Six thousand years ago, on the coast of the Persian Gulf, there was a Sumerian civilization, which left behind many clay tablets, mottled with cuneiform. These tablets brought to us myths, historical chronicles, codes of laws, business documents, personal letters. Whole libraries of clay tables have been found by archaeologists among the ruins of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and in another large ancient city of Mesopotamia - Nippur. But, despite such a seemingly huge amount of information, many mysteries remain in the history of the Sumerian civilization. And one of them is associated with the texts of clay tablets …
Judging by the deciphered texts, the ancient Sumerians possessed the most detailed information about the Universe, stars and planets, possessed extensive knowledge in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, metallurgy, agriculture. Six thousand years ago, they knew that the Earth revolves around the Sun. It was the Sumerian astronomers who divided the sky into twelve signs of the zodiac. They knew all the planets of the solar system and the history of their origin. But, for example. Uranus was "officially" discovered in 1781, and Pluto only in 1930!
As the clay tablets say, 4 billion years ago, an alien from the depths of space - Nibiru, a wandering celestial body the size of the Earth - invaded our solar system. As NASA specialists calculated from the clay tablets, the celestial body was moving at a speed of about 65 thousand kilometers per hour. At that time, Mercury (Mummu), Venus (Lahamu), Mars (Lahmu), the planet Tiamat with its moon Moon, Jupiter (Kishar), Saturn revolved around the Sun (Apsu)
(Anshar), Uranus (Anu), Neptune (Ea) and Pluto (Gaga). They all moved counterclockwise in circumsolar orbits. When the mysterious Nibiru entered the solar system, it fell into the gravitational field of the Sun and, captured by it, entered an unstable orbit, rotating clockwise and exposed to the gravitational fields of other planets. In turn, under the influence of the gravitational field of Nibiru, cataclysms began to occur on the planets of the solar system nearest to it. Tiamat suffered the most. Powerful tectonic processes began on it, which, as a result, tore the planet in two. One of them, together with Tiamat's satellite - the Moon, was thrown into another orbit and continued its life under the name Earth. Another part of the lost planet fell apart and formed an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
And Nibiru? Under the influence of the forces caused by the catastrophe with Tiamat, it also entered a new orbit, to the very periphery, and became the tenth, most distant planet in the solar system. In scientific and science fiction literature, it is usually called Transpluton.
Maybe this story is just another beautiful legend? But in 1766, the German astronomer, physicist and mathematician Johann Titius formulated, and another German astronomer, Johann Bode, substantiated the so-called "Titius-Bode rule". This rule determines the pattern: at what distance from the Sun should be the planets of the Solar System. So, this regularity provides for the existence between Mars and Jupiter "planet number 5", which in fact does not exist!
The fact that the Titius-Bode rule is true was proved by the subsequent discoveries of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Indeed, in 1772, when Bode published the results of his calculations, these planets were not yet known to astronomers. And in 1781 Uranus was discovered - the rule "works"! It was then that the question of "planet number 5" was first raised …
The first broad discussion of the problem took place at the Astronomical Congress in 1796. They began to search hard for "Planet 5", and on the first New Year's Eve of the 19th century, the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered it.
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But it turned out to be not a planet in the "normal" sense, but a celestial body of extremely small dimensions. The tiny planet was named Ceres. In 1802, her “sister” was discovered - Pallas, two years later - Juno, three years later - Vesta … around the Sun there are many tiny planes - current - asteroids. And the question immediately arose - how did this "swarm" form?
This question was already asked by the German astronomer Heinrich Olbers, who discovered Pallas and Vesta. He first suggested that "planet number 5" exploded, creating clouds of asteroids and cosmic dust.
The clay tablets of the ancient Sumerians, telling about the catastrophe that happened to the planet Tiamat, were not known at that time. But in Europe, the ancient Greek myth of Phaethon, the son of the Sun, was well known. Once Phaethon, without permission, brought out his father's golden chariot, harnessed by a pair of fire-breathing horses, and rushed across the sky, but failed to control the mad horses, failed to direct the chariot along his father's path, set fire to all living things on Earth and died himself, incinerated by lightning. This event caused a catastrophe on Earth …
In the early 1970s, the estimated mass of "planet No. 5" was calculated and the time of its destruction - 16 million years ago. But what caused the destruction? There are a lot of unclear things here.
Since the time of Olbers, the hypothetical "planet No. 5" has been called Phaeton. But it turns out that the ancient Sumerians also knew its other name - Tiamat. And the Sumerians knew that it was not the golden chariot that was to blame for the catastrophe that happened to Phaethon-Tiamat, but another celestial body - Nibiru, it is also probable Transpluton. Until now, all attempts to detect it have ended in nothing, although the presence in the solar system of some kind of extraneous gravitational field that has nothing to do with the known planets has been noted for a long time. In the 1980s, the American spacecraft Pioneer and Voyager suddenly 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,which should be located beyond the orbit of Pluto at a distance of about 50 astronomical units. And in 1997, American astronomers announced that they had discovered a small planet located on the periphery of the solar system. The as yet unnamed space body, perhaps, should be considered the Sumerian Nibiru, the tenth planet of the solar system.
The planet 1996TL66, newly discovered by astrophysicists from Cambridge, is quite massive and has a diameter of 490 kilometers. 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 (one astronomical unit is equal to the Earth's distance from the Sun, which is 150 million kilometers). This is much farther than the orbits of Pluto and Neptune. Several such bodies have already been discovered in a region called the "Cooper belt", which is located at a great distance from the so-called Oort cloud, where comets are "born". The discovery of a small planet at the edge of the solar system may bode well for many new surprises …