I've been reading the book
Nemesis: The Death Star, by Rich Muller. As he recounts in the book, Muller was the originator of the Nemesis
theory. He had to play devil's advocate to geologic evidence of period mass extinctions that he was presented by Louis Alvarez, who was trying to
discredit the information. In doing so, he came up with the theory of a companion star. The paper he published some time later was in concert with
another paper published by Whitmire et al, but Whitmire's work began when the periodicity findings were publicized. Muller's theory, on the other
hand, came about before the periodicity information had spread beyond its discoverers (Raup and Sepkoski), Louis Alvarez, and himself.
In the course of developing the theory, Muller entertained the idea that the periodic extinctions were caused by a companion star which swept into the
inner solar system every 26 million years. Aside from the orbital period, this is identical to Nibiru. And here's what happened to that theory...
Muller's idea was reviewed by Shoemaker, and he immediately shot it down. As a renowned astrophysicist and specialist in orbital mechanics, he saw
that such an orbit would be unstable. Muller wasn't aware of exactly WHY such an orbit would be unstable, but, after some research of his own, he
found the answer.
A companion star cannot have a sufficiently elliptical orbit to periodically enter the inner solar system and cause mass extinctions on Earth every 26
million years because, as the star passes close to the sun, it gains angular momentum. This surplus momentum then affects the orbit of the companion
star and increases its semi-major axis. Because of this, the next close approach to the sun will be nowhere near as close as the first approach. In
fact, what was, on the first orbit, a perihelion of about 1 AU, would become, on the second orbit, a perihelion of a couple dozen AUs. Thus, the orbit
is unstable and cannot account for extinction periodicity.
This means that, not only is the orbital period of Nibiru impossible at the distance it's claimed to be (as I've shown numerous times in another
thread), the orbit, itself, is also unstable and physically incapable of producing periodic mass extinctions.
It was this fact that lead Muller to hypothesize that the companion did not enter the inner solar system to disturb the asteroid belt, but rather came
only close enough to disturb the comets in the Oort cloud. This was the birth of the Nemesis theory, and it was borne of the impossibility of the
Nibiru myth.
edit on 25-2-2011 by CLPrime because: (no reason given)