Evidence Mounts For Sun's Companion Star

[jokerman93]

Paradigm shift from heliocentric solar system to binary-heliocentric!?

Evidence Mounts For Sun's Companion Star

Binary Research Institute (BRI) has found that orbital characteristics of the recently discovered planetoid, "Sedna", demonstrate the possibility that our sun might be part of a binary star system. A binary star system consists of two stars gravitationally bound orbiting a common center of mass. Once thought to be highly unusual, such systems are now considered to be common in the Milky Way galaxy.
dence Mounts For Sun's Companion Star

The Binary Research Institute (BRI) has found that orbital characteristics of the recently discovered planetoid, "Sedna", demonstrate the possibility that our sun might be part of a binary star system. A binary star system consists of two stars gravitationally bound orbiting a common center of mass. Once thought to be highly unusual, such systems are now considered to be common in the Milky Way galaxy.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060424180559.htm

[gristy]

1. Wow, deja-vu

Really strong when I read your post. Strange... ;)

[jokerman93]

15. LOL

That's very funny, I copied and pasted it twice! :-)

[BlueJazz]

2. That's rather Cerebral ....2 stars...2 posts

:toast:

[jokerman93]

6. I don't get the joke

But I'll have a beer anyway.

:-)

[qazplm]

13. The joke

is the idea that there is a binary star companion to the sun.

It. Doesnt. Exist.

[BlueJazz]

14. Your first paragraph is the same as the second...hence...

2 stars ...2 posts :)

[Ian David]

3. The Binary Research Institue are crackpots at worst, fringe at best

Doesn't mean they're wrong...

But from what I see, I'd bet $100 they're wrong with about 99.5% certainty.


See:

I was just reading an article yesterday about precession, and the person (a proponent of the idea that our solar system is a binary system) made the following argument.

He said that precession takes place relative to the distant stars, but not to the objects in our solar system. If I understand correctly, he was saying that the equinox cycles through through the zodiac, but that, for instance, meteor showers will always take place at the same time of the year.

After thinking about it a bit, it seems that there is a problem with this logic. AFAIK, the precession wouldn't affect the time a meteor shower comes, because that has nothing to do with where the earth is facing at a certain time, but rather where the earth is in its orbit around the sun, right? However, it makes sense that the precession should mean that the meteor showers would appear to come from a different point of the sky each year, slowly cycling. Does this make sense?

But actually, when I think about it, I don't really understand what's happening with the precession of the equinoxes very well. My sort of commonsense understanding was that it was due to the movement of the solar system itself, leading to a difference in the sidereal year and the solar year, just like the difference in the lunary month and synodic month is, I think, caused by the movement of the earth around the sun.

And of course, I realize there is something else I don't really understand, which is, why do the meteor showers always come at the same time of the year? I guess it's because the debris is orbiting around the sun but in some orbit that is affected by the earth?

More:
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=19733

Also:

Bogus binary star math?
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=16076



Also:


http://www4.cs.umanitoba.ca/~jacky/Teaching/Courses/74.436-MachineLearning/2005/Assignments/Assignment3/SampleFiles/science.txt

http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=19733


http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?p=276868#post276868

[jokerman93]

5. Well how about that?

I always thought Science Daily was more or less a reliable source for science news. They mostly repost synopses of credible scientific articles. Too bad.

[Odin2005]

12. Yep, sounds like BS.

The sun, like nearly all stars, was born in a star cluster, sibling stars could of easily come near enough to affect objects in the Oort Cloud or outer Kuiper belt, there is no need to hypothesize a companion star.

BTW, meteor showers come from the dust released when the comet is near the sun, the dust spreads out through the whole orbit. You get a meteor shower when the Earth meats the comets orbit and plows through the dust and debris that ranges in size from dust grains to the comet fragment that caused the Tunguska explosion.

[Ediacara]

4. So.... where's the star?

[htuttle]

9. That's an excellent question

The only candidate I can think of is Proxima Centauri. At what we think is it's nearest point to Earth, it's almost midway between Sol and the other two stars in the Alpha Centauri system. It's supposedly in a 2 million year (or so) orbit around the rest of Alpha Centauri. Seems hard to believe that they would have calculated it's previous orbit wrong, but I suppose they haven't been observing it for too long considering it's orbital period.

Either that, or it's a very, very (very) dim dwarf star we haven't seen yet.

Both possibilities seem highly unlikely, though.

[Solon]

11. I would say that Proxima Centauri is far to far away to be a companion...

star to Sol. Its already a Red Dwarf, about 8% the size of our Sun. Its most likely far outside the gravity well of Sol, which most likely extends out to 2 light years out, where the Oort Cloud is located. However, Proxima Centauri is only about one fifth a light year from Alpha Centauri A, a Sun about 1.5 times larger than our own Sun. Not to mention that Alpha Centauri B, the companion to A, is only about 33 astronomical units from its companion. I figure, at best, if we did have a companion star, it would be at least as far out as the Oort cloud, and that's pretty far, plus it would have to be so dim it would only emit in the infrared range, but it would still be detectable, on two levels, one is mass, and the other is infrared. I say its existance is highly unlikely.

BTW: Just an FYI, Alpha Centauri A is a star that is a main sequence star, similar to our own Sun, a G2 star, by classification, Alpha Centauri B, its companion, is a little smaller than our Sun, a K0 star, about 88% the size of our Sun.

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. Exactly

Even a brown dwarf -- a star about twice as massive as Jupiter with a barely started nuclear furnace -- would leave an unmistakeable trace in infrared, and no one has seen any trace of a nearby, cool star. Anything bigger would be visible to the naked eye and totally unmistakeable.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. now I'll have to worship an additional god

.

[OneBlueSky]

8. wonder how things are going on Earth 2? . . .

maybe Al Gore is president, we're at peace with Iraq, alternative energy is all the rage, and gay marriage is no big deal . . .

[Bill McBlueState]

16. Some things you should know about the Binary Research Institute

Their mission statement is antiscientific, if you look at it carefully:

The Binary Research Institute was formed in 2001 to support and fund research regarding the hypothesis that the Sun is part of a binary star system. It is the goal of the Binary Research Institute to present evidence for this theory, showing that the motion of the sun along a binary orbital path can result in and better explain the same precessional motion that current LuniSolar and Earth Wobble theories attempt to account for.

In other words, like the creationists, they've decided what they want their conclusion to be and are now out looking for evidence to support it. This is the opposite of the scientific method, where the conclusions follow from the evidence.

Also, none of the papers on the website have been published in peer-reviewed journals. In fact, according to the Astrophysics Data System, institute founder Walter Cruttenden has never published anything in a peer-reviewed astronomy journal.

Just some reasons to be skeptical.

[qazplm]

17. well

the main reason to be skeptical is that its just plain loopy! vbg

[Beelzebud]

18. This reminds me of the "electric universe" crap...

Pre-concieved idea, looking for the proof they need.

Much like Intelligent Design.

If we had a binary star, wouldn't we be able to observe it? We would. And thats why this concept is not sound...

[Tesha]

19. Well you *COULD* see it, except...

> If we had a binary star, wouldn't we be able to observe it?

Well you *COULD* see it, except that it orbits exactly
opposite the earth, behind the sun. And it's kept there
by magic, err, "quantum entanglements" with the
Earth. Yeah, quantum entanglements, that's it.

And the reason we can't see it from the probes we've
sent out to the planets is because the star is surrounding
itself by a giant Scottian energy-dampening field
created through the massive release of La Forge
energy and inverse tachyon pulses. And.. And...

Tesha

[rman]

22. Doesn't have to be an actual star,

as in, an object that radiates E/M energy due to nuclear fusion.
It could be a gas giant or a brown dwarf, and still have a mass that's a sizable fraction of the sun's mass - certainly many times heavier then Jupiter. It can even be a small black hole.
I think it is conceivable that there is a companion to the sun that's large enough to have a quite a long orbit, and if the orbit is elliptical then it can come close enough to stir things up. I think it may be hard to find by accident. I don't think there has been a serious search for it, given that the consensus in astronomy is that the sun has no companion.

[Bill McBlueState]

35. a black hole?

But black holes form catastrophically, when a star more then ~ten times the mass of the sun goes supernova. Surely we would have noticed this. Probably would've destroyed our planet entirely.

[Scribe]

20. A Dark Star named NEMESIS

was hypothesized decades ago as an explanation for the apparent periodicity of global extinctions. Specifically, Nemesis was theorized to disturb the Sun's Oort cloud every 30 million years or so. The disrupted Oort cloud then dispatched dozens of life killing comets toward the inner planets.

Two scientists at a Southern Louisiana College came up with the theory and name in 1985.

"Suppose that this companion star moved in an elliptical orbit, its solar distance varying between 90,000 a.u. (1.4 light years) and 20,000 a.u., with a period of 30 million years. Also suppose this star is dark or at least very faint, and because of that we haven't noticed it yet."
- excerpt from http://www.nineplanets.org/hypo.html#nemesis

[qazplm]

21. A star isnt "dark"

if its a star, it emits light. Now it may be faint, or it may be a Brown Dwarf orn object that isnt a star but is like Jupiter, but it isnt a "dark" star.

You wouldnt need a star to disrupt the oort cloud, smaller objects in the oort cloud itself could be enough to send things our way.

[Scribe]

23. A Brown Dwarf is most likely but ...

for some reason the theory has had a book written about it named Dark Star. I suppose it could also be a neutron star with its magnetic lensing focused away from the solar system. Or even a black hole?

Whatever. It does explain precession of the equinoxes fairly neatly. It is the result of noting the frequency of binary systems involving g-class stars like our Sun. And, somebody had better find the companion darn soon if the theory stands a chance.

Smaller objects in the Oort cloud could do the job but the math calls for a bigger mass that never enters the Oort cloud. In fact, the Sun's binary companion would not be orbiting the Sun. The entire solar system and the companion would be orbiting the center of mass of the combined system.

[Odin2005]

24. Uh, no.

The cause of precession is well understood, it is cause by the competing gravitational effects of the Moon, Sun, and Jupiter.

[Scribe]

25. Gyroscopic precession is well understood and doesn't need all that.

And, it is the likely cause of the wobble of the Earth's axis which is believed to cause the Sun to move through the zodiac roughly every 25,000 years. I understand that, am educated in physics, and am hardly a proponent of the Binary theory. In fact, one of the principle points of the authors of Rare Earth (Why complex life is uncommon in the Universe) was the role our Moon plays in stabilizing the planet's axis.

But it is not a slam dunk. We cannot be certain the Earth's axis does wobble because we have no frame of reference from which we can observe it. So I don't understand the dogmatic reaction to the Binary system hypothesis. The only way it can be proved is if somebody finds a companion. But you can not prove the negative.

In fact, if you want to get really esoteric about it, you cannot be sure the Moon exists if no one is looking at it --- at least according to Erwin Schrodinger and the rest of his quantum physicists.

[Dead_Parrot]

26. Umm, what?

We cannot be certain the Earth's axis does wobble because we have no frame of reference from which we can observe it.

Er, yes we do, it's the stars. We can - and have - observed a shift of 1 degree over the last 72 years, about the ecliptic pole. And we can accuratley calculate the tidal forces acting on the earth - to the extent that I can tell you you that on new years eve 2009 the high tide in Welligton will be 450 cm at 16:35.

This doesn't mean that the isn't a binary companion: Just that nobody, from Hipparchus to Hawking, has found any evidence for it.

If you want to get all zen over the Copenhagen interpretaion, that's up to you. It won't change reality, though.

[Scribe]

27. Nope. Get off the planet! Otherwise, you have no perspective

from which you can tell exactly what is moving against the background of stars. The perceived axis shift from a planetary wobble is identical to the perceived shift seen on a fixed axis planet traveling in a 25,000 mile diameter orbital path.

I don't want to get too nerdy here on you but do the math. The only reference plane from which the actual cause of the precession of the equinoxes could be seen if there is a companion is the plane of rotation of the combined system. And, that can't be found until a companion is found.

But don't get all huffy and insist you can be certain that precession of the equinoxes is not related to a companion to Sol. You can not prove that negative based on observations from the planet.

I don't get all 'zen' over any interpretation of quantum mechanics. I just don't know but you seem to. Your last sentence surprised me. That is, you seem to claim actual knowledge of the nature of REALITY.

So, tell me Great Seer ... Is Copenhagen correct or are there many universes? Do hidden variables really power experiments with quantum entanglement or are tachyons carrying information backward in time?

I don't know for certain that the Sun doesn't have a companion. I can't know that for certain unless it does and it is found. Otherwise, it is a negative that cannot be proved. Why are so many people here unwilling to admit the possibility?

[OldCurmudgeon]

28. proving negatives

True, in general you can't prove a negative.

But it doesn't take proving a negative to knock down this "Dark Star" stuff.
You just have to do a sufficiently efficient and thorough search and not find the companion.

For example, the hypothesis "The earth has a second moon! Identical in size and orbital distance!". Would you say that we can't "prove it doesn't exist"? Just look in the sky: if you should be able to see it and you don't see it, then one must conclude that it's not there. Or is that proving a negative, which one "can't do"?

Now:

Assume that the precession of the equinoxes is caused by a "dark" companion to the sun. (It's fully explained by direct calculation, using Newtonian mechanics, fer cryin' out loud, but ignore that for now); perhaps with some other putative "anomalies" in solar system dynamics.

That assumption will result in a range of possible masses and orbital radii for a dark companion; perhaps the period of precession fully constrains the dark companion, perhaps not...in either case, there's some sizes and distances.

Now there's only a few choices for what such an object can be: black hole, neutron star, normal star, "brown dwarf". A normal star is ruled out because it would be stunningly obvious, one of the brightest objects in the night sky.

Black holes and neutron stars actually do emit a fair amount of radiation (we can compare to ones that are observed at much larger distances), but that radiation is mostly high-energy photons. There have been all-sky surveys for gamma- and X-ray point sources that set stringent limits that are sufficient to completely rule out any nearby black holes or neutron stars.

Brown dwarfs (normal matter non-fusing objects) are harder to see, but
should still show up in IR. There have been all-sky IR surveys (it's one of the first things astronomers to when they get a new observing window), and no companion found. There have also been searches for transient dips in brightness of stars caused by brown dwarfs occlusions, gravitational lensing, or other phenomina. I don't know that these surveys have been formally put together to make a "limit" on solar companions, but the lack of discovery announcements over the past decade or so of searches leads me to conclude that the formal limit is just a formality. There's nothing there.

[Scribe]

29. Thank You

for a reasoned response. I too don't think our Sun has a companion. But, I can't rule it out as impossible. It does seem that a Brown Dwarf would be the only realistic possibility. And it would be nearly impossible to find such an object by observation.

The dust-up over the binary system idea this time is apparently a direct result of the discovery of Sedna and the analysis of its highly elliptical orbit. It is also not the idea of some obscure crazy --- as the Science-Daily piece notes.

"The recent discovery of Sedna, a small planet like object first detected by Cal Tech astronomer Dr. Michael Brown, provides what could be indirect physical evidence of a solar companion." "Sedna is stuck, frozen in place; there's no way to move it, basically there's no way to put it there -- unless it formed there. But it's in a very elliptical orbit like that. It simply can't be there. There's no possible way - except it is. So how, then?"

Terrific! Anytime we discover an anomaly, we are likely to learn something new. So how did Sedna get there? What force is tugging on the Pioneer spacecrafts? What renews the methane in the Martian atmosphere? What a great time to be alive. So many questions. So many possibilities.

[Dead_Parrot]

30. We have a very good perspective from right here...

We can take, for instance, the galactic centre, the pole of the ecliptic and the Earth's rotational pole to give us three precise directions in space. Or you like, you can refer to quasars to give you an absolute, since at that distance you can call them pretty much fixed. Just measuring them them with reference to each other for a year or two will prove the Earth's wobble, and give you the data to calculate the period and magnitude. it's not a "perceived" shift, it's a measured shift.

And the only way a companion star could induce a wobble on our axis is via tidal forces. What the hell that would do to our orbit doesn't bear thinking about, but since we don't appear to be crashing into the sun or flying into outer space, it's safe to assume the answer lies a little closer to home.

I can, indeed, get "all huffy" about precession not being caused by a companion star. I did mention this isn't proof that there isn't one, just that if there is there's no sign of it anywhere - except a possible periodic bombardment by stuff flying out of the Oort cloud. Trying to calculate the specifics of such a body from it's effect on Earth would be like trying to calculate the orbit of Jupiter from watching a clock pendulum - it's a non-starter, I'm afraid...

The Great Seer happens to like Copenhagen. :D It has a certain elegance over pilot waves or many-worlds. Although you can put me in the same box as Schrödinger as Einstein for finding it less than appealing, it seems to keep coming back (a bit like the moon). But although you can play games with superfluids and superconducting rings to bring quantum effects into the macro world, anything bigger than a nucleus seems to be immune from the effects. Reality seems to be real enough, for us to shut up and do the math :).

[Scribe]

31. Now I understand our difference!

The Binary companion hypothesis has the Earth axis fixed. No wobble. No gravitational effect on the Earth (of any importance) from the companion. The axis of the planet traces a circle against the heavens every 25,000 years not because the axis travels in a circle but because the whole solar system does. No wobble allowed!

There would instead be just this great circle (or ellipse?) as the whole solar system moves around the center of mass of the combined system. Their theory produces exactly the same measured shift you mentioned.

You are correct that there is no observational evidence and I wouldn't expect there to be. It certainly wouldn't be a naked eye object. If our Sun has a Brown Dwarf companion, it seems to me that finding it by observation would be almost impossible. But, as I noted in a post above, this latest 'binary theory eruption' is caused by mathematical irregularities in Sedna's orbit.

This must end my participation in this topic because I don't want to be labeled as a proponent of Binary theory. I'm aware we have no need for another explanation of precession. I'm far more interested in your ideas about the Copenhagen interpretation because it requires a conscious observer and other interpretations do not.

[Dead_Parrot]

32. Yes and no...

It would produce the same effect looking just at the Earth's axis of rotation, but the pole of the ecliptic would also be wandering off (measured from Earth orbital plane, that is). There is a wobble of Earth's inclination, with a period of ~70ky, (relative to the ecliptic derived from Jupiter's orbit, which is more meaningful) but that's a different kettle of fish... :)

Don't worry, you've already said you don't support the binary theory. Personally, I wouldn't rule it out: If we had a mini black hole kicking around the system, it could cause all sorts of interesting perturbations but the accretion disk - the bit we can observe - would be tiny, and easily missed on a survey. Or we could imagine a glob of dark matter (what ever it is!) lurking around.

Hell, consider the great attractor in the Norma cluster - it's even pulling on our galaxy about from 250gly away, but we can't see anything there.

The point being, there's enough things we don't know about to get genuinely exited about, without having to twist up the things we do know about.

To get back to the OP, if Sedna's orbit is doing something funky (and I need to look at that properly, although I note no-one else seems to be getting exited about it) it might well indicate something else "out there": But we've barely started plotting KPOs, so I don't think it's anything to get overly exited about just yet...

As for Copenhagen, it never ends - you end up chasing Wigner's friend in and out of the building (or for that matter, do the experiment yourself and wait for Wigner's friend to look at you so you know which universe your in... This way lies madness. Intuitively, I would guess that the universe acts as it's own "observer": In the same way that you can add atoms of plutonium to each other without a problem, until you hit the critical mass and it goes bang, so you can can add wave functions and virtual interactions until you hit a "critical mass" and you've got reality. I think it would also solve the problem of single-particle inertia.

Needless to say, If I could prove that, I'd be catching the next flight to Stockholm rather than sitting here thinking about my shopping list. :)

Edit: Or you can blame God, of course. Scientists tend towards atheism, but if we chase the idea of naturalistic pantheism around the block, the collapse of waveforms becomes more an exercise in neurology that statistics...

[Scribe]

33. Other errors I made

I should have been more clear about crazy ideas. The hypothetical companion to our Sun could not also be hypothetical Nemesis. The notion of periodicity in Earth extinctions is out of favor now anyway. Indeed, the Chicxulub impact is losing support as the sole cause of dinosaur extinction. But the hypothetical companion wouldn't be disturbing the Oort cloud. That is a separate wild idea.

Nor would it have any relation to the even crazier ideas of Stitchen and others. But, a companion might be involved in defining the apparent sharp edge of the Kuiper Belt which we think we are just now seeing.

Quantum electrodynamics is the most accurate science we have in that our calculations agree with measured reality to more decimal places than any other science. I'd rather send you to Stockholm for having unlocked our access to the energy predicted by our calculations and physically exhibited in the Casimir effect.

"God is a mathematician," said Einstein. Maybe but I still wonder if the mathematical reality we see isn't imposed on the Universe by us. After all, the universe is its own observer ... through us.

[Dead_Parrot]

34. I wouldn't be too quick...

...to wipe out periodical extinctions. There is a hint of a pattern there. Whether it's in fashion or not is kind of irrelevant - It's either true or false: Certainly, the Chicxulub event did happen at about the right time, and probably pushed things in the right direction. whether it was caused by a "nemesis" is another question, but not one we can answer with 100% certainty: Nor can we rule out Silverpit or Boltysh as being part of the same event. Fascinating stuff.

I certainly can't rule out a sharp edge to the KPO orbits due to a "shepherd moon", although I'd proffer a bit of caution: I don't think we're that far advanced in our observations to be sure on the edge. We'll see, I guess.
_____

You've got to laugh at QED. We don't understand a thing about it (at a fundamental level), but we've got enough of a grasp to build computers - which rely on QED-based semiconductors to work. We've ended up building QED machines to simulate QED - kind of like learning what a wheel is by building a bicycle and riding around in a circle. Talk about bootstraps...

Out of interest, have you ever watched "Babylon 5"? Straczynski summed up your last point nicely: "We are the universe incarnate, trying to understand itself."

There are worse philosophies than that... :)

[Odin2005]

36. I don't see any evidence for a pattern.

If there is some cyclic pattern it probably has more to do the supercontinent cycle more then anything. I don't think impacts alone can cause a mass extinction, they have to occur together with other events that stress the biosphere, in the case of the K/T extinction there was massive volcanism in Inda and the Rockies as well as a massive drop in sea level besides the impact. The impact basin under Chesapeake Bay, as well as many other impact basins are not associated with any mass extinctions.