2012 and the ARRIVAL of PLANET X

Something out there beyond the furthest reaches of the known solar system is tugging at Uranus and Neptune. A gravitational force keeps perturbing the two giant planets, causing irregularities in their orbits. The force suggests a presence far away and unseen, a large object, the long-sought Planet X. Astronomers are so certain of this planet's existence that they have already named it "Planet X."

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On March 1, 2008 scientists at Kobe University in western Japan announced that they believe another planet up to two-thirds the size of the Earth was orbiting in the far reaches of the solar system. The researchers said calculations using computer simulations led them to conclude it was only a matter of time before the mysterious "Planet X" was found.

"Because of the very cold temperature, its surface would be covered with ice, icy ammonia and methane," Kobe University professor Tadashi Mukai, the lead researcher, told reporters. "The possibility is high that a yet unknown, planet-class celestial body, measuring 30 percent to 70 percent of the Earth's mass, exists in the outer edges of the solar system." "If research is conducted on a wide scale, the planet is likely to be discovered in less than 10 years," it said.

Planet X - so called by scientists as it is yet undiscovered - would have an oblong elliptical solar orbit and circle the sun every thousand years, the team said, estimating its radius was 17 to 30 billion miles. The study comes two years after school textbooks had to be rewritten when Pluto was booted out of the list of planets.

Pluto was discovered by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 in the so-called Kuiper belt, a chain of icy debris in the outer reaches of the solar system. In 2006, nearly a decade after Tombaugh's death, the International Astronomical Union ruled the celestial body was merely a dwarf planet in the cluttered Kuiper belt. The astronomers said Pluto's oblong orbit overlapped with that of Neptune, excluding it from being a planet. It defined the solar system as consisting solely of the classical set of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The team noted that more than 1,100 celestial bodies have been found in the outer reaches of the solar system since the mid-1990s. "But it would be the first time to discover a celestial body of this size, which is much larger than Pluto," Mukai said.

The researchers set up a theoretical model looking at how the remote area of the solar system would have evolved over the past four billion years.

"In coming up with an explanation for the celestial bodies, we thought it would be most natural to assume the existence of a yet unknown planet," Mukai said. "Based on our hypothesis, we calculated how debris moved over the past four billion years. The result matched the actual movement of the celestial bodies we can observe now," he said.

He was hopeful about research by Kobe University, the University of Hawaii and Taiwan's National Central University.

"We are expecting that the ongoing joint celestial observation project will eventually discover Planet X," Mukai said.

The New York Times reported on June 19, 1982 that something out there beyond the farthest reaches of the known solar system seems to be tugging at Uranus and Neptune. Some gravitational force keeps perturbing the two giant planets, causing irregularities in their orbits. The force suggests a presence far away and unseen, a large object that may be the long-sought Planet X.

The last time a serious search of the skies was made it led to the discovery in 1930 of Pluto, the ninth planet. But the story begins more than a century before that, after the discovery of Uranus in 1781 by the English astronomer and musician William Herschel. Until then, the planetary system seemed to end with Saturn.

The discovery of new planets has, in the last two hundred years, owed more to the science of mathematics than it has to the design of bigger and better telescopes. The unaccounted for mathematical irregularities in the orbits of the outer planets have prompted astronomers to speculate upon the existence of a further, undiscovered planet. Astronomers are so certain of this planet's existence that they have already named it Planet X - the Tenth Planet.

NASA themselves officially recognized the possibility of Planet X, with an announcement that "some kind of mystery object is really there - far beyond the outermost planets." One year later, the newly launched IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite) spotted a large mysterious object in the depths of space.

To this day, the search continues for a Planet X---although some say that Planet X has already been found, a planet that matches the Sumerian descriptions for a celestial body 4-8 times the size of earth, on a highly 3,600 elliptical orbit around our sun. In the early 1990's, calculations by the United States Naval Observatory have confirmed the orbital perturbation exhibited by Uranus and Neptune, which Dr. Thomas C Van Flandern, an astronomer at the observatory, says could be explained by "a single undiscovered planet." He and a colleague, Dr. Robert Harrington, calculate that the 10th planet should be two to five times more massive than Earth and have a highly elliptical orbit that takes it some 5 billion miles beyond that of Pluto. We now know that beyond the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn there are two major planets, Uranus and Neptune, and small proto-planets such as Pluto and Eris. But such knowledge is quite recent.

With the use of improved telescopes, Uranus was discovered in 1781. In 1846, astronomers guided by mathematical calculations pinpointed Neptune. It became evident that Neptune was being subjected to an unknown gravitational pull, and in 1930 Pluto (was located). The latest advances in space imaging do not rely solely on orbital perturbations as the way for locating and identifying possible candidates for Planet X.

The 6,000 year old Sumerian descriptions of our solar system include one more planet they called "Nibiru," which means "Planet of the crossing." The descriptions of this planet by the Sumerians match precisely the specifications of Planet X (the Tenth Planet), which is currently being sought by astronomers in the depths of our own Solar System.

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