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Did our Solar System once have another Planet?

cosmosmagazine.com — The fiery demise of a fifth rocky planet in our Solar System might have led to a flurry of asteroid impacts that pockmarked the Moon and Earth billions of years ago... "Destabilised its orbit, causing it to fall into the Sun."

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  • hdar3415, on 11/12/2007, -2/+201We used to have another planet, it was called Pluto!
    • SpallettaAC1041, on 11/09/2007, -3/+16Dugg for best comment of the day.
    • engrishGamer, on 11/11/2007, -5/+23Man, I wanted to be the first person to say this!
      • GothAlice, on 11/08/2007, -2/+4Freaking people stealing my thunder!
        • marcomc2, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1YES. Same here. *****. I'll say it anyway. Yes, it was Pluto! There, thanks everyone, I'll be here all year.
      • EBFoxbat, on 11/09/2007, -0/+9Pluto was a good planet, a nice planet. Pluto never bothered anyone- hardly an orbital tug. It was the bureaucracy that did in poor Pluto. Too small, too irregular they said, blasphemy... and a shame.
    • robalesi, on 11/09/2007, -4/+25It'll be a cold day in hell when I stop recognizing that tiny frozen orb as a planet. LONG LIVE PLUTO!! VIVA PLUTO!!!
      • thcobbs, on 11/09/2007, -1/+4Don't get too excited.... I hear its a bit ruff there.
    • CATSCEO, on 11/09/2007, -5/+3KILL IT!!! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!
    • chewsti, on 11/09/2007, -4/+0wow, i was beaten to the punch not only on this comment, but also on the reply to it. i must be lousing my edge.
      • Matteos, on 11/09/2007, -0/+5Well once you get all the lice off of it, Im sure you'll feel better.
    • dsmx, on 11/08/2007, -1/+2Except that it can't be defined as a planet in any way. Even our moon is bigger than pluto.
      • bagboyrebel, on 11/08/2007, -0/+4Lies! Pluto will always be a planet in our hearts.
      • RedHairedMan, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Except our moon orbits US, Pluto orbits the sun. That and I don't wanna learn a whole new nemonic device for memorizing the order of the planets...
        • Jennyd6, on 11/13/2007, -0/+1My 4th grade students came up with this one: "My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Noodles." Eh... it works. ;)
    • x00x, on 11/09/2007, -1/+1Clever, oh so clever! I love it.
    • JoelBakan01, on 11/09/2007, -1/+0Good one!
    • NASAChick, on 05/29/2008, -0/+0 There are actually 11 planets now. Pluto is one of our smaller planets, The reason why it was eliminated in the first place was because it is an outer planet and the outer planets are the gas giants. Pluto is about 100 times
      smaller than Neptune and had a solid icy surface instead of a... non-solid gassy surface. Pluto has just been re-added to our list of planets and will probably taken off our list of planets again. The 2 new planets are named after Greek and Roman gods. Take that to your stupid ass mother. Before you get sarcastic with someone who is just asking a simple question, know the answer to the question first DUMB ASS!
  • HoraceQS, on 11/12/2007, -0/+24Or maybe it's still orbiting out there somewhere, populated by a race of unimaginable super men, biding their time when the orbit realigns with Earth so they can move from their cold twisted grave planet onto our nice warm green-blue sphere...
    • dafragsta, on 11/09/2007, -1/+4It's nice and warm alright.
    • platypibri, on 11/09/2007, -0/+9I for one welcome our unimaginable superman overlords.
    • dartmanx, on 11/08/2007, -3/+2Where did you think the neocons came from???
  • wonderchemist, on 11/09/2007, -5/+4"Destabilised its orbit, causing it to fall into the Sun."

    Um, I don't think that's possible. The orbital energy you have to lose from beyond Mars orbit to hit the sun is quite high. If your talking about something with planetary mass, the energy becomes enormous.

    I'm not saying there wasn't a Planet V, just saying it (or most of it) didn't end up in the sun.
    • BoneheadFarker, on 11/09/2007, -2/+7Then again...there is that asteroid belt between Mars and Saturn. If anything, that would be a clue to a fifth rocky planet. Possibly the result of a collision between a planet and a large comit or asteroid? Don't know how they worked the sun into the story though...
      • CATSCEO, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2Mars and Saturn? Did I miss something?
        • IglooFu, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Yeah the astroid belt between Mars and Saturn. You know the one with...uh...what's it called....oh yeah Jupiter.
        • IEatHamburgers, on 11/14/2007, -0/+2Well the asteroid belt IS between Mars and Saturn. Nothing he said there was wrong.
        • BoneheadFarker, on 11/08/2007, -0/+0Crap...right, Mars and Jupiter. I was always good with the names, just not the order...
      • Arkaris01, on 11/09/2007, -1/+0This sort of makes sense, something breaking the 5th planet leaving the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and the remainder being brought into the center. I would be more likely to believe that then an entire planet slowing down so that even as it was sucked into the sun it was not able to speed back up and return to an orbit (maybe he is using planet V for Venus and going to explain that Venus was it?).
        • Matteos, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2Hell, I have thought since 4th grade that the asteroid belt could have been a planet.
    • meridian300, on 11/09/2007, -1/+4If another asteroid with enough mass slammed into the direct path of this planet and slowed it down just the right amount, it would spiral into the sun (maybe over the course of a few thousand years more or less depending). The reason we have orbit is because of the speed at which objects orbit the sun, and if they're slowed down enough on top of a possible slow orbit as it is, you'll have a slow spiral to the sun.

      You fail, but thanks for playing!
      • init100, on 11/09/2007, -3/+2"If another asteroid with enough mass slammed into the direct path of this planet and slowed it down just the right amount, it would spiral into the sun"

        No, it wouldn't. The orbit would simply become elliptical. Sure, if you slowed it down a lot, the ellipse would be narrow enough to pass through the sun. But nothing would ever "spiral into the sun".
        • Ajajadude, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4What is it with people here acting like they're experts in gravitational theory, astrophysics, and all that crap?
      • wonderchemist, on 11/09/2007, -1/+11. In order to go from Mars orbit to Mercury orbit your delta v is: 23.8 km/sec.
        2. In order to 'spiral' into the sun, you need to lose energy with every orbit. This is very unlikely as any long acting process that would cause an object to decay into the sun would have affected the other planets as well.

      • Matteos, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Not to mention that an impact of that magnitude would most likely rip each object apart.
    • catalysis, on 11/09/2007, -0/+7My money is on the astrophysicist.
    • cnldelta, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4All this time I thought the Asteroid belt was formed when 2 'pre-existing' planets collided together rather than one imploding.
      • MattBD, on 11/09/2007, -0/+3I thought it was created because Jupiter's gravity prevented a planet forming there so the asteroids weren't able to come together - if they did, Jupiter would just pull it apart again.
        • Ajajadude, on 11/14/2007, -0/+4I'm beginning to dislike this "Jupiter" fellow everyone keeps talking about. Sounds like quite a bastard to me.
    • FlyingSpaghetti, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2That's no moon.
  • rubberfactory, on 11/09/2007, -6/+2I'm pretty sure I learned about this in my astronomy class last year... Old speculative news..
    • TeacherOfHeroes, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4New news about old news. If you learned about evolution last year, and there was new evidence found to support it would you call it old news?
  • thedarkrabbit, on 11/08/2007, -14/+1It did... but after electing George Buss for 2 terms, the planet became involved in an on-going war that eventually led to its destruction...
    • GrantTheGr8, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1As much as we, the inhabitants of Earth, can manage to ***** our planet up, destroying it is pretty damn far beyond our potential. Plus, your comment is political, trolling, and just plain stupid.
  • slashbot, on 11/09/2007, -14/+4Fall into the sun?

    Buried as innacurate
    • TeacherOfHeroes, on 11/09/2007, -2/+3Well...the digg posting isn't inaccurate, since thats what TFA says as well...

      "Chambers provides the most compelling evidence yet that a hypothetical Planet V could have existed for hundreds of millions of years before minute gravitational tugs from Mars and Jupiter destabilised its orbit, causing it to fall into the Sun."

      I'm sure that if you emailed the guy and told him that it was inaccurate, he'd see reason and abandon his crazy crazy computer models.
    • kelly, on 11/09/2007, -6/+5If you Buried it for being as inaccurate... do so for the billions of years comment. If it happened, it would have had to be within thousands of years... not hundreds of thousands, not millions and certainly not billions. The universe is less the 10,000 years old.
      • TeacherOfHeroes, on 11/09/2007, -2/+6I couldn't tell if you were being sarcastic or not, so I checked your profile. It seems that you are actually serious. Dugg down for making me weep in despair.

        On a lighter, more humerous note, what evidence do you have to support *your* claim?
        • drachemorder, on 11/09/2007, -4/+3Hey, if we're making evolutionists "weep in despair", I consider that a good day's work!
          • TeacherOfHeroes, on 11/09/2007, -2/+4What does evolution have to do with the age of the universe? If anything, your claim in this context would be making cosmologists weep in despair.

            Is everyone that doesn't believe that the universe is 10000 years old automatically an "evolutionist"?

            For the record, I think that evolutionary theory is about the best explanation offered as of yet, but it seems wholly inconsequential to this discussion.
          • Ajajadude, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1When we're discussing the age of the universe, there are more people involved than evolutionists.
        • kelly, on 11/08/2007, -2/+1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationi ...
  • RealSurreal, on 11/09/2007, -5/+1Some info on another theorized planet
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_x
  • bizkit00, on 11/09/2007, -5/+5"Planet V's orbit was between that of Mars and the Asteroid Belt"
    duh, it is the astroid belt
    • TeacherOfHeroes, on 11/08/2007, -0/+3Did you even read the article? Or did you just scan through it to find a good quote. This computer model suggests that it fell into the sun after its orbit was disturbed by Mars and Jupiter.
    • x00x, on 11/09/2007, -2/+1The single dumbest thing I can recall ever reading. Good reason why an IQ test should be a requirement for owning a computer.
  • dredman, on 11/08/2007, -2/+5I fell into the sun once..............................ONCE !
  • OnipSemaj, on 11/08/2007, -17/+3Yeah, it was called "Earth" before George Bush. Now it is called "Hell".
  • Muncher, on 11/09/2007, -1/+20Alderan?
    • Thuktun, on 11/09/2007, -1/+5Here, you dropped this: a
    • hydroplane, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Dantooine was too remote to make an effective demonstration.
    • FlyingSpaghetti, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1That's no moon.
  • Klarth, on 11/10/2007, -0/+4http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_%28hypothetica ...

    Despite having no scientific basis, I still love the Nibiru/Tiamat theory. I'm such a sci-fi dork.
    • blitzkriegpunk, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1ZOMG the Annunikai!11 I was thinking of this very thing after reading the description. Kind of eery.
  • RVSTY, on 11/09/2007, -3/+1Cybertron!?
  • drakaan, on 11/09/2007, -1/+3I remember reading a book called "Genesis Revisited" by a guy named Zecharia Sitchin (I think that's his name). He talked about two planets...Marduk and Nibiru, and they smacked into each other and the premise was that somehow that's how we got an earth with a giant moon...don't remember the details, but the article reminded me of the book.
    • modix, on 11/08/2007, -0/+0That's actually a common theory about how we ended up with our moon. There's alot of reasons the moon is an oddity. Being the remenants of a collision of two smaller planets that fused together was the best explanation for many of the facts.
    • Sovereigndk, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Sitchin describes it in the book "The 12th Planet".
      What he refers to as Nibiru/Marduk, or one of the moons surrounding it, collided with a planet name Tiamat, which was just beyond Mars. The Collision sent a large chunk of Tiamat to a new orbit inside of Mars and actually causing Mars to move farther out. The large chuck of Tiamat is now Earth. It was during the collision, that one of the moons was also catapulted to this location, explaining why we have a moon much larger in proportion than other planets with moons.
      It's all written in stone, found in museums today.
      Sitchins books have resulted in many 'finds' by archaeologist today of ancient cities from the past.
  • ravage86, on 11/08/2007, -14/+2"Did our Solar System once have another Planet?"

    Yeah, it was called Pluto
    • doctapeppa, on 11/08/2007, -1/+2see above.
    • Heaiser, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Looks like hdar3415 beat you to this comment by about 6 hours.
    • Klarth, on 11/08/2007, -0/+4Seriously, how hard is it to read the first comment?
    • kahrytan, on 11/08/2007, -1/+1Pluto is still a planet. Eris is our 10th planet.
      • Pssdoff, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Pluto Eris and Ceres are only dwarf planets.
        If you were to number them based on distance, Ceres would be the 5th planet, Pluto would be the 10th, and Eris would be the 11th.
  • kelly, on 11/09/2007, -16/+2While another planet may or may not have existed, the "billions of years" theory is off base. If it happened, it would have had to be within thousands of years... not hundreds of thousands, not millions and certainly not billions. The universe is less the 10,000 years old.
    • TeacherOfHeroes, on 11/09/2007, -1/+4[citation needed]
    • modix, on 11/08/2007, -1/+0Evolution is a well founded theory with about every single piece of scientific data supporting it. There are alot of gaps in the fossil record. Much of the past has to rely on guesswork and trace evidence.

      This is NOT true about geology. There are many strata of rocks that date back millions of years. Silt formations from the ice melts layer in the hundreds of thousands with each representing a year. The wearing down of mountains with wind alone takes 4-5 million years, yet there are whole mountain ranges eaten away.

      While the 4.03 billion years or whatever our Earth's age is pure guesswork, saying they can't prove that the earth is more than 100k years is ridiculous and is the mental equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and humming.
      • Arkaris01, on 11/09/2007, -1/+1"While the 4.03 billion years or whatever our Earth's age is pure guesswork, saying they can't prove that the earth is more than 100k years is ridiculous and is the mental equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and humming."
        What? No it's not at all. While I personally believe the age of the Earth is probably more than the 10k theory, probably more than the 100k theory, it's all guess work. It's all making the assumption that these rock formations happen over hundreds of years, and the ice cores happen over hundreds of years. Too many things mess with geology to make it an -accurate- and even a calculable guess. If a flood happens, if an earthquake, mass migration disrupts geology records. We can make many inferences but to come to accurate conclusions is at best a good guess. Too many things distort the record base.
        Forgive me for not having the article handy but there was a case where a volcano blew in India and threw ash all around the world. Geologist can find this and since we know the relevant time this event happened we can mark that as part of time. In some places we find this event very deep in other places this event is found relatively close to the surface. What causes this variation and how do you calculate the times? Why do some areas show certain parts of the geological records and others are missing it entirely for "hundreds and thousands of years"? It's all best guess, and while I give 'em high marks at guessing, there is reason to doubt and I have to give them that as well.
  • designerutah, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1And I thought the Asteroid Belt was very likely part of a failed (or damaged) fifth planet. How are astronomers sure this isn't what happened? I remember reading somewhere that someone calculated the orbits of the asteroids and going back in the past, they do not come to a single point. Is that why the Asteroid Belt is not being considered part of the missing fifth planet? If so, I would question the model.
  • yujie, on 11/08/2007, -7/+1Al Qaeda did it
  • PapaBoojum, on 11/09/2007, -2/+1It was called Minerva. Our moon used to orbit it. It broke up and became the asteroid belt.

    Where do you think the Ganymeans used to live? Duh.
    • edzieba, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2What, no love for Inherit The Stars?
      • DoscoJones, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Used to love it. The science is utter crap though, so it sort of fell away.
  • init100, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2"Did our Solar System once have another Planet?"

    Yes. It is usually called Theia.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothes ...
  • natewitt, on 11/08/2007, -0/+0I do not trust any scientific report that misspells Destabilized.
  • supaklaw, on 11/09/2007, -0/+3Yes, it was called Mongo. We blew it up with our discombobulator. Ming was pissed.
    • jrak, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Wow, dugg for the excellent original Flash Gordon reference.
  • SirZRX, on 11/09/2007, -3/+2enough with the stupid comments
    • SpongeBad, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2this is DIGG...there's no such thing as enough stupid comments.
      • DoscoJones, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Duh. Digg was created to host stupid comments. It's like a giant stupid capacitor for the net. Short Digg to ground and the entire net would asplode.
  • dgh1973, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1I figured that was pretty much established fact by now... either that or it's the "little planet that could" but hasn't so far gotten together yet.

    I remember reading the work of some quack that claimed there is a HUGE planet out there he dubbed "Tiamut" that had a long oval orbit taking it thousands of years and swinging out to the kuiper belt. He claimed when it came back in it would cause mayhem like planet destruction and extinction events... yadda yadda.
  • pleiadianagenda, on 11/09/2007, -0/+3The asteroid belt WAS the fifth planet. It was known by different cultures as Maldek, Milona, or Tiamat. Just do the research and ascertain your own opinions.
  • dgh1973, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Ahh see after RTFA they say it was above and beyond the asteroid belt. I've heard a lot more theories claiming that the asteroid belt WAS the planet... I guess that theory doesn't work unless you can explain what destroyed it.

    Maybe a race of advanced monkeys lived there and blew it to hell with weapons that were way to powerful for them.... hmmm.
  • Tyorant, on 11/08/2007, -0/+4Death star did it.
  • insonh, on 11/08/2007, -2/+1people of earth, i am one of two survivor of this planet

    it was called "Bob"

    Bob was blown up but it wasnt blown up by a bunch of damn dirty apes...no! no!

    it was blown up by a bunch of damn dirty "Manbearpigs", but before they destroyed my planet their leader took a spacecraft to your planet and is living here amoung you and is ploting the take over of your planet

    you must stop him before its too late

    i'm super serial

  • SeriusBlac, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1There's a counter-Earth just like our on the opposite side of the side sun from us. The Sumerians knew that too.
  • mickwalks, on 11/09/2007, -6/+1It's Called Pluto
  • WaterDragon, on 11/09/2007, -1/+2It once had a planet called Earth...but idiots living on it argued so much about semantics when climatic change, caused by man-made pollution, threatened its habitability.
    Some people called it global warming, not an entirely accurate name, and others argued, in denial, pretending there was no problem caused by man-made pollution and mismanagement.

    They say it was a lovely planet -- and now it is gone.
    All that remains are these trillions of little plastic discs and plastic bags!
    • bingobongony, on 11/09/2007, -2/+1any real proof? Nahhhh, of course not. Logic and intelligence are lost on WaterDragon, as evidence by EVERY post he makes on Digg.
  • bingobongony, on 11/08/2007, -1/+1Boy, do people have that short of memories? We had another planet just one year ago.
  • theelectricafro, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1I believe the ancient Summarian's were under the same impression.
  • FallOutBoyTonto, on 11/09/2007, -1/+2Atlantis!
  • Sovereigndk, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Planet X
    Nibiru
    Marduk

    See books by Zacharia Sitchin (The 12th Planet)
    He wrote about the outer planets before our voyagers reported home, confirming his writings
  • bbnkstr, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1sfdasfd
  • Nadsofed, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1At some point it had many other planets colliding and breaking apart thus forming our current iteration, including the collision of our planet with another that gave us our tilt, created the moon and gave us our rotation.
  • cipherscribe, on 11/10/2007, -0/+2Research the work by Michael Tsarion. It will blow your mind!
  • Rizmaster, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Of course we did. It was called Mondas. It's home to the Cybermen that have been attempting to invade Earth for the last 20 years.
  • Sarzec, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Between Mars and Jupiter theres a gap for another planet now way back yeah maybe a madman just blew the ***** out of it..
  • fixedcoma, on 11/09/2007, -1/+1It's called planet X and it orbits around a different area of our system and its orbit is every 3600 years! Because there is still perburation being detected by neptune and some other planets!
  • jrak, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Destroyed... by the Empire.
  • FascistNation, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Nice theory. Can you say Velikovsky? I mean come on, scifi writer James P. Hogan wrote about Minerva being reduced to the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars...of course in his story it took place 50,000 years ago. At least credit those who thought of it before you. Your simulations are the paper.
  • billb914, on 11/09/2007, -1/+0Minerva
  • wirah, on 11/09/2007, -1/+1The asteroid belt used to be a planet before it was blown to *****.
    That blast blew our atmosphere to pieces and killed our dinosaurs.

    Also, this planet was the 2nd home of the original Egyptians.

    Bye
  • DoscoJones, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1I blame bears.
  •  

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