Free Republic

A new out-of-this-world theory links mass extinctions with exotic astrophysics and galactic architecture Every once in a great while, something almost unspeakable happens to Earth. Some terrible force reaches out and tears the tree of life limb from limb. In a geological instant, countless creatures perish and entire lineages simply cease to exist. The most famous of these mass extinctions happened about 66 million years ago, when the dinosaurs died out in the planet-wide environmental disruption that followed a mountain-sized space rock walloping Earth. We can still see the scar from the impact today as a nearly 200-kilometer-wide crater in...

The 4.6-billion-year history of our solar system is nowhere crystal clear, astronomers admit. Instead, it's filled with questions as to the origin of some of its most remarkable feats. Here is a top 6 of these mysteries, as compiled by New Scientist... Another thing that concerns astronomers is the existence of Planet X, a hypothetical celestial body that supposedly circles our Sun on an orbit somewhere behind Pluto. Experts say that the distance it revolves around the Sun can only imply that the planet is frozen, but say that it could be as big as Mars, or even Earth. However,...

A theory is hereby proposed that an unknown mega-massive planet has, for billions of years, been orbiting at 77.2 AU from the sun -- within a 44 AU-wide, virtually empty Great Void that surrounds the Kuiper Belt (One AU = 93 million miles, the mean Earth-Sun distance). The Void is postulated to have been formed by strong gravitational attraction of the unknown planet having removed all CKBOs (Classical Kuiper Belt Objects) that had existed previously in the vicinity of the massive planet's huge orbit... The 77.2 AU distance from the sun of the proposed unknown planet is derived from a...

In 1846, researchers noticed that Uranus was wobbling in a way that confounded Newton's Law of Motion. This meant they had two options: rewrite the most time-honoured of the laws of physics, or "invent" a new planet to account for the extra gravitational pull. Compared to Newton's reputation, an eighth planet seemed much less massive and Neptune was discovered. Today scientists working in the University of Louisiana have discovered a statistical anomaly of similar proportions. Professors John Matese, Patrick Whitman and Daniel Whitmire have studied the orbits of comets for 20 years, and their recent findings have led to startling...

We assume that if the sun has a companion, it has a period of 27 Myr corresponding to the periodicity seen in cometary impacts on earth. Based on this assumption, it is seen that the inner Lagrangian point of the interaction between the Sun and its companion is in the Oort cloud. From this we calculate the mass – distance relation for the companion. We then compute the expected apparent magnitude (visible and J band) for the companion using the models of Burrows... We then compare this with the catalogue completeness of optical and infrared catalogues to show that the...

Japanese scientists believe another planet, up to two-thirds the size of Earth, is orbiting in the far reaches of the Solar System... "Because of the very cold temperature, its surface would be covered with ice, icy ammonia and methane," said lead researcher Tadashi Mukai. The study by Mukai and co-worker Patryk Lykawka will be published in the April issue of the Astronomical Journal. "The possibility is high that a yet unknown, planet-class celestial body, measuring 30 per cent to 70 per cent of the Earth's mass, exists in the outer edges of the Solar System," says a statement released by...

Nasa scientists are searching for an invisible 'Death Star' that circles the Sun, which catapults potentially catastrophic comets at the Earth. The star, also known as Nemesis, is five times the size of Jupiter and could be to blame for the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The bombardment of icy missiles is being blamed by some scientists for mass extinctions of life that they say happen every 26 million years Nemesis is predicted to lie at a distance equal to 25,000 times that of the Earth from the Sun, or a third of a light-year....