Paranormal
This article is my attempt at compiling a list of heavenly objects which were thought to exist at some point in time, but were either never proven or were simply lost... by time, or by the astronomers that observed them. These include planets, asteroids and a star in our very own Solar System.
While some of these cases have been explained off as a result of mistaken identity or ignorance, not all have, or can, be explained and remain a mystery. Some of these names will sound familiar, such as Planet X and Vulcan, and will have often been referenced in popular culture, books and sci-fi shows.
Vulcan
Although now popularly known as the planet where Spock hails from, the concept of Vulcan had actually been brought up back in the 1800s as an intra-Mercurial planet, very close to the sun. An interesting bit of trivia though: In the show Star Trek, Vulcan is a planet that orbits either the star "40 Eridani" or "Epsilon Eridani." In 1998, scientists discovered a planet, the size of Jupiter, orbiting Epsilon Eridani. The planet has a highly elliptical orbit though, and is thought to be incapable of sustaining life.
The story of the original Vulcan goes something like this: In 1859, an amateur astronomer told the French mathematician Le Verrier (who also discovered Neptune) that he had observed a black spot on the Sun earlier that year, and that it looked like a planet transiting the Sun. His observations told him that it crossed one-fourth of the solar disc in a little over an hour. Le Verrier computed that this 'planet' had a very eccentric orbit, and made one revolution of the sun in just 19 days and was located at a distance of 21.3 million kilometers from the sun.
It was hoped that this would explain the deviations in Mercury's orbit being observed, but the planet's size was just 1/17th of Mercury's and failed to account for the deviations. However, he proposed that this could also mean that it was part of an intra-Mercurial asteroid belt. Either way, Le Verrier became obsessed with this planet and named it Vulcan.
During a solar eclipse in 1860, several scientists from around Europe attempted to spot Vulcan (as a solar eclipse was the best time to observe planets close to the Sun). Nobody was able to actually find it, but an astronomer named Wolf saw some mysterious 'sunspots'. Later, in 1875, a round dot was photographed over the sun from several places in Europe, and it was then proposed that the planet Vulcan might have an orbit of 38 days to match those observations.
In 1878, a year after Le Verrier died (still convinced that he had discovered the planet Vulcan), astronomers claimed that they had spotted not one, but two illuminated discs, thought to be TWO intra-Mercurial planets.
That was the last time Vulcan was 'seen', despite several attempts to see it again. Finally, in 1916, Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity and explained Mercury's deviating orbit.
In retrospect today, it has been thought that perhaps the amateur astronomer had merely seen a near-Earth asteroid, which was almost unknown in those days. The other observations made may have been comets, asteroids, and possibly unknown stars.
Mercury's Moon
In March of 1974, the Mariner 10 spacecraft was approaching Mercury, when one of its instruments began detecting bright emissions in the UV band that had "no right to be there". The next day, it wasn't detected, but it reappeared after three days. This object, as detected, had seemed to move itself away from Mercury. At first, the astronomers thought that they were looking at a star. But having seen it in two different directions, and also knowing that these extreme UV wavelengths could not penetrate very far through the interstellar medium, it was thought that there was an object close by. Mercury might have a moon.
The moon was calculated to be moving at 4km/sec, which matched the speed that a moon for Mercury would travel at. The JPL team was unsure as to what they would announce to the press, whether the discovery of the moon should be announced or not. The press did come to know if it, though, and some newspapers ran stories about Mercury's new moon, while others remained mum.
The moving object itself kept heading away from Mercury and was eventually identified as a hot star, 31 Crateris. It is unknown though, where the original UV emissions came from, but it did show astronomers that UV could travel through interstellar medium without being absorbed.
Neith (Venus' Moon)
Cassini, the famous astronomer, observed once in 1672, a small object near Venus which appeared to be its companion. It seemed to him, to be a satellite. He didn't announce his observation, but was able to spot the same satellite again in 1686, when he decided to write about it in his journal. He estimated the size of the object to be 1/4th that of Venus. Other astronomers later reported seeing the satellite, in 1740, 1759 and an amazing eighteen times in 1761 alone. The astronomer Scheuten said that he saw Venus transit the Sun's disc, along with a small dot on one side of it, which followed Venus.
The controversy that arose from this was that other astronomers observing the Sun at the same time were unable to see it. This occurred several times, wherein a few astronomers claimed to have seen it, while others were not able to. One astronomer proposed that the observers of this new moon were merely looking at an optical illusion caused by the reflection of Venus in their telescopes. Obviously, this was not received well by the community.
Nevertheless, the observers calculated that the moon orbited Venus once every 11 days, at a distance of 400,000 kms from Venus.
M. Hozeau, in 1884, came up with a slightly different suggestion. According to him, it appeared that this "moon" appeared close to Venus every ~3 years. Hence, it wasn't really a moon of Venus, but was another planet, close to Venus, and orbiting the sun once every 283 days. He named it Neith (after the Egyptian goddess of Sais, "whose veil no mortal raised").
Finally, the Belgian Academy of Science performed a detailed study of all the reported observations of Neith, and came to the conclusion that these were actually stars being observed, which just happened to be in the right place at the right time, even going on to show that some astronomers had been fooled by stars in succession. This wasn't an empty claim, and this was backed up with the names of the stars along with their positions at the time, which logically could have been mistaken to be a companion to Venus.
It is now known that Venus has no moon.
Counter-Earth, Earth's Evil Twin!
The Pythagoreans were an ancient Grecian organization of astronomers, scientists, musicians and mathematicians. They believed that all things are, essentially, numeric. So much so, that they actually strove to keep the discovery of irrational numbers a secret and even ended up killing one of their members for revealing this secret to someone.
The Pythagoreans hypothesized the existence of a counterpart to Earth, which shared the same orbit, but existed on the other side of the Sun, directly opposite, and hence could never be observed or seen.
Modern scientific models, astronomy and spacecrafts disproved this hypothesis in addition to the fact that Earth actually has an elliptical orbit and not a circular one, but this concept continued to exist in some science fiction and comic publications, usually describing it as a planet with three moons, and humans of more 'honor' than us.
Lilith, Earth's Second Moon
F.Petit, in 1864, stated that through observations by him and a few other fellow astronomers, Earth's second moon had been discovered. He said that the orbit was elliptical, with a period of 2 hrs 45 mins. Most bizarre in this claim was that the near-point in the elliptical orbit of this moon was just 11 kms above the surface of the Earth!
Petit chased this theory for many years, but it was later forgotten generally until a reference to the second moon appeared in Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon." The interest in the second moon was then revived, especially in Germany where the astronomers referred to it as Kleinchen ("little bit").
W.H. Pickering added to the renewed excitement by calculating that a simple 3 inch telescope would be all that was needed to discover this second moon, AND that this was actually a secondary moon - a moon orbiting our own moon, setting off a hunt for the moon by amateur astronomers everywhere. However, all searches ended with nothing substantial.
The original idea was that the gravitational field of the second moon should account for the then inexplicable minor deviations of the motion of our big Moon. That meant an object at least several miles large - but if such a large second moon really existed, it would have been seen by the Babylonians or any other ancient civilization, but it wasn't.
This was later caught on by astrologers, and in 1918 the astrologer Sepharil called this moon Lilith. He considered it to be black enough to be invisible most of the time, being visible only close to opposition or when in transit across the solar disk. Sepharil constructed an ephemeris of Lilith. He considered Lilith to have about the same mass as the Moon, apparently happily unaware that any such satellite would, even if invisible, show its existence by perturbing the motion of the Earth. And even to this day, "the dark moon" Lilith is used by some astrologers in their horoscopes.
Cruithne, Earth's Second Moon
Object 3753 Cruithne, has a very unusual relationship with Earth. It was discovered in 1986 and its unusual orbit was determined in 1997. The 5 km wide satellite, takes 770 years to complete a horseshoe shaped orbit around Earth. It was named Cruithne after a Celtic tribe in Britain. It was also determined that Cruithne will remain in a suspended state around Earth for at least 5,000 years. Initially dubbed as "Earth's second moon", this was later shown to be an incorrect term, and that Cruithne was merely an asteroid with an unusual orbit.
Theia, Mother of the Moon
There are several theories as to how the Earth's Moon, Luna, came into existence. Of the many, one is the impact theory. This theory, which was put forward n 1974, states that the Earth, early in its history, had a major collision with another planet sized body (about the size of Mars) and the matter that was ejected formed the Moon. The impact would have absorbed the impacting object, amalgamated the two cores and emitted vast quantities of mantle material, which formed a cloud orbiting the Earth. This cloud later accreted under the influence of gravity and rotation to form a spherical satellite we now know as the Moon. The Impact theory also explains the orbits and rotations of the Earth and the Moon. The tilt of the Earth's axis, 22.5 degrees, can also be explained by an impact which "knocked" the Earth over. (It is known that the planet Uranus has a tilt of 98 degrees, and it is thought by scientists to have been affected in a similar way, possibly by comet(s) or a planetary collision.)
The impact body as detailed above is now proposed to have been Theia, another planet in our newly formed Solar System. In Greek mythology Theia was the mother of the Moon. Theia's orbit was unstable and she gradually moved closer to the Earth. Eventually, 4 billion years ago, she collided with the Earth, liquefying both planets. Theia was destroyed and the Earth absorbed her iron core. Earth's surface melted into a sea of molten rock and a huge chunk of magma was blasted into space. The magma absorbed the other orbiting debris from the collision and under gravity formed our Moon. This process from collision to completed Moon supposedly took seven days.
The Moons of Mars
Although the two moons of Mars were actually discovered in 1877, the subject of Mars having moons was rife with speculations, and included some noteworthy observations.
Kepler, in 1610, was the first to guess that Mars had a moon, when trying to decipher Galileo's Anagram about Saturn's Rings:
smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttauiras
Which he mistakenly interpreted as a discovery about Mars having moons. (Scientific discoveries were generally encoded at the time, for fear of the Church).
In 1643, the Capuchin monk Anton Maria Shyrl claimed to really have seen the moons of Mars. We now know that would be impossible with the telescopes of that time and Shyrl was probably deceived by a star nearby Mars.
In 1727, Jonathan Swift in "Gulliver's Travels" wrote about two small moons orbiting Mars, known to the Laputian astronomers. Their periods of revolution were 10 and 21.5 hours.
In 1747 a German captain, Kindermann, had claimed to have seen the moon (just one!) of Mars, on 10 July 1744. Kindermann reported the orbital period of this Martian moon as 59 hours 50 minutes and 6 seconds.
In 1877, Asaph Hall finally discovered Phobos and Deimos, the two small moons of Mars. Their orbital periods are 7 hours 39 minutes and 30 hours 18 minutes, quite close to the periods guessed by Jonathan Swift 150 years earlier!
The Legend of Maldek
This is a legend associated with the currently existing asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The concept of Maldek begins with J. E. Bode, who pointed out a regular pattern in the planets' distance from the Sun. Bode's Law predicted that there should be a planet between Mars and Jupiter. This set off a telescopic hunt for the missing planet, and in 1801 Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres, the largest of the asteroids.
Heinrich Olbers speculated that the asteroids were the ruins of a fifth planet, destroyed by some natural catastrophe; the idea cropped up now and then in science fiction, where inevitably it was assumed that the catastrophe was artificial, perhaps caused in an interplanetary war in the distant past.
The hypothetical planet which may have once existed in the orbit of the asteroid belt is also referred to as Phaeton.
Nibiru, Marduk and Tiamat
Another hypothesis of the missing planet between Mars and Jupiter comes from the Sumerian Legend of Creation and is related to the Legend of Maldek according to some. Ancient Sumerian texts indicate that Tiamat (an ancient planet of which Earth is a half of) was struck by a large planet, which moved it into its present orbit that we know today, and also created the Earth's moon and the Asteroid Belt. The planet "Marduk" (the Sumerian "Nibiru"), as it came into the solar system on its 3,600-year clockwise (retrograde) elliptical course, struck Tiamat, which was moving in its ordained counterclockwise orbit.
One of Marduk's satellites struck Tiamat first, followed by two more of Marduk's moons. Then Marduk itself, an enormous cosmic entity, struck Tiamat, smashing one half of the planet into pieces, which became what the Sumerians called the Great Band. The remaining half of the planet, which was struck by a smaller moon of Marduk, was catapulted into a new orbit, along with a chunk of material which became its moon. According to the Enuma Elish(The Sumerian Epic of Creation), Tiamat's original moons were dispersed, many changing the direction of their orbits and rotations.
Atlantis Rising and Zecharia Sitchin, proponents of the Nibiru theory, had this to say from their studies of the Enuma Elish:
"[A] planet once existed between Mars and Jupiter, known either as Maldek or Marduk. Although its inhabitants were highly advanced technologically and space travel was routine for them, their technical ability exceeded their better sense, and their planet exploded, creating the asteroid belt that exists today. Before the final detonation, however, some of the Mardukians travelled to Earth and seeded a civilization that eventually became Atlantis. When these former denizens of Marduk interbred with the primitive beings that pre-existed on the earth at that time, they began the heritage of our own species, approximately 20,000 years ago."
"...these revelations are distinctive in that Marduk is claimed to have been destroyed as a planet and now continues to exist only on the astral plane. This subtle world is where many people on Earth go after their demise, to continue living an earth-like existence, but in their astral bodies. Interestingly, people on Marduk apparently have a limited vision of themselves; like the physical earthlings they once were, they believe that their astral planet is the full extent of reality. Many Mardukians do not acknowledge the existence of life on the physical Earth; rather, many believe that their notions of an earlier existence in physical form are just bad dreams!"
"This other planet was responsible for shattering the moons gravitationally that caused Saturn's rings and for turning Uranus on its side, so that it has a highly inclined axis. And - this also caused Pluto to release from Saturn and come into its own orbit."
"This planet, of course, that caused all the havoc was/is Nibiru. It is our 10th planet - not really the 12th."
"...these revelations are distinctive in that Marduk is claimed to have been destroyed as a planet and now continues to exist only on the astral plane. This subtle world is where many people on Earth go after their demise, to continue living an earth-like existence, but in their astral bodies. Interestingly, people on Marduk apparently have a limited vision of themselves; like the physical earthlings they once were, they believe that their astral planet is the full extent of reality. Many Mardukians do not acknowledge the existence of life on the physical Earth; rather, many believe that their notions of an earlier existence in physical form are just bad dreams!"
"This other planet was responsible for shattering the moons gravitationally that caused Saturn's rings and for turning Uranus on its side, so that it has a highly inclined axis. And - this also caused Pluto to release from Saturn and come into its own orbit."
"This planet, of course, that caused all the havoc was/is Nibiru. It is our 10th planet - not really the 12th."
Planet X
By far, Planet X is the single most talked about, researched and debated hypothetical objects in the Solar system.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the discovery of Neptune was used to explain the discrepancies shown in the calculated and observed orbits of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. However, even after Neptune's discovery, there were still some discrepancies that remained, as well as discrepancies discovered in Neptune's orbit. It was then speculated that yet another planet existed beyond Neptune.
Percival Lowell named this hypothetical planet, Planet X (where X represented unknown). He performed two searches for it, but remained unsuccessful, but went on to publish his mathematical hypothesis regarding the parameters of Planet X. Many scientists toiled for years in search of the elusive Planet X. In December 1929 a young farmer's boy and amateur astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh from Kansas, was hired to do the search. Tombaugh finally exposed the pair of plates on which he found Pluto when examining them. By then Tombaugh had examined hundreds of plate pairs and millions of stars. The search for Planet X had come to an end, or so it was thought.
This new planet was named Pluto, and it turned out to be disappointingly small. Definitely not large enough to explain the discrepancies. Tombaugh continued his search for another 13 years. Tombaugh examined some 90 million images of some 30 million stars. He found one new globular cluster, 5 new open star clusters, one new supercluster of 1800 galaxies and several new small galaxy clusters, one new comet, about 775 new asteroids - but no new planet except Pluto.
Over the next decades, scientists tried to calculate the distance and size of the hypothetical Planet X in accordance with the discrepancy-riddle orbits of the planets before Pluto, and arrived at several different conclusions.
In recent years, the discoveries of Sedna and Planet Xena (temporary name until the status and official name of the object is decided) were hailed as the elusive Planet X, but Sedna was too small to be a planet, smaller than Pluto itself. Planet Xena is definitely larger than Pluto and with further examination, could just be the Planet X that scientists have been looking for.
Nemesis - The Sun's Companion Star
The theory for Nemesis requires a bit of explaining and also involves geology.
To start with, some geologists have noticed that a mass extinction occurs on earth on an average of every 30 million years, as a result of collision with an asteroid or comet. These asteroids and comets are thought to come from the Oort Cloud. The Oort Cloud is a hypothetical collection of 'dormant' comets just outside the Solar System.
Now, many may not know this, but it is a common feature of the Universe to observe binary stars. Binary stars are a pair of stars which orbit each other around a common center point. Assuming that the sun has a binary companion with an elliptical orbit, which (for whatever reason) is very dark, or faint, or simply has not been realized yet, if this star were to approach near the Oort cloud, it would cause several asteroids or comets to be thrown out, and as a result, head towards the Sun and collide with Earth. Taking the geological timescale for mass extinction as a reference, one can assume that our Sun's companion star has an elliptical orbit of 30 million years, which, when it approaches, stirs up comets in the Oort Cloud and causes a catastrophe on Earth.
This theory was proposed in 1985 and the companion star even got a name then, Nemesis. 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. If it should be found, few will doubt that it is the primary cause of periodic mass extinctions on Earth.
Pluto
Pluto was first discovered in 1930. It was a chance discovery, or a fortunate accident. The curiosity for a planet beyond Neptune began with a man named Percival Lowell, who believed that there exists a "Planet X" (not to be confused with Planet X above) somewhere in the outer reaches of our solar system, based on calculations done with the study of the motions of Uranus and Neptune. The International Astronomical Union declared it to be a planet that same year.However, on September 13, 2006, the very same organization, the IAU, decided that Pluto was not a planet as it did not meet all three of the criteria outlined in a definition created at the very same conference. While we may currently collectively remember Pluto as being a 9th planet until just a few years ago, it will eventually be phased out as school books are revised and updates are made to study materials; and some kid, some day, may come across this article, where she will learn that the Solar System was once larger than just 8 planets.
Other Notables
In 1975, Charles Kowal at Palomar photographed an object thought to be a new satellite of Jupiter. It was seen several times, but not enough to determine an orbit, then lost. It used to show up as a footnote in texts of the late 70s. And then in 2000 it was found again. We now know that Jupiter has at least 63 moons.
In April 1861 Hermann Goldschmidt announced the discovery of a 9th moon of Saturn, which orbited the planet between Titan and Hyperion. He named that moon Chiron. However the discovery was never confirmed - nobody else ever saw this satellite "Chiron". Later, Pickering discovered what's now considered Saturn's 9th moon, Phoebe, in 1898. This was the first time a satellite of another planet was discovered by photographical observations.
In 1905, Pickering though he had discovered a tenth moon, which he named Themis. According to Pickering, it orbited Saturn between the orbits of Titan and Hyperion in a highly inclined orbit and had a mean distance from Saturn of 1,460,000 km, orbital period 20.85 days. Themis was never seen again, but nevertheless appeared in almanacs and astronomy books well into the 1950's and 1960's.
In 1966, A. Dollfus discovered another new moon of Saturn. It was named Janus, and orbited Saturn just outside its rings. It was so faint and close to the rings that the only chance to see it was when the rings of Saturn were seen from the edge, as happened in 1966. Now Janus was Saturn's tenth moon.
In 1980, when Saturns rings again were seen edgewise, a flurry of observations discovered a lot of new satellites close to the rings of Saturn. Close to Janus another satellite was discovered, named Epimetheus. Their orbits are very close to each other, and the most interesting aspect of this satellite pair is that they regularly switch orbits with each other! It turned out that the "Janus" discovered in 1966 really were observations of both of these co-orbital satellites. Thus the 'tenth moon of Saturn' discovered in 1966 really turned out to be two different moons! The spacecraft Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, which traveled past Saturn shortly afterwards, confirmed this.
As of today, Saturn has 49 moons.
