Phaeton (or
Phaëton, less often
Phaethon) is the name of a
hypothetical planetA hypothetical Solar System object is a planet, natural satellite or similar body in our Solar System whose existence is not known, but has been inferred from observational scientific evidence. Over the years a number of hypothetical planets have been proposed, and many have been disproved...
posited to once have existed between the
orbitIn physics, an orbit is the gravitationally curved path of one object around a point or another body, for example the gravitational orbit of a planet around a star....
s of
MarsMars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. It is also referred to as the "Red Planet" because of its reddish appearance, due to iron oxide prevalent on its surface....
and
JupiterJupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass slightly less than one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all of the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas...
whose destruction supposedly led to the formation of the
asteroid beltThe asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets...
. The hypothetical planet was named for
PhaëtonIn Greek mythology, Phaëtōn or Phaethōn was the son of Helios . Perhaps the most famous version of the myth is given us through Ovid in his Metamorphoses . Phaeton seeks assurance that his mother, Clymene, is telling the truth that his father is the sun god Helios...
, the son of the sun god
HeliosIn Greek mythology the sun was personified as Helios Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion, while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn...
in
Greek mythologyGreek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, who attempted to drive his father's solar chariot for a day with disastrous results and was ultimately destroyed by
ZeusIn Greek mythology, Zeus is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky and thunder. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" also derives certain iconographic traits from the...
.
The asteroid
3200 Phaethon3200 Phaethon is an Apollo asteroid and an extinct comet.Simon F. Green and John K. Davies, while searching Infrared Astronomical Satellite data for moving objects, discovered 3200 Phaethon in images from October 11, 1983. It was announced on October 14 in IAUC 3878 along with optical...
, sometimes incorrectly spelled Phaeton, shares Phaeton's name. 3200 Phaethon is a Mercury-,
Venus-A Venus-crosser is an asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Venus. The known numbered Venus-crossers and outer-grazers are listed below .Venus also has a quasi-satellite, 2002 VE
68...
, and
Mars-A Mars-crosser is an asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Mars. The known numbered Mars-crossers are listed here. They include the two numbered Martian Trojans: 5261 Eureka and ....
orbit crossing
Apollo asteroidThe Apollo asteroids are a group of near-Earth asteroids named after 1862 Apollo, the first asteroid of this group to be discovered by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth. They are Earth-crosser asteroids that have orbital semi-major axes greater than that of the Earth and a perihelion distance < 1.017 AU...
with unusual properties.
The Phaeton hypothesis
According to the now-discredited
Titius-Bode lawThe Titius–Bode law is a hypothesis that the bodies in some orbital systems, including the Sun's, orbit at semi-major axes in an exponential function of planetary sequence...
, a planet was believed to exist between Mars and Jupiter.
Johann Elert BodeJohann Elert Bode was a German astronomer known for his reformulation and popularization of the Titius-Bode law. Bode determined the orbit of Uranus and suggested the planet's name.-Biography:...
himself urged a search for the fifth planet. When
CeresCeres, formal designation 1 Ceres, is the smallest identified dwarf planet in the Solar System and the only one in the asteroid belt. It was discovered on 1 January 1801, by Giuseppe Piazzi, and is named after the Roman goddess Ceres — the goddess of growing plants, the harvest, and motherly...
, the largest of the asteroids in the asteroid belt (now considered a
dwarf planetA dwarf planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union , is a celestial body orbiting the Sun that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity but has not cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals and is not a satellite. More explicitly, it has to have sufficient mass to...
), was found in 1801 at the predicted position of the fifth planet, many believed it was the missing planet. However, in 1802
astronomerAn astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars, and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus OlbersHeinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers was a German physician and astronomer.-Life and career:Olbers was born in Arbergen, near Bremen, and studied to be a physician at Göttingen. After his graduation in 1780, he began practicing medicine in Bremen, Germany...
discovered and named another object in the same general orbit as Ceres, the asteroid
Pallas2 Pallas is one of the largest asteroids and is located in the main asteroid belt. It was the second asteroid to be discovered, by astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers on March 28, 1802...
.
Olbers proposed that these new discoveries were the fragments of a disrupted planet that had formerly revolved around the sun. He also predicted that more of these pieces would be found. The discovery of the asteroid
JunoJuno , formal designation 3 Juno in the Minor Planet Center catalogue system, was the third asteroid to be discovered and is one of the larger main belt asteroids, being one of the two largest stony asteroids, along with 15 Eunomia. Juno is estimated to contain 1% of the total mass of the asteroid...
by
Karl Ludwig HardingKarl Ludwig Harding was a German astronomer notable for having discovered the asteroid 3 Juno.Harding was born in Lauenburg. In 1796 Johann Hieronymus Schröter hired Harding as a tutor for his son. In 1804, Harding discovered Juno at Schröter's observatory...
and
Vesta4 Vesta is the second most massive object in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of about 530 km and an estimated mass of 9% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt...
by Olbers buttressed the Olbers hypothesis.
Theories regarding the formation of the asteroid belt from the destruction of a hypothetical
fifth planetIn the history of astronomy, a handful of solar system bodies have been counted as the fifth planet from the sun. Under the present definition of a planet, this celestial body is Jupiter.-Previous fifth planets:...
are today collectively referred to as the "disruption theory". This theory states that there was once a major planetary member of the solar system circulating in the present gap between Mars and Jupiter, which was variously destroyed when:
- it veered too close to Jupiter and was torn apart by the gas giant
A gas giant is a large planet that is not primarily composed of rock or other solid matter. There are four gas giants in our Solar System: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune...
's powerful gravity.
- it was struck by another large celestial body.
- it was destroyed by a hypothetical brown dwarf
Brown dwarfs are sub-stellar objects with a mass below that necessary to maintain hydrogen-burning nuclear fusion reactions in their cores, as do stars on the main sequence, but which have fully convective surfaces and interiors, with no chemical differentiation by depth...
, the companion star to the SunThe Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. The Earth and other matter orbit the Sun, which by itself accounts for about 99.86% of the Solar System's mass....
known as NemesisNemesis is a hypothetical red dwarf star or brown dwarf, orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU, somewhat beyond the Oort cloud...
.
- it was shattered by some internal catastrophe.
In the twentieth century,
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n meteoriticist Yevgeny Leonidovich Krinov (involved in the investigation of the
Tunguska eventThe Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at around 7:14 a.m...
), suggested that the exploded planet in the Olbers theory be named Phaeton after the story in Greek myth.
Planet Phaeton today
Today, the Phaeton hypothesis has been superseded by the
accretion modelAn accretion disc is a structure formed by diffuse material in orbital motion around a central body. The central body is typically a young star, a protostar, a white dwarf, a neutron star, or a black hole. Gravity causes material in the disc to spiral inward towards the central body...
. Most astronomers today believe that the asteroids in the main belt are remnants of the
protoplanetary diskA protoplanetary disk is a rotating circumstellar disk of dense gas surrounding a young newly formed star, a T Tauri star or Herbig star...
, and in this region the incorporation of protoplanetary remnants into the planets was prevented by large gravitational perturbations induced by Jupiter during the formative period of the
solar systemThe Solar System consists of the Sun and those celestial objects bound to it by gravity, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago...
.
However the hypothesis continues to be advocated by some non-scientists. One notable proponent is
Zecharia SitchinZecharia Sitchin is an author of books promoting an explanation for human origins involving ancient astronauts, amidst other aspects of pseudoscience....
, who has proposed, based on his reading of ancient
SumerSumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Iraq . It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization...
ian mythology, that the planet known to the Sumerians as Tiamat was destroyed by a
rogue planetRogue Planet may refer to:In literature:* Rogue Planet , a Dan Dare story that ran in the original Eagle comic from Volume 6, Issue 48 to Volume 8, Issue 7* Rogue Planet , a novel set in the Star Wars galaxy...
known as Nibiru. However, his work is widely regarded as
pseudosciencePseudoscience is a methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be scientific, or that is made to appear to be scientific, but which does not adhere to an appropriate scientific methodology, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
.
In 1988, Donald W. Patten wrote a book entitled
Catastrophism and the Old Testament outlining the theory that a planet he called Astra overtook Mars and, upon reaching the
Roche LimitThe Roche Limit , sometimes referred to as the Roche Radius, is the distance within which a celestial body, held together only by its own gravity, will disintegrate due to a second celestial body's tidal forces exceeding the first body's gravitational self-attraction...
, broke apart much like the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 did when it reached Jupiter's Roche Limit in 1994.
In UFO and
channellingIn spirituality, channelling or channeling is the belief that communication of information occurs by or through a person , from a spirit or other paranormal entity outside the mind of the channel. Channeling is part of the belief systems and rituals of religions, such as Candomblé, Voodoo,...
related sources, Phaeton is also known as "Maldek".
See also
- Hypothetical planet
A hypothetical Solar System object is a planet, natural satellite or similar body in our Solar System whose existence is not known, but has been inferred from observational scientific evidence. Over the years a number of hypothetical planets have been proposed, and many have been disproved...
- Fifth planet
In the history of astronomy, a handful of solar system bodies have been counted as the fifth planet from the sun. Under the present definition of a planet, this celestial body is Jupiter.-Previous fifth planets:...
- Asteroid belt
The asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets...
- Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers
Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers was a German physician and astronomer.-Life and career:Olbers was born in Arbergen, near Bremen, and studied to be a physician at Göttingen. After his graduation in 1780, he began practicing medicine in Bremen, Germany...
- Titius-Bode law
The Titius–Bode law is a hypothesis that the bodies in some orbital systems, including the Sun's, orbit at semi-major axes in an exponential function of planetary sequence...
- 3200 Phaethon
3200 Phaethon is an Apollo asteroid and an extinct comet.Simon F. Green and John K. Davies, while searching Infrared Astronomical Satellite data for moving objects, discovered 3200 Phaethon in images from October 11, 1983. It was announced on October 14 in IAUC 3878 along with optical...
- Planet V
Planet V is a hypothetical fifth planet hypothesized by NASA scientists John Chambers and Jack Lissauer to have once existed between Mars and the asteroid belt, based on computer simulations...
- Tiamat (planet)
- Zecharia Sitchin
Zecharia Sitchin is an author of books promoting an explanation for human origins involving ancient astronauts, amidst other aspects of pseudoscience....
Books
- see, for instance,
"Olbers," Britannica, p. 35., Records of meetings 1808-1916 in v. 11-27, p. 872.
External links
- J. Timothy Unruh, Phaeton, The Lost Planet: An Ancient World that Perished, An Astronomer's Account of the Missing Planet Between Mars and Jupiter as Interpreted from Observations Made Within a Biblical Context - an online book that posits that the planet Phaeton played a role in Noah's Flood
- J. Timothy Unruh, "Phaeton, The Lost Planet: An Ancient World that Perished," Planetary Papers, No. 6 - a condensed version of Unruh's book
- Kevin O'Flynn, " Asteroid Could End World Monday," Asteroid News, December 16, 2000