For millions of years, the starry sky attracted a person with its mystery. Our distant ancestors were sure that everything that happens on Earth was sent from above. Over time, people learned to read the starry sky like a book. But many of the mysteries of space have remained unsolved to this day.
One of them is associated with the disappearance of the planet Phaethon …
A long-standing mystery for scientific astronomers is the field of asteroids located in the space between Mars and Jupiter. Even in ancient times, astrologers were surprised by such an arrangement of cosmic bodies. Many were in the opinion that there must be another planet in this place.
So, in Georgia there is a copy of a document from 1561, which mentions that there is another star near Mars. On clay tablets of ancient shumad (V-IV millennium BC) information is recorded, from which it follows that between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, people observed an "invisible planet." Similar secrets can be found in ancient Chinese chronicles.
Chance helped shed light on the search for a mysterious planet.
In 1766, the German astronomer, physicist and mathematician Johann Titius formulated, and another German astronomer, Johann Bode, substantiated the numerical regularity in the distances of the planets from the Sun. According to this pattern, between Mars and Jupiter, there must be a "planet number 5". The fact that the Titius-Bode rule works was proved by the subsequent discoveries of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. At the end of the 18th century, at a congress in the German city of Gotha, it was decided to begin the search for the missing planet. However, none of the astronomers assigned to the observations had any luck. The planet was discovered in 1801 by Giuseppo Piazzi, director of the observatory in Palermo (Sicily). When the orbit of this cosmic body was calculated, it turned out that it moves exactly at the distance from the Sun, which is predicted by the Titius-Bode rule. Astronomers rejoiced at the missing planet found. They called her Ceres oh,in honor of the goddess - patroness of Sicily.
However, the joy of scientists was soon clouded by a chain of new discoveries. In 1802, another minor planet, Pallas, was discovered between Jupiter and Mars. In 1804 - the third planet - Juno, and in 1807 - Vesta. So, where they expected to find one large planet, they found 4 small ones. Meanwhile, the stream of discoveries of small planets (they are also called asteroids, that is, "star-like") did not stop, and by 1890 more than 300 of them were known. Astronomers came to the firm conviction that between Mars and Jupiter, a whole swarm revolves in orbits around the Sun small planetary bodies.
Promotional video:
About 2000 asteroids are known to date. And according to some estimates, their number may exceed 7000.
They all moved approximately at the same distance from the Sun as Ceres - 2.8 astronomical units (one astronomical unit is equal to the distance of the Earth from the Sun, which is 150 million kilometers). It was this circumstance that allowed the German astronomer G. Olbers back in 1804 to formulate a hypothesis that the minor planets occurred as a result of the disintegration of one large planet, which he gave the name Phaeton.
So, according to the ancient Greek myth, the name of the son of the sun god Helios was. Once Phaethon begged his father to let him drive the golden chariot of the Sun, in which Helios made his daily journey across the firmament. The father did not agree for a long time, but finally yielded to the desire of the young man. But Phaethon lost his way among the celestial constellations. The horses, feeling the driver's uncertain hand, carried it. And when the chariot approached a dangerous distance to the Earth, the flame engulfed our planet. God Zeus the Thunderer, to save the Earth, threw lightning into the chariot. Phaethon fell to Earth and died.
Thus, the beautiful legend received a real scientific basis. Although some contemporaries of G. Olbers (V. Herschel, Laverrier, P. Laplace) expressed other assumptions about the origin of asteroids, the most popular was Olbers's point of view, which best explained all the facts known by that time.
The hypothesis of the German scientist turned out to be so plausible that the existence of Phaethon was considered generally recognized until 1944, before the appearance of the cosmological theory of O. Yu. Schmidt, who interpreted the appearance of asteroids differently. According to this theory, asteroids are not fragments of Phaeton, but the matter of some unformed planet. At the dawn of the birth of the planets, about 4 billion years ago, the young Sun was surrounded by a cloud of gas and dust. Due to the relatively low velocities, the dust particles began to quickly stick together, forming cosmic bodies comparable in size to modern asteroids. The fastest process of the birth of these bodies was in the region of the orbit of the present Jupiter, where the largest planet was formed. The growing Jupiter eventually began to push protoasteroids out of the zone of its infusion, generating chaotic movement among them. They could no longer unitethe fragmentation process began to prevail over the growth process. Part of the protoasteroids left the solar system, the other part from time to time returns in the form of comets, reaching the Earth.
Studying the fallen meteorites has become one of the ways to find out if the planet Phaethon existed. Academician A. Zavarnitsky, relying on the analysis of the composition of meteorites, tried to reconstruct the structure of the dead planet. He considered iron meteorites to be fragments of the planetary core, stone meteorites as remnants of the crust, and iron-stone ones as mantles.
Science, proving the reality of Phaeton's existence in the past, relies on the fact that meteorites that fell to the Earth have only two classes of mean density values that could arise only when the shell and core of a celestial body were destroyed, that is, meteorites are part of one planet, which includes they have gone through the processes of densification, remelting, mixing and crystallization.
Paleontologists have found fossilized bacteria similar to terrestrial cyanobacteria in stone matter. Microorganisms of this kind live in rocks and hot springs, feeding on chemical reactions and do not need oxygen and sunlight. This fact proves that the meteorite substance was formed on a large celestial body and life existed on it.
Despite the above arguments, most modern scientists question the theory of G. Olbers. In the 70s of the XX century, the opinion began to prevail that Phaethon did not exist, but there were remnants of the unreacted primary matter of the protosolar nebula, from which the Asteroid Ring between Mars and Jupiter arose.
The Moscow astronomer AN Chibisov, using the methods of celestial mechanics, tried to "collect" asteroids together and determine the approximate orbit of the parent planet. He concluded that it was impossible to determine either the area where the planet exploded, or the orbit in which it moved before the explosion.
The Azerbaijani scientist I. F. Sultanov approached this issue from the other side. He calculated how the fragments should be distributed in space during the explosion of the planet. The data obtained was compared with the existing distribution of asteroids. The result was not in favor of the theory of G. Olbers.
But in the early 70s of the XX century, astronomers calculated a hypothetical mass of the planet and suggested that the destruction occurred approximately 16 million years ago. For such a long time, under the influence of planets, the orbits of asteroids have become so entangled that it is simply impossible to restore the initial conditions.
Many defenders of Phaethon question this date. If Phaeton exploded 16 million years ago, then where did the trail from the asteroid that fell to Earth 65 million years ago come from? Alternatively, they suggest a later date of 4 billion years.
There is no unity among specialists about the causes of the death of the planet. Some believe that Phaethon died as a result of volcanic activity, others - that the planet was torn apart by centrifugal force due to too fast daily rotation. Some see the reason for her death in a collision with her own satellite or a dangerous approach to Jupiter.
A number of astronomers associate the death of Phaethon with the movement of the solar system through the jet streams of the Milky Way. A passing star by the force of its gravity destroyed Phaeton.
Supporters of the stellar theory do not agree with this development of events, who consider Phaethon not an ordinary planet of the solar system, but a dwarf star.
The fatal role in the death of the planet was played by the jet stream, which was literally stuffed with comets. The largest of them dealt a crushing blow to Phaeton, which resulted in an explosion. Pieces of the exploding star, mixing with comets, flew in different directions. Departing from orbit between Mars and Jupiter, they collided with the planets of the solar system, leaving monstrous craters on them. Such collisions disfigured the nearest planet - Mars beyond recognition. Earth, in comparison with Mars, suffered less from collisions. Some scientists associate the explosion of Phaeton with the death of dinosaurs and the beginning of a new evolutionary round of life forms on Earth.
Experts at the NASA Space Agency Research Center see the reason for the death of the planet Phaethon in the instability of its orbit between Jupiter, Mars and the asteroid strip. As a result of the interaction of the planet and asteroids, the latter also began to change their orbits. Some of these asteroids began to cross the Earth's orbit and bombard it and the Moon. Having brought chaos into the inner part of the solar system, Phaethon disappeared on its own: most likely, moving in a highly elongated orbit, this planet dangerously approached the Sun and was swallowed by it.
Currently, a hypothesis is being actively developed, according to which the planet Phaethon did not die, but continues to exist in the outer orbit of Pluto. During the transition to a new stage of development (from a planet to a star) about 4 billion years ago, it "dropped" about 10% of its mass (crust or "shell"), which became the asteroid belt of the solar system.
Until now, all attempts to detect Phaethon have ended in nothing, although the presence of an extraneous gravitational field in the solar system has long been noticed. In the 80s of the last century, the American spacecraft Pioneer and Voyager began to deviate more and more from the calculated trajectories as they approached the boundaries of the solar system. Calculations have shown that the deviations are caused by the presence of a gravitational field of an unknown planetary mass beyond Pluto's orbit. And in 1997, American astronomers explained that they had discovered a small planet at the periphery of the solar system. It revolves around the Sun in an elliptical orbit, approaching it at a minimum distance of 35 and moving away at a maximum distance of 130 astronomical units. Perhaps this planet should be considered Phaeton? And it was this star that the Magi from the East saw 2000 years ago,and its description is found in ancient chronicles? The answers to these questions and many others related to the secrets of the "invisible planet" are still to be given by scientists in the future.