(Redirected from Tiamat (hypothetical planet))
There are a number of planets or planetary bodies whose existence is not supported by scientific evidence, but which are occasionally believed to exist by
pseudoscientists,
conspiracy theorists or certain religious groups. Some were proposed early in philosophical history, and perhaps belong more to
protoscience than pseudoscience, while others were formed in direct conflict with current scientific consensus.
Hypothetical planets
Counter-Earth
Main articles: Counter-Earth
This idea was first established by
Philolaus when he reasoned that in order to keep the universe in balance there was a need for a
Counter-Earth,
Antichthon in Greek, a second Earth, identical but opposite to ours in every way on the other side of the Central Fire.
If such a planet actually existed in our current scientific cosmology, as a spherical world that revolved around the sun, it would be permanently hidden behind the sun but nevertheless detectable from Earth, because of its gravitational influence upon the other planets of the
Solar System. No such influence has been detected, and indeed space probes sent to
Venus,
Mars and other places could not have successfully flown by or landed on their targets if a Counter-Earth existed, as it was not accounted for in navigational calculation.
Planets proposed by Zecharia Sitchin
Main articles: Zecharia Sitchin
In recent years, the work of the amateur Semitic language scholar
Zecharia Sitchin has garnered much attention among
ufologists,
ancient astronaut theorists and
conspiracy theorists. He claims to have uncovered, through his own radical retranslations of
Sumerian texts, evidence that the human race was visited by a group of extraterrestrials from a distant planet in our own
Solar System. Part of his theory lies in an astronomical interpretation of the Sumerian
creation myth, the ''
Enuma Elish'', in which he replaces the names of gods with hypothetical planets. However, since the principal evidence for Sitchin's claims lies in his own personally derived etymologies and not on any scholarly agreed interpretations (including scholars among the Sumerians themselves), his theories remain at most
pseudoscience to the vast majority, if not the totality, of academics.
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Sitchin's theory proposes the planets
Tiamat and
Nibiru. Tiamat supposedly existed between
Mars and
Jupiter. He postulated that it was a thriving world in a much differently shaped solar system, with jungles and oceans, whose orbit was disrupted by the arrival of a large planet or very small star (less than twenty times the size of Jupiter) which passed through the solar system between 65 million and four billion years ago.
The new orbits caused Tiamat to collide with this
object, which is known as
Nibiru. The debris from this collision are thought by the theory's proponents to have variously formed the
asteroid belt, the moon, and the current incarnation of the planet
Earth.
To the
Babylonians, Nibiru was the celestial body or region sometimes associated with the god
Marduk. The word is
Akkadian and the meaning is uncertain. Because of this, the hypothetical planet Nibiru is sometimes also referred to as Marduk. Sitchin hypothesizes it as a planet in a highly
elliptic orbit around the Sun, with a
perihelion passage some 3,600
years ago and assumed
orbital period of about 3,600 to 3,760 years or 3,741 years, he also claims it was the home of a technologically advanced human-like alien race, the
Anunnaki, which would have visited Earth in search of gold particles.
Hypothetical moons
Lilith
Main articles: Lilith (hypothetical moon)
Earth's "dark moon," first proposed in 1846 by French astronomer Frederic Petit and supposedly confirmed in 1919 by
astrologer Walter Gornold, who named it. Although neither claim is supported by scientific evidence, Lilith is still used by some astrologers today.
Gaga
Sitchin also postulates that
Pluto began life as 'Gaga', a satellite of Saturn which, due to gravitational disruption caused by
Nibiru's passing, was incited to move outside of Neptune.