Between Mars and Jupiter is the asteroid belt, which consists of many small cosmic bodies sweeping through space around the Sun. According to a number of scientists, they are fragments of the dead planet # 5, named Phaethon. Nobody knows what caused the death of this planet, whether there was life on it and whether our Earth can repeat its fate.
INSTEAD OF A PLANET OF A THOUSAND ASTEROIDS
Phaethon is called a hypothetical planet, whether it actually existed in the distant past is a big question that still causes heated debate among scientists. How was the planet "discovered" that no one had ever seen? This happened in the 18th century, when the German astronomers John Titius and Johann Bode jointly formulated the so-called Titius-Bode rule.
According to this rule, the distances of the then known planets from the Sun obeyed a certain mathematical pattern, thanks to which it was possible to calculate where the planets had not yet been discovered.
That this "Titius-Bode rule" is true and actually works has been proven by subsequent discoveries of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Back in 1781, after the discovery of Uranus, the question arose for the first time about "planet number 5", which, according to the rule, should have been between Mars and Jupiter.
The search began for this missing fifth planet, which a group of 24 astronomers took on.
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It so happened that in 1801 this group was outstripped by the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, he discovered in the predicted orbit the dwarf planet Ceres, which was too small to be considered "planet number 5".
When astronomer Heinrich Olbers discovered another dwarf planet Pallada in close orbit in 1802, he suggested that all these small cosmic bodies were fragments of a large planet that once existed.
After that, Olbers calculated where to look for new dwarf planets. Already in 1804, Juno was discovered in a place predicted by a scientist, and three years later, Olbers himself discovered Vesta.
Olbers's hypothesis about the lost fifth planet, which later received the name Phaethon in honor of the mythical hero, the son of the sun god Helios, was so plausible that for a long period it became generally accepted. In the decades that followed, hundreds of new asteroids were discovered, and then thousands. According to various estimates, there are from two to four thousand relatively large cosmic bodies in the asteroid belt, but the number of various small things can number hundreds of thousands of objects.
According to rough estimates, if from all the bodies of the asteroid belt "blind" one large ball, then a planet with a diameter of about 5900 kilometers would turn out. It would be larger than Mercury (4878 km), but smaller than Mars (6780 km).
If such an imposing planet actually existed, what could have caused it to collapse into so many fragments?
JUPITER'S WINE OR ATOMIC WAR?
The simplest and shortest explanation of the death of the planet Phaethon is associated with the giant Jupiter. According to one of the hypotheses, Phaethon collapsed under the influence of the powerful gravity of the giant planet. Jupiter simply ripped apart the neighboring planet with the assistance of Mars' gravitational field.
The destruction of Phaethon could have occurred during a close approach to Jupiter, which happened for a reason unknown to us. True, skeptics believe that as a result of the explosion of the planet, both Jupiter itself and the system of its satellites would be severely damaged.
According to the calculations of one group of scientists, the destruction of Phaeton took place 16 million years ago, but it would take at least 2 billion years to restore all the parameters of Jupiter after the explosion. It turns out that if the destruction of Phaeton happened, it happened not 16 million, but billions of years ago. This assumption is also supported by the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago; If Phaeton collapsed 16 million years ago, where did it come from?
There are other hypotheses explaining the destruction of Phaethon. According to one of them, due to too fast daily rotation, the planet was torn apart by centrifugal force. But according to another hypothesis, Phaethon became the victim of a collision with his own satellite. Perhaps the most interesting hypothesis was proposed by science fiction writers, who in a number of works connected the destruction of Phaethon with the atomic war unleashed by its inhabitants. Nuclear strikes were so powerful that the planet could not stand it and fell apart.
As a variant of this hypothesis, there is an assumption that the civilization of Phaethon was at war with the civilization of Mars. After an exchange of powerful nuclear strikes, the Red Planet became lifeless, and Phaeton completely collapsed.
To some, this hypothesis will seem too fantastic and incredible, but recently the famous astrophysicist John Brandenburg said that the death of life on Mars was caused by two powerful nuclear strikes inflicted from space millions of years ago.
By the way, the mystery of tektites, mysterious formations similar to glassy slags that are formed in the places of ground-based nuclear explosions, fits into this hypothesis. Some believe that tektites are traces of an ancient atomic war that once occurred on Earth, while others see fragments of glass meteorites in tektites.
The famous astronomer Felix Siegel believed that if glass meteorites actually exist, then they were formed as a result of nuclear explosions on some of the large cosmic bodies. Maybe this body was Phaethon?
WHEN THE MOON WASN'T YET
The above-mentioned Soviet astronomer Felix Yuryevich Siegel at one time developed a very interesting hypothesis. The scientist suggested that a three-planetary system consisting of Mars, Phaeton and the Moon revolved in a common orbit around the Sun. The catastrophe, which turned Phaethon into thousands of debris, upset the equilibrium of this system, as a result Mars and the Moon were in orbits closer to the Sun.
The heating of these cosmic bodies followed, Mars lost most of its atmosphere, and the Moon - all. It ended with the fact that the Moon, being close to the Earth, was "captured" by our planet.
It is interesting that there is historical information about the absence of the moon in the sky in antediluvian times. In the III century BC. e. the chief caretaker of the Alexandria library, Apollonius Rodius, wrote that there was a time when there was no moon in the earthly sky. Rodius received this information by rereading the most ancient manuscripts, which burned down along with the library. The most ancient myths of the Bushmen of South Africa also say that before the Flood the night sky was illuminated only by stars. There is no information about the Moon in the most ancient Mayan chronicles.
The famous writer and researcher A. Gorbovsky believes that Phaeton died 11652 years ago, mind you, this is about 12 thousand years ago. By this time, some researchers just attribute the appearance of the moon in the sky and a global catastrophe - the Flood.
Having "moored" to the Earth, the Moon, without a doubt, caused this disaster, which is reflected in the myths and legends of almost all peoples of our planet. Amazingly, there is a hypothesis that the Moon is the core of the destroyed Phaeton!
MAYBE PHAETON IS JUST A MYTH?
According to the ancient Greek myth, Phaethon begged permission from his father Helios to rule the solar chariot, but his team ruined him: the horses of the inept driver deviated from the right direction and approached the ground, which set it on fire. Gaia prayed to Zeus, and he struck Phaeton with lightning, and Phaethon fell into Eridan and died.
The existence of the planet Phaethon in the distant past was generally recognized only until the second half of the 40s of the XX century. After the appearance of the cosmogonic theory of O. Yu. Schmidt about the formation of planets, many scientists began to say that the asteroid belt is only a "preparation" for a failed planet.
It was unable to form due to Jupiter's gravitational influence. That is, the giant planet did not destroy Phaeton, it simply did not allow it to form.
Some calculations do not support Olbers's hypothesis about Phaeton. For example, the Moscow astronomer AN Chibisov tried, according to the laws of celestial mechanics, to "put" all the asteroids together and calculate the approximate orbit of the destroyed planet.
After the calculations, the scientist came to the conclusion that there is no way to determine either the area where the planet was destroyed, or the orbit of its motion before the explosion.
But the Azerbaijani scientist GF Sultanov, on the contrary, tried to calculate how the fragments of the planet would be distributed during its explosion. The differences in distribution turned out to be so large that there is no reason to speak of an explosion of a single cosmic body.
These calculations can be opposed only by the fact that for a long time after the death of Phaethon under the influence of planetary disturbances, the orbits of the asteroids have changed and got confused, it is now impossible to establish their initial parameters.
But for those who believe that Phaethon once existed, there is still good news. Relatively recently, paleontologists have found fossilized bacteria in stone meteorites, similar to cyanobacteria, living on Earth in rocks and hot springs. Scientists have no doubt that these meteorites were formed from the debris of the planet on which there was life. This planet could be Phaethon.
Fedor Perfilov