Planetary Discoveries

WHEN ASTRONOMERS NEED RETHINKING,
SITCHIN SMILES

     Two recent discoveries by astronomers in the fast-expanding field of Extrasolar Planets “challenge scientists to rethink current theories,” according to published reports.

     In both instances a smiling Zecharia Sitchin says, “The Sumerians did tell you so!”

     The latest buzz in the scientific community and the media concerns a discovery, reported in the journal Science of 11 July 2003, of “a giant planet amid a cluster of primitive stars.” The discovery, Science reported, “is challenging one of astronomers’ pet notions.” “It’s a big shock,” said the leader of the team of astronomers, astrophysicist Steinn Sigurdsson of Pennsylvania State University. “The discovery, based on measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope, challenges scientists to rethink theories of how, when and where planets form,” explained the science editor of The New York Times.

     Nicknamed “Metuselah planet,” the newly discovered planet is “almost three times as old as Earth.” It is the oldest extra solar planet so far discovered; it is almost as old as the Universe itself; and its discovery unsettles current theories about how and when planets could form around stars (suns).

The real issue: When and Where Life Began

     But why is this so shocking (especially since other findings, reported in May 2003, had already suggested that planets began to form earlier than astronomers believe)? To find out why the shock-effect extends beyond the astrophysical community one has to read the scientists’ conclusions:

     “This implies… that planet formation is more widespread and has happened earlier than previously believed.”      “What’s more,” Sigurdsson noted, “ancient planets would mean that life has had 5 billion or 6 billion years longer to appear than astronomers expected.”

     That life “happened” out there much before than on Earth – that is the shocking part of the new discovery…

Ancient Knowledge Corroborated

     This admission is music to my ears.   In my very first book The 12^th Planet and then in Genesis Revisited, I asserted that the well known Sumerian /Akkadian Epic of Creation (Enuma Elish) has to be treated not as mythical allegory but as a sophisticated cosmogony; and that the challenger that appeared at the edge of our solar system, coming from outer space, was a planet ejected from another distant solar system.  This entailed recognition by the authors of the ancient text that there are other solar systems in the universe with their own planets – a notion held impossible by astronomers until a few years ago.  It entailed the notion that stars and their planetary systems could explode, ejecting a planet to journey in space – another revolutionary astronomical aspect only recently accepted; and it entailed the even more challenging idea, that life exists elsewhere in the universe and could have and did evolve earlier than on Earth.

The “seed of life” – what we now call DNA – was brought into our solar system by the invader (Nibiru in Sumerian, Marduk to the Babylonians) and was transmitted to Earth during the collision with Tiamat (of which Earth is the remnant).  

     All those three incredibly advanced and sophisticated cosmological-scientific aspects of ancient knowledge are now corroborated by the just-announced findings.  

A “Tiamat” Discovered?

     According to Enuma Elish as interpreted by me, Sumerian cosmogony (or rather the Anunnaki who had told the Sumerians) held that our planetary system began with a messenger-planet near the Sun (”Mercury”) and a larger planet called Tiamat that orbited where the Asteroid Belt is now.  In the next phase, the two inner planets that we call Mars and Venus formed between Tiamat and the Sun; and after that, the outer planet formed in pairs; Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

     Drawn into the center of that early solar system, the invader Nibiru/Marduk was fated to collide with Tiamat.   One half of her was shattered and became the Asteroid Belt; the other more intact half was thrown into a new orbit and became the planet Earth.

     A week before the announcement by the U. Penn team (described above), a team of British, Australian and American astronomers announced the discovery of a solar system similar to ours in the constellation Puppis.  “There, in what is the closest resemblance to Earth’s solar system yet found in outer space, a Jupiter-like planet circles a sun-like star in an orbit that corresponds to one halfway between Mars and Jupiter in our own system.”

     The New York Times (7 July 2003) accompanied the report with a diagram showing the positions of the Sun, the Earth, Mars and Jupiter in our solar system, compared to a superimposed sketch of the newfound solar system with a planet, in a circular orbit, between Mars and Jupiter.

     Astronomers and reporters found the discovery exciting because the findings suggest that the solar system might also include “an Earthlike planet.”

     I find it exciting because, as my readers know, in our solar system, there indeed was a planet precisely between Mars and Jupiter: TIAMAT; and were it not for the collision, it would still be there.

     Once again, what the Sumerians learnt from the Anunnaki is proven right.

ZECHARIA SITCHIN

July 2003