Where Has Phaethon Gone?

Table of contents:

Video: Where Has Phaethon Gone?

Video: Where Has Phaethon Gone?
Video: Phaeton: The Fall of the Son of Apollo - Greek Mythology Stories - See U in History 2024, March
Where Has Phaethon Gone?
Where Has Phaethon Gone?
Anonim

Was there Phaeton at all? We will find out the answer, perhaps, in 2011. It is by this time that a special envoy from Earth will begin work in the area of an unprecedented planetary catastrophe.

Image
Image

The planet Phaethon is one of the most mysterious secrets of the Universe. She is called the progenitor of asteroids and comets. Phaethon's orbit, according to the most popular hypothesis, was between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Then, due to unclear circumstances, the planet allegedly disintegrated or exploded and formed an asteroid belt. And now its fragments travel between the orbits of two large celestial bodies. But was there really a planet? And, if so, what happened to her? Scientists got the opportunity to get closer to solving this ancient mystery only today, when space telescopes were able to look into the most remote corners of the Universe.

In general, Phaethon was originally calculated at the tip of the pen. The discovery was made by the German physicist and mathematician Johann Daniel Titius (1729-1796). In 1766, he found a numerical pattern in the distances of the planets from the Sun. According to Titius, it turned out that if you write a series of numbers 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96 and add to each of these numbers (starting from the second geometric progression with denominator 2) by 4, then we get a new series of numbers 4, 7, 10, 16, 28, 52, 100, which closely enough expresses the successive distances of all planets from the Sun.

"Pay attention to the distances between neighboring planets, and you will see that almost all of them increase in proportion to the radii of the orbits themselves," Titius wrote in his works. - Take the distance from the Sun to Saturn as 100 units, then Mercury will be 4 such units away from the Sun; Venus - by 4 + 3 = 7 of the same units, Earth - by 4 + 6 = 10; Mars - 4 + 12 = 16. But look, there is a deviation from this exact progression between Mars and Jupiter. After Mars there should be a distance of 4 + 24 = 28 units, at which now we see neither a large planet nor a satellite …"

Titius firmly believed that there must be something there, but suggested that “this distance undoubtedly belongs to the not yet discovered satellites of Mars … After this unknown distance, we get the orbit of Jupiter at a distance of 4 + 48 = 52 units, and then the distance of Saturn itself is 4 + 96 = 100 such units. What an amazing ratio!"

However, in this sequence there was one "unoccupied" place - there was no planet, which was supposed to be between Mars and Jupiter, at a distance of about 2, 8 AU. e. from the sun.

Sky Police Squad

Titius' formula, meanwhile, worked properly, proving the correctness of the calculations. So, already in 1781, Uranus was discovered, by the way, at a distance that almost exactly coincides with that predicted by Titius' rule. After that, the search for the missing planet began. For this, a group of two dozen astronomers was formed, which became known in the press as the "Celestial Police Detachment". In 1801, a new discovery. The director of the observatory in Palermo (Sicily) Giuseppe Piazzi discovered a dwarf planet in the required orbit, which was named Ceres in honor of the patron goddess of Sicily. And over the next decade, three more objects were found: in 1802 - Pallas, in 1804 - Juno and in 1807 - Vesta.

All these planets moved at about the same distance from the Sun as Ceres - 2, 8 astronomical units (about 420 million kilometers). It was this circumstance that allowed the German astronomer and physician Heinrich Olbers in 1804 to hypothesize that the minor planets (they are also called asteroids, "star-like") occurred as a result of the explosion of a planet whose orbital radius was at a distance of 2.8 astronomical units. Titius was not mistaken!

Later, a whole asteroid belt was discovered, which is located exactly where the hypothetical planet should have been. According to one hypothesis, it collapsed under the influence of the powerful gravity of Jupiter. That is, the planet was "torn apart" by the gravitational fields of Mars and Jupiter.

Johann, you're wrong

But there were also skeptics. Their point of view was that calculations done to determine how asteroids moved in the past showed that they were never part of the same planet. The argument is the small total mass of asteroids and the practical impossibility of forming a large object such as a planet in the solar system region experiencing strong gravitational disturbances from Jupiter. Thus, the skeptics concluded that the main asteroid belt is not a destroyed planet, but a planet that was never able to form due to the gravitational influence of Jupiter and, to a lesser extent, other planetary giants.

The very rule of Titius was also criticized. It still has not received its theoretical justification, because, as some cosmogonists believe, it does not contain any physical meaning.

There were enthusiasts who even tried to reconstruct the distant history. So, the Moscow astronomer Alexander Chibisov, using the methods of celestial mechanics, tried to theoretically "collect" asteroids together and determine the approximate orbit of the parent planet. But the astronomer's conclusion was unambiguous: based on modern data on the movement of asteroids, it is impossible to determine either the area where the planet exploded or the orbit along which it moved before the explosion. And the Azerbaijani scientist GF Sultanov calculated how the fragments should be distributed in space during the rupture of the planet, and then compared the obtained data with the existing distribution of asteroids. And again the result was not in favor of Phaeton. The differences in the distribution are so great that there is no reason to talk about the explosion of a celestial body, the researcher concluded.

But after all, it can be assumed that under the influence of planetary disturbances for a time comparable to the age of the solar system, the orbits of asteroids have become so entangled that it is simply impossible to restore the initial conditions?

The weighty word of Themis

And in October 2009, a small, but a crack appeared in the evidence of skeptics. Astronomers at the University of Central Florida announced that they have discovered water on asteroid 24 Themis. They say that its presence on the surface of a block with a diameter of 200 kilometers can be judged by the spectral picture obtained with the NASA infrared telescope installed in Hawaii

islands.

Thus, scientists have confirmed last year's discovery of their colleagues from Johns Hopkins University, who worked on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program. It turns out that there really is water on the asteroid, since two independent research teams are talking about it. Moreover, both teams also claim that traces of organic molecules have been found on the surface of Themis.

A few years earlier, using the Hubble orbiting telescope, water was found on a much larger cosmic body - on the giant asteroid Ceres with a diameter of 950 kilometers. And on the asteroid Vesta (about 600 km) … They, by the way, are also located between Jupiter and Mars. Ceres, according to scientists, generally consists of a quarter of water. And other asteroids have tails. Like comets. There is only one explanation for this phenomenon - they also probably have water on them. And the tails are traces of its evaporation.

So far, there are no intelligible answers to the question of the origin of ice on asteroids. Does it mean that Phaethon existed after all? And water was previously in the oceans of Phaeton, and organic molecules remained from its inhabitants?

Perhaps - serious scientists answer. But at the same time, without explaining the nature of asteroid water, they believe: falling at one time on the Earth along with its "carriers", it could well fill the oceans of our planet. As well as comets, which were previously considered the only likely "water carriers".

It remains to wait for "Dawn"

The ancient mystery of the Universe about the planet Phaethon will still be solved thanks to a space expedition. The Dawn space probe is heading towards the asteroid belt. It has been flying for two years already. The goal is to get to the two largest objects in the asteroid belt. The first of them is Vesta, the rapprochement is scheduled for October 2011. The ship has electric ion thrusters powered by solar panels.

“The scientific community has been waiting for this expedition since the moment interplanetary space flights became possible,” says flight director Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles.

By examining objects in the asteroid belt, scientists hope to obtain unique data that will answer the question of how our solar system was formed. And what role did the mysterious Phaeton play in it?

And then some Marduk appears …

In the 1960s, the legendary Soviet ufologist and astronomer Felix Siegel calculated that the diameter of Phaeton could be 6,880 kilometers - slightly larger than the diameter of Mars. Further, astronomers, keen on the idea, calculated that the destruction of the planet occurred about 16 million years ago.

The date of the disaster is considered highly controversial. As well as the reasons for the cataclysm itself.

Many science fiction stories play up the idea that the planet was blown up by local residents during a thermonuclear war. This version is the basis of the novels by Alexander Kazantsev "Faete" and Mikhail Chernolussky "Phaeton", stories by Oles Berdnik "Catastrophe", "Strela to the hour" (Russian "Arrow of time") and Konstantin Brendyuchkov "The Last Angel", the story of Georgy Shakh "Death Phaeton ".

But, perhaps, the planet collapsed under the influence of the gravitational fields of more massive cosmic bodies. Such a hypothesis was put forward in the novels by Georgy Martynov "The Star-Floaters" and "The Guest from the Abyss". Phaeton found itself in the path of some superdense body falling on the Sun. Phaethon's orbit began to jerk out towards Jupiter, and everything ended in a global catastrophe. But the inhabitants of the ill-fated planet managed to go on their starships away, and then settled in the Vega system.

In the story of Alexander Levin "The Death of Phaethon", the hypothesis of the formation of the solar system is presented. The closest to the Sun giant - Phaeton - has disintegrated a complex and unstable system of satellites. They became inner planets. And the very core of Phaethon, damaged by gravitational forces, turned into the planet Uranus - the only one of all that rotates "lying on its side", that is, the own axis of rotation of Uranus passes through the plane of the planet's orbit.

According to Sumerian mythology, in our universe there was a planet with an elongated orbit, Marduk, which accidentally fell into the solar system. The fact that the trajectory of its movement ran first past Neptune, and then Uranus, suggests that the planet was moving clockwise, in the direction opposite to the movement of other planets around the Sun. The general effect of the attraction of all other planets led Marduk to the very center of the solar system, as a result, he collided with the planet Tiamat (Phaethon). Scientists who adhere to traditional views are not inclined to mix aliens and unknown "Marduks" with the cataclysm. Perhaps, some say, Phaethon died as a result of volcanic activity. Others believe the cause is centrifugal force, which tore apart the planet due to its too fast daily rotation. Some admit that he just stumbled upon his own satellite.

Well, according to academician Otto Schmidt (1891-1956), Jupiter is to blame for everything, and only he. And this happened at the dawn of the birth of the planets, about 4 billion years ago. At that time, the young Sun was surrounded by a cloud of gas and dust, and the dust layer was concentrated in the equatorial region, in the plane where the planets now rotate. The velocities of the dust grains in the layer were relatively low, so the dust grains quickly stuck together, and in a relatively short time bodies (planetesimals) were formed, comparable in size to modern asteroids. Most rapidly, due to the specific conditions in the protoplanetary cloud, the process of planetesimal birth took place in the region of the orbit of present-day Jupiter. The largest planetesimal had priority in growth - it intensively attached neighboring bodies to itself, turning into the core of the future Jupiter. When the mass of the core reached several masses of the Earth, it began to effectively "swing" the orbits of the planetesimals nearest to it and throw them out of its feeding zone. The forces were so great that planetesimals “shot through” the inner regions of the nascent solar system, right up to the orbit of modern Mercury. It is believed that most of all went to the area where the asteroid belt is now located. In collisions, the protoasteroids could no longer unite, the fragmentation process began to prevail over the growth process. So, the growing Jupiter suspended the growth of the planet closest to itself. It is possible that the mass of Mars remained small precisely because of these processes.

It turns out that at some initial stage of its development, proto-Jupiter worked like a sling, scattering neighboring planetesimals in all directions. The mass of matter carried out of the solar system by Jupiter and other giant planets could reach several hundred Earth masses. Some of the planetesimals left the solar system forever, while the other part from time to time comes back to us in the form of comets.

Something quickly they multiply …

By 1860, 62 asteroids were already known, by 1870 - 109, by 1880 - 211, by 1923 - 1000 … According to the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, by March 1998, 8443 asteroids with good calculated orbit, given the name. As astronomers Robin Evans and Karl Stapelfeldt suggested after studying the Hubble images, there are about 300,000 bodies in the asteroid belt with a diameter of 1-3 kilometers and a huge amount of other little things.

Not all asteroids are in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Some of them have completely different orbits and can even dangerously approach the Earth. Recently, newspapers and television channels reported that on Thursday, October 26, 2028, the asteroid 1997 XF11 could crash into Earth. But then everything seemed to be calculated more accurately, and it turned out that Armageddon is canceled: the asteroid will pass at a distance of 960,000 kilometers from the Earth. But, of course, much less was said about this.

Where in the Universe is it good to live?

It is imperative to know this, in case of any impending apocalypses. Where to run, where to fly?

Using the available data, astrophysicist Abel Mendes of the University of Puerto Rico has compiled a rating of habitable places in the solar system. He assigned each an appropriate index in accordance with the so-called standard of habitability that he developed - Standard Primary Habitability (SPH), which is measured in fractions of one.

The highest rating is, of course, the Earth - with the current value of SPH equal to 0, 7. Mendes assures that there were better times in the history of our planet - with the Standard at 0, 9.

The Earth is not followed by Mars. It is outstripped by the satellites of the giant planets. For example, the moon of Saturn, Enceladus, under the ice, most likely, there is heated water. And Jupiter's moon Europa, where, according to assumptions, water is also available. It is believed to contain much more oxygen than was previously thought. According to Mendes, some asteroids also have signs of habitability.

Recommended: