Free The Dark Star: The Planet X Evidence by Andy Lloyd Page B

scientific
work.
    Had my letter not been published in UFO Magazine in the late
summer of 1999, I would have difficulty proving this course of events, and I
have always been grateful to the late Graham W. Birdsall for its inclusion in
his magazine at the time, as well as a major follow-up article a couple of
years later. 28

John Matese and Daniel Whitmire
    A second synchronicity also occurred at that time, because it was
not just John Murray who had been looking closely at the patterns of
long-period comets. In the United States, John Matese’s research team had
carried out a similar analysis, and independently come to a similar conclusion.
His paper was published at exactly the same time as Murray’s, although the
details of their work varied somewhat. John Matese is a Professor of Physics at
the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and he was joined in this research
effort by Patrick Whitman and Daniel Whitmire. The latter famously co-wrote the
1984 Nature paper on the proposed ‘Nemesis’ body, and its link to the 26
million year extinction cycle. 7
    Like John Murray, they concluded that a massive planet or small
brown dwarf could be orbiting the sun, sending comets our way. Unlike Dr.
Murray, they stopped short of postulating a possible location for the object.
Other details were different too, including the approximate distance, and the
orbit. They also considered it likely that the effect supplemented that of the
galactic tide, which was the dominant feature in the statistical aberrations. 29
    In the paper it was also speculated that the orbit of this planet,
which they call the ‘Perturber’, would, on occasion, bring it fairly close to
the outer planetary zone. This was because an orbit that was at the distance of
25,000AU was not one which could be sustained for the lifetime of the solar
system, a point also conceded by John Murray. 17 Citing a very
interesting paper by Jack Hills from 1985 30 , they noted that any
orbit in the outer Oort cloud was liable to be altered by the action of the
galactic tide over hundreds of millions of years. 29
    As the sun rotates around the centre of the galaxy, it bobs up and
down through the galactic plane rather like the horse on a fairground carousel
ride. The periodic changes to the orbit of the perturber, known as
‘oscultations’, are related to this motion with relation to the galactic plane,
and, according to Dr. Matese’s calculations, could at times lead to a minimum
distance from the sun of just 125AU. This is an important point. Let us say
that the sun was formed in conjunction with a distant binary brown dwarf that
initially formed at the sort of distances that comets are now located at. Over
several hundred million years the action of the galactic tide would cause the
brown dwarf to drift inwards towards the planetary zone of the sun.
    This is precisely what I think took place 3.9 billion years ago,
some 700 million years after the formation of the solar system. The sun’s
binary companion fell down towards the sun as a result of the galaxy’s
gravitational interaction, destabilizing its orbit. It then swept
catastrophically through the solar system as described by the Babylonian myths,
before migrating out towards the comets once again.
    Furthermore, Dr. Matese argued that this situation would repeat
itself over time, without significantly destabilizing the orbits of the other
planets in the solar system. 29 Incredible, isn’t it? The
mathematical calculations carried by Dr. Matese and his colleagues created a
model to describe how a distant binary companion could, on occasion, end up
wandering near to the sun.
    If a small brown dwarf sometimes approaches the planetary zone to
within 3 times the distance of Pluto, even though for the vast majority of the
time it is located much further away, then it would significantly affect the
minor planetary bodies of the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt. As we shall see, this is
exactly what has been observed in the last few