The ghostly drummer of Hickling Broad

 

Potter Heigham is a small village in Norfolk, not far from Hickling Broad. In the winter before the battle of Waterloo in 1815, a drummer boy, home on leave, fell in love with a girl from the village.

Though she returned his love, her father refused to accept a soldier as a son-in-law and the two were compelled to meet secretly at a place called Swim Coots, close to the Broad. Every evening the drummer boy would skate across the ice-covered Broad to meet her, but one night the ice gave way and he fell into the Broad and drowned.

However, his ghost still skated across the ice to meet his sweetheart. It is said that, at 7 o’clock on a misty February evening, the role of a drum can be heard across the Broad as the phantom skater appears through the gloom, beating a tattoo as he tries to summon his long lost love.

© John Welford

McRaven House, a haunted house in Vicksburg, Mississippi

 

McRaven House, on Harrison Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi, played an important role during the American Civil War and also features on lists of notorious “haunted houses”.

When General Grant captured Vicksburg in 1863 he established the Union headquarters at McRaven House, from where he was able to direct operations concerned with control of the Mississippi River. Stationed at the house were Colonel Wilson and his aide, Captain McPherson. McPherson’s role was to liaise between the occupying troops and the residents of the town.

One night, MacPherson did not return from his usual tour of the vicinity and was declared to be missing. On the following night, so it is said, the mutilated apparition of Captain MacPherson, dripping with blood, appeared to Colonel Wilson and told him that he had been murdered by Confederate sympathisers and his body thrown into the river.

Since that time, the ghost of Captain McPherson has continued to appear to occupants of McRaven House, each time telling them the same story.

McPherson’s ghost is not the only one to have been seen. Other Civil War soldiers and a woman with long brown hair have also been reported.

Despite the building being blessed by a priest in 1991, ghostly sightings have continued at McRaven House, which has become a popular tourist destination.

© John Welford

The Voynich Manuscript

 

The Voynich Manuscript is one of the stranger items held by the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts library of Yale University. Physically, it is a tiny notebook comprising pages of text and illustrations, mainly of plants, but also including astronomical and astrological charts, recipes, and pictures of naked women. However, the text is in a language that nobody has ever been able to translate or decipher, which means that the origin and purpose of the manuscript are still shrouded in mystery ever since it first came to public attention before World War I.

 

Wilfred Voynich

Wilfred Voynich (1865-1930) was a dealer in books and manuscripts who operated firstly in London and then in New York. While working in London, having opened his business there in 1895, he undertook regular trips to continental Europe seeking items that he could purchase for sale in his shop. It was on such a trip in 1912 that he acquired the manuscript that has ever since borne his name.

One mystery, apart from the nature of the manuscript, is precisely how Voynich came to own it. He claimed that he had bought it in a castle in southern Europe. However, it emerged in the 1960s, more than 30 years after his death, that he had acquired it from a Jesuit college in Italy, along with some other documents. It also appears that Voynich might have stolen it from the college’s library as opposed to acquiring it legally.

Voynich claimed that there had been a letter accompanying the manuscript and that this was by a 17th-century scientist from Prague who in turn claimed that it had been written by Roger Bacon, the 13th century English philosopher who was known to have been interested in the subjects covered by the manuscript. Voynich, as a dealer, would have had every reason for wanting to believe such a story, to which he added the idea that the manuscript could have been taken to Prague by the Elizabethan alchemist John Dee, who was known to have visited Prague and to have met the Emperor who, according to the supposed letter, had owned the manuscript.

 

Real or Fake? 

This is the question that has been at the heart of the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript ever since its appearance. The suspicion that Voynich had acquired a clever forgery, or perhaps created it himself, was always going to be present in the mind of anyone tempted to part with the large sum of money for which Voynich sought to sell it. However, the best way by which Voynich might possibly have been able to prove its provenance, without the equally mysterious letter that he no longer possessed, would have been to offer a translation of the text, which could then have been compared with other known works by Roger Bacon. It would be remarkable for a forger or dubious dealer to be unable to offer this definitive proof, so the fact that Voynich could never do so does seem to count in his favour as a dealer offering a genuine item for sale.

Carbon dating of the vellum on which the text was written – a technique that was not available during Voynich’s lifetime – has shown that it dates from the early 15^th century, and the style of the handwriting matches that time period, thus proving that it could not have been the work of Roger Bacon. However, the fact remains that it could have been forged at an even later date – there is no reason why a modern forger could not have used 15^th century vellum and copied the appropriate handwriting style.

 

But what is it?

That is the other major mystery surrounding the manuscript. The text is written in a language that has resisted all efforts at translation, as it resembles no known language and the characters are not recognizable as letters in any known alphabet. No codebreaker has been able to suggest a possible cipher that might be of use.

At first sight, the notebook appears to be a herbal, by which is meant a guide to herbs and other plants that could be used in medicinal preparations, together with notes on how to make them. However, very few of the illustrations can be identified as being those of actual plants, so how could the document have had any practical use even if the text made sense to someone?

One suggestion that has been offered is that it is an example of “outsider art”. This is work produced by somebody undergoing some kind of mental breakdown, and there have certainly been cases of people suffering hallucinations or severe psychosis who have devoted many hours to creating extraordinary artworks and documents that made no sense to anyone apart from, possibly but by no means certainly, themselves.

As it is, the Voynich Manuscript remains a mystery. Unsellable, it ended up being presented to the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts library of Yale University, where it remains to this day.

© John Welford

 

Nell Crook and the Dark Entry of Canterbury Cathedral

 

The Dark Entry is a passage that runs between Canterbury Cathedral’s Green Court and the old infirmary cloister, passing underneath the building known as the Prior’s Lodging. It is reputedly haunted by the ghost of Nell Crook, who lived and died during the reign of King Henry VIII in the 16^th century.

A servant of a canon of the cathedral, she discovered that her employer was having an affair with his niece. Out of jealousy, she killed them both by serving them with a poisoned pie. Her crime was uncovered and her fate was to be buried alive beneath the pavement of the Dark Entry.

Her ghost has haunted the passageway ever since, particularly on Friday nights! It is advisable to avoid the Dark Entry at these times, given that seeing Nell’s ghost will bring about one’s own death, or so it is said.

The story is one of many told by the Rev R H Barham (1788-1845), writing as Thomas Ingoldsby in The Ingoldsby Legends, which first appeared in 1837. These were macabre, satirical and witty tales, mainly in verse, that continued the fashion for horror and mystery that was current in the early 19^th century, but in a form that was suitable for children.

So did Nell Crook ever really exist, or was she merely an invention on the part of Rev Barham? Who knows?

© John Welford

The Devil's Footprints

 

Did the Devil visit East Devon in February 1855? There are still some people today who think that this is the only possible explanation.

On the morning of 9th February, after a two-inch fall of snow and a severe frost, people came out of their houses to find strange footmarks leading across the frozen countryside in single file. The marks, resembling those of a donkey’s hooves, were in a single line with each print 8 inches apart, one in front of the other. They certainly looked as though they have been made by a two-legged as opposed to a four-legged animal.

The trail was on both sides of the estuary of the River Exe, for a distance of as much as 100 miles. It zigzagged about, leading through gardens, over gates, haystacks, walls and roofs. Local people reported seeing the prints in some very strange places, such as under a gooseberry bush and through a 6-inch pipe. When dogs were brought in to investigate a thicket through which the trail passed, they retreated, howling in terror.

As might be expected, the event was widely reported and several newspapers made careful investigations. Attempts to reach a logical conclusion as to the cause were not helped by the differing descriptions and drawings supplied by witnesses.

It was soon revealed that the trail was not made in a single night but over several. It also became clear that the footmarks were not consistent along the whole length of the trail. In places it looked as though they might have been made by large birds, particularly those prints seen on rooftops.

Many suggestions were made to explain how the footmarks on the ground could have been made. Although most people thought that they looked as though they had been made by a donkey, others said that badgers, otters, cranes and even mountain wildcats were responsible. One amateur naturalist even thought that the prints most closely resembled those of a kangaroo!

It was the fact that the prints were clearly those of a cloven hoof that gave rise to the notion that the Devil himself had visited East Devon. At Woodbury they led up to the church door and looked as though they had been made by a hot iron. The work of a practical joker could not therefore be discounted, at least at this location.

Whatever the cause of this strange phenomenon, many local people refused to leave home after sunset for a long time afterwards. They, at least, were convinced that the Devil had singled out Devon for his special attention.

© John Welford

St Dunstan, the Devil and a pair of tongs

 

In the convent of the Holy Child Jesus at Mayfield in Sussex is a pair of tongs which tradition claims was the property of the great Saxon churchman St Dunstan, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 960 to 978. However, this cannot be true, because although the Monastery stands on the site of Mayfield Palace, where Dunstan lived when he was Archbishop of Canterbury, the tongs were certainly not made before the 13^th century, some 300 years after Dunstan’s death.

Many stories were told about the piety of Dunstan and his conversion to Christianity, and some of these make mention of rumours that he had occult powers and may even have dabbled in black magic.

After his conversion by St Alphege, he divided his time between spreading the message of the Gospels and working as a blacksmith at Mayfield. The legend concerning his thwarting of the Devil comes from this time.

One day, so the story goes, the Devil was so enraged by the work that Dunstan was doing as a Christian that he disguised himself as a beautiful young woman and set about seducing him.

Dunstan did not even look up as he worked at his anvil, while the Devil danced around the room. At one point, the dance became so animated that the devil’s skirts rode up to reveal the hooves on his feet, which might seem a bit strange given his otherwise immaculate impersonation of a young maiden.

Dunstan promptly seized a pair of red-hot tongs from the forge and clamped them onto the Devil’s nose. His screams could be heard up to three miles away as he fled from the forge. As he flew through the sky he caught sight of the springs of Tunbridge Wells, swooped down, and plunged his nose into the water.

To this day, the spa water of Tunbridge Wells still tastes of sulphur!

© John Welford

Were the Dogons visited by aliens from outer space - or somewhere closer?

People who are keen to believe that aliens from outer space have visited Planet Earth at various times in our history sometimes point to the Dogon people of Mali (West Africa) as evidence of such a visitation.

This is because the Dogons appear to possess certain pieces of astronomical knowledge that they could never have worked out for themselves. In particular, they are very well informed about the star Sirius. This was reported by a French anthropologist named Marcel Griaule who studied the Dogon people during the mid-20^th century and wrote about them in 1946.

The Dogon people knew that Sirius was a double star, with one of the pair taking 50 years to orbit the other. This was extraordinary knowledge, given that the companion star is too faint to be seen with the naked eye and the Dogons did not have telescopes to look through.

What explanation could there have been for this knowledge? Surely they must have been visited at some time by aliens who lived on a planet that orbited one of the Sirius stars?

Or might it have had something to do with the team of astronomers who had visited Mali in 1893 to view a solar eclipse?

© John Welford

Exploring the Summer Triangle

The Summer Triangle is the name given to an area of the night sky that contains several features of interest for the amateur astronomer.

Out On The Lawn

In 1933 W H Auden wrote a poem (“A Summer Night”) that begins with the lines:

Out on the lawn I lie in bed

Vega conspicuous overhead
In the windless night of June …

Leaving aside the merits of the poem – and there are many – nobody could fault Auden’s astronomical knowledge. On a clear night in June, if you lie looking up at the stars on an English lawn in June you will hardly fail to be aware of the prominent star Vega, which is the fifth brightest star in the entire sky. 

Vega forms one of the extremities of what is known as the Summer Triangle, the other points being Altair and Deneb. The Triangle is what is termed an “asterism”, by which is meant an arrangement of stars other than an officially recognised constellation. Altair forms the lowest point of the triangle, with Vega to the top right and Deneb at the top left.

All three stars are also members of constellations: Vega is in Lyra (The Lyre), Deneb in Cygnus (The Swan) and Altair in Aquila (The Eagle). Each named star is the brightest in its constellation.

An Optical Illusion

It is easy to imagine that the constellations and asterisms seen with the naked eye represent actual associations of stars that are relatively close to each other. However, this is rarely the case, because what we are seeing are stars along certain lines of sight when viewed from Earth. A star can be many times further away from us than its apparent neighbor, and the Summer Triangle provides an excellent example of this fact. 

The closest of the three stars to Earth is Altair. It is 16.7 light years away, which means that we are seeing it as it was 16.7 years ago. Vega is 25 light years away but appears to be somewhat brighter than Altair. That is because Vega is considerably more luminous than Altair, which is a main sequence dwarf star – as is our own Sun. Altair is 11 times more luminous than the Sun, but Vega is 52 times more luminous and therefore appears brighter than Altair despite being considerably further away.

Even more striking is the case of Deneb. It appears to be three times fainter than Vega, but that is because it is nowhere near as close. It has been estimated that it could be between 1,550 and 2,600 light years away, and would be invisible to the naked eye were it the same sort of star as Vega or Altair. However, Deneb is a white supergiant star with a diameter 200 times greater than that of our Sun and it is 200,000 times more luminous. Were Deneb to be at the same distance from us as is Vega, it would appear so bright that it would cast shadows at night and be visible in daylight!

The Milky Way

If the sky is dark and the Moon not shining, a viewer of the Summer Triangle will not fail to be impressed by the sweep of the Milky Way crossing the Triangle between Vega and Altair. It is even more impressive when viewed through a telescope.

This “river” is the combined light of the many millions of stars that form part of our galaxy. The tilt of Planet Earth means that viewers in the Northern Hemisphere can only look “outwards” whereas in the Southern Hemisphere you would look “inwards” towards the heart of the galaxy. That is not a great limitation as far as northern viewers are concerned, because our Sun lies in one of the outer swirls of the galaxy (the Orion Arm) and there is plenty to see that is in the same swirl as ourselves and in swirls even further out, such as the Perseus and Cygnus Arms.

Albireo

This star is just to the left of a line drawn between Vega and Altair and about halfway along that line. It can be seen with the naked eye, but even a modest telescope will reveal it to be a double star with strongly contrasting components in terms of color – Beta Cygni A is amber and Beta Cygni B is blue-green. It has been suggested that Beta Cygni A is itself a double star, making Alberio a triple-star system.

However, the jury is still out over whether Alberio represents a true double/triple, with the components orbiting a common centre of gravity, or whether this is an optical double with Beta Cygni A and Beta Cygni B merely being seen along very close lines of sight.

Epsilon Lyrae

If there are questions about the composition of Alberio, there are none about Epsilon Lyrae, which lies quite close (visually) to Vega. This is a genuine “double double”, with the two main components also being doubles. You would need very good eyesight – or modest binoculars – to resolve the main division, but something much stronger in terms of telescopic power to see the system in all its glory – around 200x magnification in a four-inch aperture telescope should do the trick!

The impression that these stars are sitting on top of each other is easy to gain but somewhat misleading. The Epsilon Lyrae system (which probably contains more than the four stars indicated above) is 162 light years away, which is 6.5 times further away than Vega. The fact that it is possible to resolve the components at all using standard ground-based equipment must mean that they are at some distance from each other. Each of the two doubles are around 120 AUs (astronomical units) apart. Given that an AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun, that distance takes you considerably beyond the orbit of any known object in the solar system – the most remote object discovered to date is at 103 AUs and Pluto is almost cheek by jowl with the Sun at an average distance of 39.5 AUs!

The distance between the two main pairs in Epsilon Lyrae is on a completely different scale, at 10,500 AUs. When seen in the context of its own star system that sounds like a vast distance; however, when one considers that the distance to the Sun’s nearest star neighbor, Proxima Centauri, is 268,000 AUs, the Epsilon Lyrae stars sound to be almost touching each other!

Nebulas M57 and M27

Two impressive planetary nebulas can be seen in the Summer Triangle. A nebula looks like a fuzzy star when seen through low-resolution equipment, but a better telescope will reveal its true nature, namely the expelled outer layers of an ancient red giant star that reached the end of its life as a giant and continued as a white dwarf.

M57, which is known as the Ring Nebula, is about halfway between Vega and Alberio, slightly to the right of an imaginary line between them. A three-inch aperture or larger telescope will reveal the dramatic colors of what has been described as a “celestial smoke ring”. M57 is 2,300 light years away from us.

Alberio lies halfway between M57 and M27, which is known as the Dumbbell Nebula. It is brighter and larger than M57 and closer to us at 1,360 light years. It is easier to spot than M57 and was in fact the first planetary nebula to be identified. It has been calculated that the original red giant star threw off its outer layers about 14,500 years ago, leaving its core behind as a white dwarf star that is the largest such star discovered to date.

Time spent with a moderately powerful telescope pointed at the Summer Triangle will be well rewarded!

© John Welford

All aboard the starship to Proxima Centauri!

Let’s suppose that – 100 years hence, maybe – it is decided that Planet Earth is no longer inhabitable and the human race will have to decamp to another planet if it is to survive. After much debate it is concluded that Mars is far from suitable so the journey will have to take a lot longer – to the next nearest planet that could sustain human life, namely one that orbits Proxima Centauri B, some four light years away.

OK – we know that light can make the journey in four years, but no spacecraft could possibly travel at anything like that speed. Indeed, the best we can imagine given the propulsion technology available to us is around 700,000 kilometres per hour, which means that the journey would take around 6,300 years!

Is that feasible? Let’s imagine what that would involve. Of course, if a spacecraft left Earth with a journey of that length in mind, the astronauts who began it would die of old age before they had gone even a fraction of that distance. The only option would be for a whole community of people to set off in a very large spaceship that could not only sustain life for thousands of years but enable them to breed new generations of people as they went along.

An awful lot of new generations! If you estimate that a new generation arrives on average every 25 years, that is more than 250 generations that will be born, live and die during the voyage. It is now 2018 – 6,300 years ago our ancestors by 250 generations were living in 4282 BC, when agriculture was first being developed in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, metalworking was in its infancy in some parts of the world and the Pyramids and Stonehenge were still thousands of years into the future!

Can you imagine what it would be like to spend your whole life on a vast starship whizzing through space, knowing that you had absolutely no choice in the matter and that you would die exactly where you had been born, your only real function being to produce the right number of babies to keep the community in perfect balance? 

Presumably it would be essential to develop virtual reality to the extent that people could lead entirely artificial but realistic lives, maybe similar to that of the hero of “The Truman Show”? Otherwise everyone would surely lose their minds!

There is also the question of preventing disease from wiping out the community before it gets to where it’s going. That will imply the thoroughgoing screening of all the “starters” to make sure that there are no genetic imperfections that could lead to fatal or debilitating conditions emerging several generations down the line. It will also mean that some of the community will have to learn medical skills as they go along – presumably from previous generations or from a highly sophisticated library.

How much lifestyle choice will the voyagers be allowed to have? Suppose that a substantial portion declare themselves to be gay and refuse to breed? Should this be a genetic trend that is screened out at the outset, or would that mean introducing a form of eugenics – extreme social engineering – that is morally indefensible?

And who will enforce the rules down the generations? How will they do it, and what sanctions will be at their disposal?

Hm! A lot of questions! So is the idea even remotely conceivable? It may surprise you to learn that there are people who have given serious thought to these issues and produced computer models for the ideal starship community – apparently you start off with 49 men and 49 women and that is what you get at the end! 

It sounds crazy to me – what do you think?

© John Welford

Psyche could reveal secrets about Earth

There is a small minor planet, only 210 kilometres across, that could unlock some of the secrets of our own planet. This is Psyche, which orbits in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. 

There is a lot that we don’t know about the origin and inner structure of Earth. In particular, we do not know exactly how the planet came to be formed or what the composition is of its solid metal core. We cannot examine this directly because it is surrounded by thousands of kilometres of molten metal and magma. 

So where does Psyche come into the picture?

Observations of the asteroid reveal that it is composed almost entirely of solid metal, and there is nothing else in the solar system – as far as we know – of which this can be said. The implication is that Psyche is a remnant of a former planet that was once considerably larger, but was so battered about by collisions with other objects that all the outer layers were knocked off to leave only the solid metal core. Could this therefore be similar to what lies at the heart of Planet Earth?

Astronomers are keen to send a probe to Psyche to find out. A launch date for a mission to Psyche has been set for 2022, with the destination reached in 2026. 

The spacecraft will be equipped with a range of instruments to enable the nature of Psyche’s gravity to be established, which will in turn allow deductions to be made about its composition and structure. There will also be a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer on board, which will be used to discover the exact range of metals of which Psyche is composed. It is thought that the main elements will be iron and nickel, but there is a distinct possibility that silver, gold, palladium, copper and iridium will also be present.

The purpose of the mission is to gain knowledge, from which inferences will be made about Earth’s interior. The assumption is that the early solar system contained many similarly composed lumps of metal, most of which coalesced and ended up as planetary cores.

However, there is also room for speculation about how such a world might be a source of future benefit to mankind in terms of its content. All that metal, just sitting there doing nothing! An estimate has been made of what Psyche might be worth in terms of monetary value, and it is a truly staggering figure,  namely ten quintillion dollars – a one followed by nineteen zeros!

If anyone imagines that all that metal could be transferred to Earth and the value realized, they need to think again. For one thing, the idea is pure fantasy. For another, the value of something like gold depends on its scarcity – make vast quantities of it available and it will no longer be valuable!

© John Welford

Arsonist birds

Eyewitness accounts from Australia have suggested that certain species of bird of prey practice a food-finding technique that involves spreading fire with the intention of driving prey to where it can more easily be caught.

What they do is visit an area where a fire is taking place (usually started by natural means such as a lightning strike), take burning sticks from the fire and then drop those sticks in a non-burning area which then catches fire. Small mammals and birds flee the fire and are then caught by the raptors, which are mainly black kites, whistling kites and brown falcons.

A report cites the evidence of a firefighter in Northern Territory who was fighting a blaze near a uranium mine when he saw a whistling kite – only 20 metres away – take a burning stick and drop it on the other side of the road from the fire. This caused a new fire to break out. The witness reckoned that at least seven new fires were caused by the kites.

Another firefighter reported a similar event in which hundreds of kites swirled above a wildfire and were able to start new fires in grassland 50 metres away. 

It is believed that such action is quite common, especially when it appears that the original fire is unlikely to spread or will soon be extinguished, meaning that no more prey will be forced out unless the birds take matters into their own beaks and ensure that fresh fires break out.

There is evidence that this behaviour is not limited to Australia, with reports of similar incidents coming from Asia, Africa and the Americas. It is quite possible that wildfires that were thought to have been spread by the wind, or even by human arsonists, may have raptor birds as the culprits.

It has also been suggested that spreading fire in order to catch prey may be something that birds have done for hundreds of thousands of years. Indeed, using fire to gather food may be something that predates the existence of human beings. Raptor birds evolved millions of years before humans did, and may have “tamed” fire long before any of them clapped eyes on a human.

© John Welford

The Great Comet of 1680

The comet that appeared in the sky in November 1680 has two main claims to fame. It was the first to be discovered by telescope and the first to have a known orbit. 

It was found by accident by Gottfried Kirch, a German astronomer, when he was actually observing the Moon through his telescope, but as it approached closer to Earth it became clearly visible to everyone as it streaked across the sky. 

The orbit was calculated by Isaac Newton who made use of his new theory of universal gravity, publishing his results in his “Principia Mathematica” in 1687. 

The Great Comet was seen twice – once as a morning phenomenon as it headed towards the Sun and later in the evenings as it made its return journey towards the outer regions of the Solar System. Newton was the first person to appreciate that these appearances were of the same comet. It had previously been assumed that comets travelled in straight lines, passing through only once. Newton’s discovery that comets travelled round the Sun in parabolic curves was what enabled Edmund Halley to predict that the comet named after him would return every 76 years.

Robert Hooke, the English physicist, noticed a stream of light issuing from the comet’s nucleus. This was the first description of the emanation of jets of material from active areas.

The Great Comet will not be seen again in the lifetime of anyone alive today. Its orbit takes it into the outer regions of the Solar System and it will not return for more than 9,000 years!

© John Welford

The Vela Supernova Remnant

The Vela Supernova Remnant is an object within the constellation of Vela, which can only be seen in the southern Hemisphere. It is about 6,000 light years away.

Around 10,000 years ago a massive star exploded as a supernova that would have been easily visible from Earth. It has been estimated that – for a short time – it would have been as bright as the Moon in the night sky. 

At the heart of the Remnant is a pulsar, this being a rapidly spinning neutron star that is the extremely dense core – only 12 miles in diameter - of the original star. The pulsar rotates about 11 times every second, emitting radiation as it does so. At gamma-ray wavelengths the Vela Remnant is the brightest object in the sky.

The Vela pulsar was only the second such object to be discovered optically, the flashes being observed in 1977. 

The Remnant itself is a spherical shell of material that has been expanding into the interstellar medium ever since the supernova explosion.

© John Welford

Planet X and The Goblin

Astronomers have long taken the view that the Solar System has a planet that nobody has seen but which might offer an explanation for some of the phenomena that have been discovered and which present as-yet-unanswered questions. This planet is believed to be of substantial size and therefore unlike any of the dwarf planets that are known to exist in the outer reaches of the Solar System. However, it is the very size and mass of this planet that is believed to cause the phenomena in question, such as the elongated orbits of the dwarf planets and the existence of comets that are sent hurtling towards the inner Solar System from their natural orbits way beyond that of Pluto.

The planet has been given the title Planet X – the X can either be taken to signify “unknown” or the Roman numeral for ten. It would have been the tenth planet when Pluto was still regarded as the ninth. 

In October 2015 a new dwarf planet was discovered that might help in the search for Planet X. The dwarf is about 300 kilometres in diameter and probably consists of a ball of ice. It was nicknamed “The Goblin” thanks to its discovery at around Halloween.

Work done since the initial discovery has shown that the Goblin has an extremely elongated orbit that takes it about 2300 times further away from the Sun than Earth. A complete orbit would take about 40,000 Earth years.

The Goblin would appear to be orbiting as one of a cluster of similar objects, which poses the question of why such a cluster might form. The intriguing thought is that Planet X, if it exists, would have precisely the effect that is being seen, namely providing a gravitational tug that herds objects including the Goblin into their extreme orbits.

This suggests that Planet X has a similarly elongated orbit and might therefore be so far away from the Sun at present that it is unlikely to be seen from Earth any time soon. But at least the discovery of the Goblin gives astronomers hope that they are looking in the right direction.

(The illustration is an artist’s impression of another dwarf planet, namely Sedna)

©John Welford

Space is not completely empty

A vacuum is defined as a space that contains absolutely nothing, and it is often thought that the space between the stars and galaxies constitutes a perfect vacuum.

However, this is not necessarily so. Within every cubic kilometre of space there will be at least a few atoms of dust and gas.

It has been discovered that interstellar space (i.e. the space between our solar system and neighbouring stars) contains atoms of hydrogen and helium as well as small amounts of dust. The proportion of these is 90% hydrogen, 9% helium and 1% dust.

The dust comprises silicates (compounds of silicon and oxygen), carbon and iron.

Intergalactic space contains minute amounts of ionized hydrogen, by which is meant hydrogen nuclei from which their electrons (one per atom) have been stripped away. 

So space is not empty – just very nearly so!

© John Welford