement of our Solar System relative to its stellar neighbors, including pressure waves caused by nearby supernovae and close encounters with other stars.

But the hyperbole does not stop there. MR finds it “encouraging” to imagine that, after passing by our Sun to form the Solar System and catapult it on its way toward Vega, Angona moved on to create yet another solar system around Vega. Astronomers have recently discovered a dust disk and what may be a planet the size of Neptune surrounding Vega, which provides MR with a visible path of construction that points to Angona’s legacy. However, simple observations leave this hypothesis somewhat “discouraging.” Astronomers have also determined that Vega appears to be rotating with its pole pointing toward Earth, and its dust disk is viewed face-on from our vantage.[27] If Angona were responsible for causing the dust disk around Vega to form, we would be viewing the disk edge-on, as this would be Angona’s trajectory once it passed by our Solar System. Furthermore, Vega is estimated to be only about 200 million years old.[28] Because Angona supposedly passed by our Solar System about 4.5 billion years ago, this means that it would have taken Angona at least 4.3 billion years to get to Vega. But Vega is only about 25 light years away, which means that Angona would have had to travel toward Vega at a maximum velocity of 0.002 kilometers per second, or 2 meters per second. This value is at least 4 orders of magnitude lower than the typical values for the space velocities of stars, which range from 20 to 100 kilometers per second.[29] At typical speeds, Angona would have whizzed by Vega’s current position at least 4.4996 billion years before Vega was even born!

The Formation of the Asteroid Belt

The Fifth Epochal Revelation has another element of inconsistency with modern science when it comes to describing the origin of the Asteroid Belt that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. The fact that the Asteroid Belt has such a well-defined, high concentration of asteroids suggests two possibilities. One possibility is that they are fragments of a planet that broke up long ago, and the other possibility is that they are rocks that never managed to accumulate into a genuine planet. Currently, scientists tend to favor the latter explanation. There is far too little mass in the belt to constitute a planet; in fact, the total mass of the asteroids in the main belt is less than half that of the moon. Furthermore, the marked chemical differences between individual asteroids strongly suggest that the asteroids could not all have originated from a single planet. Instead, astronomers believe that the strong gravitational field of Jupiter continuously disturbs the motions of these chunks of primitive matter, nudging and pulling at them, thereby prohibiting them from aggregating into a planet.

The “Life Carrier” author of Paper 57, on the other hand, chose to ratify the former idea, that the “fifth planet” was that formed between Mars and Jupiter, but then split up. In the author’s own words:

“The fifth planet of the solar system of long, long ago traversed an irregular orbit, periodically making closer and closer approach to Jupiter until it entered the critical zone of gravity-tidal disruption, was swiftly fragmentized, and became the present-day cluster of asteroids.” (57:6.5)

It is out of a sense of duty, then, that MR must find fault with current scientific opinion. Unfortunately, MR goes about debunking the idea in a wrong but familiar fashion, assigning the “problem” to the wrong theory:

“The present theory seems to have some obvious problems: If, as some computer models indicate, the dust of the primordial solar nebula would not form planets, neither would it form asteroids.”

This problem is associated with the old Nebular Hypothesis, and has little to do with whether or how the asteroid belt formed. It goes without saying that, if the old Nebular Hypothesis does not work for planets, then neither would it work for asteroids. Modern theories such as the Solar Nebula Theory and Woolfson’s Capture Thoery solve the problem for planets and asteroids alike by allowing agglomeration of dust and gas particles to take place. The region of the asteroid belt simply did not get beyond forming asteroid-sized bodies due to Jupiter’s gravitational pull, which accelerated these asteroids to velocities too rapid to prevent violent collisions (in lieu of coalescing into larger bodies on the order of planetoids).

The other “problem” MR finds with the prevailing theory regarding the origin of the asteroid belt is self-refuting:

“The asteroids are relatively solid and irregularly shaped. They are not mere dust balls. They have survived impacts that would have shattered a dust ball.”

Simple Newtonian physics reveals the fallacy behind this statement. The “dust balls” would not have been influenced by Jupiter’s gravitational pull enough to accelerate them to significant velocities, and therefore would not have been subjected to violent impacts. Only until the “dust balls” coagulated and grew in size would their mass be influenced by Jupiter’s gravitational tug to cause velocities sufficient to impart violent impacts. Lastly, MR takes yet another stab at reference-hopping to reinvent the problem:

“The asteroids have variable composition: some are ‘stony’ while others are largely iron [42]. If they all formed from the same part of the primordial nebula, they should all have a similar composition.”

Once again, the very reference that MR cites provides an answer to the “conundrum” posed. As the article explains, the primordial Solar System contained asteroids that had metallic cores, middle regions of stone and iron, and surfaces of stone. Over time, many of these early asteroids collided and broke apart. The fragments, many of which became today’s asteroids, are therefore actually classified as “irons,” “stony-irons,” or “stony.” In other words, all of the modern asteroids came from the same primordial nebula, but have a different composition because the asteroids themselves had a varied internal composition to begin with.[30]

(On a side note, MR later transposes the information regarding the layered differential composition of asteroids to explain their varied composition under the guise of a revamped exploded planet hypothesis to explain the origin of the asteroid belt [see below]. The problem with this thinly disguised fable is that we would not expect to encounter the middle category of asteroid types, the “stony-irons,” as the iron and stone layers of a planet would have been differentiated on a scale much too pure and much too grand to permit significant amalgamation.)

As a tribute to The UB, MR then goes on a campaign to revitalize the exploding planet hypothesis as the reason behind the formation of the Asteroid Belt, only this time the planet was “smaller,” about the size of Mercury. (A major objection to the exploding planet hypothesis is that the total mass of the asteroid belt does not add up to sufficiently account for a planet-sized body.) Unfortunately, the hypothesis is once again replete with wild speculation without consideration for testability. Regardless of the mass of the so-called fifth planet, it would not be significantly influenced by Jupiter’s gravitational pull by virtue of its orbital position. Assuming the fifth planet originally held a near-circular orbit in the vicinity of the centroid of today’s Asteroid Belt, Jupiter’s annual gravitational tug at its closest encounter with the planet would not have been sufficient to increase the ellipticity of the planet’s orbit. This outcome can easily be demonstrated by checking with Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, which states that the force between any two objects having masses m₁ and m₂ separated by a distance r is an attraction acting along the line joining the objects and has the magnitude

F = Gm₁m₂/r²

where G is the universal gravitational constant.

In order for Jupiter’s mass to be great enough to draw the hypothetical fifth planet (which MR calls “Ceres,” in honor of the largest known asteroid within the belt where the planet hypothetically once existed) towards itself, the two competing gravitational forces (that is, the force between the Sun and “Ceres” and the force between “Ceres” and Jupiter) would need to be equal or nearly equal. As it turns out, the mass of “Ceres” cancels out when equating the two forces, leaving only the masses of the Sun and of Jupiter, and the position of “Ceres” relative to the Sun and Jupiter as the determining parameters. Crunching the numbers determines that the force between “Ceres” and Jupiter upon closest approach is approximately three orders of magnitude smaller than that between the Sun and “Ceres,” which means that the influence of Jupiter’s gravitational pull on “Ceres” is greatly overshadowed by that of the Sun’s. Hence, the fifth planet would not have been pulled any closer to Jupiter, much less to the point of allowing “tidal disruption.” In addition, the retrograde-orbiting satellites of Jupiter are more readily explained as captured asteroids, rather than captured remnants of an exploding fifth planet.

An Even Dozen?

The long list of scientific errors attributed to The UB’s Angona recitation grows ever on, and we are still not yet done discovering more historic anomalies therein. It seems that the filament of gas that was spewed out of the Sun had formed not nine, not ten, but twelve planets:

“The great column of solar gases which was thus separated from the sun subsequently evolved into the twelve planets of the solar system.” (57:5.7)

As we have already learned, the “fifth” planet supposedly became the asteroid belt, which leaves us two other heretofore undiscovered planets that are presumably beyond the orbit of Pluto. To date, no other planets have been discovered, and a rather vocal debate is currently ongoing as to whether Pluto should lose its planetary classification.

Ever true to the cause at hand, MR points to a reference that suggests there are, in fact, 12 planets in the Solar System, if the definition of “planet” is expanded to include the largest asteroid Ceres and the two largest Kuiper Belt Objects known as Quaoar and Veruna. The February 2003 article cited by MR (endnote 19) further explains, however, that if we hold to the proposed definition of a planet, then it would be only a matter of time before “the tally would rise beyond two dozen as more discoveries are made.”[31] Once the 13th “planet” is discovered, the alleged “celestial revelators” to whom MR holds high allegiance would be right back where they were in the first place: dead wrong.

Enter “Sedna,” dubbed the coldest, most distant known object in our Solar System when its discovery was announced on 15 March 2004 by NASA.[32] Because of its frigid temperatures, the discovery team has proposed that the object be named in honor of the Inuit goddess of the sea. The dark red object is estimated to be about three-quarters the size of Pluto and therefore the largest Solar System object found since Pluto in 1930 (its size is somewhere between the largest known Kuiper Belt Object, Quaoar, and Pluto). Its highly elliptical orbit currently places it more than twice the distance of Pluto, near its closest approach to the Sun, but will further displace it by 10 times, making it a candidate for the long-hypothesized Oort cloud of icy objects thought to extend to the Solar System’s edge. Although most scientists do not consider Sedna to be a planet, it would certainly fit the criteria cited by MR above and would therefore become the dreaded 13th planet (at least, dreaded for those who hold high allegiance to the alleged “celestial revelators” of the “fifth epochal revelation”!). Do I hear 14?

Update: In late July 2005, astronomer Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, announced the discovery of a new planet orbiting our Sun that is both larger and more distant than Pluto. The new object — dubbed 2003 UB₃₁₃ — is currently about 97 AU’s (the distance between the Earth and the Sun) away — more than twice Pluto’s average distance from the Sun. This makes it the farthest object ever seen in the solar system. Are we to presume, then, that the elusive “tenth planet” has been discovered, thus providing some validity to The UB’s claim that the solar system it calls Monmatia includes two heretofore undiscovered planets orbiting our Sun? I wouldn’t pop the champaign corks just yet. There is good reason why the new planet had not been discovered earlier. Unlike most planetary orbits, which lie more or less in the ecliptic plane, 2003 UB₃₁₃ rides an orbit tilted 44° out of this plane. Nobody had thought to look so far beyond the ecliptic before now. The newly discovered planet’s tilted orbit presents a problem for those who would be inclined to include it among the “column of solar gases which . . . evolved into the twelve planets of the solar system” (57:5.7) subsequent to the Angona encounter. One would have to provide an explanation as to how a column of solar gas could manage to be thrown so far out from the Sun and remain stable long enough to form a planetoid. In addition, the new planet is a scattered-disk object, meaning that at some point in its history, an encounter with some massive object moved it into its highly inclined (44°) orbit. One would also need to come up with an explanation as to the nature and timing of this secondary encounter, which had to have taken place after the Sun’s encounter with the Angona system.

Miscellany