One of the mysteries of the Sumerian civilization is their knowledge of an unknown 12th planet that orbits around the sun in 3,600 years.
The picture at the right (origin tbd) includes a star chart of our solar system that shows 12 round objects of which 11 are circling around a sun, in various sizes and at various distances.
To date, our solar system has the following 10 planets circling around the Sun: Mercury (#1, eyesight), Venus (#2, eyesight), Earth (#3), Mars (#4, eyesight), Jupiter (#5, 7th/8th century BC, unknown), Saturn (#6, eyesight), Uranus (#7, 128 BC, Hipparchos), Neptune (#8, 1612, Galileo), Pluto (#9, 1930, Clyde Tombaugh), Eris (#10, 2005, Mike Brown).
In 1999, astrophysicists John Matese, Patrick Whitman and Daniel Whitmire of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette were the first to propose the existence of a Planet X, which they called Tyche, “a hypothetical gas giant located in the Solar System‘s Oort cloud” (Wiki).
On 7 March 2014, NASA reported: “After searching hundreds of millions of objects across our sky, NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has turned up no evidence of the hypothesized celestial body in our solar system commonly dubbed “Planet X.”
In 2016, CalTech astronomer Mike Brown “announced that they have found new evidence of a giant icy planet lurking in the darkness of our solar system far beyond the orbit of Pluto. They are calling it “Planet Nine.” (eg, Astronomical Journal, WP).
The reference to Planet X, #10 or #9 works as follows: Pluto was planet #9 from 1930 to 2005. In 2006, Eris and Pluto were reclassified to dwarf planets. Hence, the 2016 name: Planet #9.
Although an orbit of 3,600 years around the sun is highly unusual, it is possible. In 2000, Mark Buie located a detached object called (148209) 2000 CR105 that “orbits the Sun in a highly eccentric orbit every 3305 years“. Mike Brown‘s website lists it as a possible dwarf planet with a diameter of 328 kilometres” (Wiki). That is small compared to Earth (12,756 km).
The interpretation of the clay tablets from the Sumerian civilization has been cause for a lot of speculation (eg, Zecharia Sitchin‘s book The Twelfth Planet). Unfortunately, such speculation often discredits history and ridicule remains (eg, WP article of 5 January 2017).
“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.” A J.R.R. Tolkien quote from The Lord of the Rings. Also see History, Legends & Myths (part 1, part 2).
Time Passages (1978) by Al Stewart – artist, lyrics, video, wiki-1, wiki-2
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