A Most Peculiar Object In Our Solar System

By James Donahue

Astronomers have been calling it G1.9. It appears to be very large . . . some say about twice the size of Jupiter and located just beyond Pluto. It does not appear to be a planet and some have suggested it is a brown dwarf star. NASA is calling it a remnant of a supernova. A team of Spanish astronomers says it even has planets or large satellites circling it.

Fortunately, whatever GI.9 is, it is following an elliptical track around our Sun. This means that all of the doomsday theorists claiming it is the dangerous “Planet X,” or the alien planet Nibiru making its return swing through our solar system cannot claim G1.9 for their own.

G1.9 is far out in space, possibly on the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt, a large ring of debris that is known to be circling our solar system. While the object in the Kuiper Belt are believed to be mostly frozen methane, ammonia and water, that an object as large as G1.9 also exists in the belt suggests that the debris field may also be comprised of solids.

Since we haven’t the capability of jumping into a space craft and flying out for an up-close look at all of this stuff, we can only speculate at what is really there.

As we might expect, there is controversy among world astronomers as to just what G1.9 is, and if it poses a possible threat to our solar system and us. While NASA says everything is just fine, the Spanish astronomers and even Russian astronomers are expressing alarm over what they say is the recent discovery that G1.9 is changing. It appears to be growing in size.

Since the time the object was first discovered and identified as a “supernova remnant” in 1984 by Dave Green at the University of Cambridge, more recent observations by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory show that the object has grown in size by 16 percent.

NASA astronomers say a supernova does not expand that fast unless it has just exploded. Thus they suggest that G1.9 may be a very young supernova, possibly no more than 150 years old. The other explanation is that G1.9 is on a somewhat imperfect orbit and that this phase of its orbit has brought it closer to Earth than it was in 1984.

The Spanish team rebuts the NASA theory. They believe G1.9 is a brown dwarf star that is appearing larger in size because it is approaching our solar system.

Russian astronomers appear to be in agreement with the Spanish team. They say a supernova explosion that occurred 150 years ago would have been so visible on Earth that people would not have missed it. Such an event would have been well documented.

The Russians suggest that G1.9 is either a brown dwarf sun or perhaps even a new planet coming into or orbiting our solar system. They suggest that its presence close to the Kuiper Belt and its gravitational field is kicking loose many of the objects in the belt and sending them flying through the solar system. This, they say, may have been the reason Jupiter was struck by the Shoemaker-Levy Comet in 1994 and another large object in 2009. Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency, recently told Voice of Russia radio that they were so alarmed by the onslaught of these “space missiles” that his agency was preparing to try to protect Earth from such a strike.