Phaeton (hypothetical planet)

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Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, who formulated the planet Phaeton hypothesis
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Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, who formulated the planet Phaeton hypothesis

Phaeton (or Phaëton, less often Phaethon) is the name of a hypothetical planet posited to once have existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter whose destruction supposedly led to the formation of asteroid belt. In Greek mythology, Phaëton, the son of the sun god Helios, attempted to drive his father's solar chariot for a day with disastrous results and was destroyed by Zeus.

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[edit] The Phaeton hypothesis

According to the so-called Titius-Bode law, a planet was believed to exist between Mars and Jupiter. Johann Elert Bode himself urged a search for the fifth planet. When Ceres, the largest of the asteroids in the asteroid belt, was found in 1801 at the predicted position of the fifth planet, many believed it was the missing planet. However, in 1802 astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovered and named another object in the same general orbit as Ceres, the asteroid Pallas.

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 Juno by Karl Ludwig Harding and Vesta by Olbers buttressed the Olbers hypothesis. Most astronomers today, however, believe that the asteroids in the main belt are remnants of the protoplanetary disk, 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 system.

In the twentieth century, Russian meteoriticist Yevgeny Leonidovich Krinov (involved in the investigation of the Tunguska event), suggested that the exploded planet in the Olbers theory be named Phaeton after the story in Greek myth.

[edit] Planet Phaeton today

Although the Planet Phaeton hypothesis is discarded by the scientific community today, it is still proposed by various fringe elements and creationists (see the external links section below). Recently, Zecharia Sitchin has proposed, based on his reading of ancient Sumerian mythology, that the fifth planet between Mars and Jupiter was known to the Sumerians as Tiamat. Sitchin believes that Tiamat was destroyed by a rogue planet known as Nibiru. Others hold that the fifth planet may have been destroyed by a hypothetical brown dwarf companion star to the Sun known as Nemesis.

3200 Phaethon, sometimes incorrectly spelled Phaeton, shares Phaeton's name. 3200 Phaethon is a Mercury-, Venus-, and Mars- orbit crossing Apollo asteroid with unusual properties.

[edit] Phaeton in literature

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources

[edit] Books

  • This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. - see, for instance, "Olbers," Britannica
  • Christy-Vitale, Joseph (2004). Watermark: The Disaster That Changed the World and Humanity 12,000 Years Ago. New York: Simon and Schuster.
  • McSween, Harry Y. (2004). Meteorites and Their Parent Planets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., p. 35.
  • Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. New York Academy of Sciences., Records of meetings 1808-1916 in v. 11-27, p. 872.

[edit] External links

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