Topics: Space, International Space Station, Technology, Science, World News
Now that Earth is in a bit of a pickle with its climate, maybe there’s a way for us to find another.
Well, this might be a reality as there have been theories for thousands of years that there is a second Earth.
It all began in ancient Greece, where the philosopher Philolaus theorised that there was a ‘counter-Earth’ hidden behind the Sun.
This Earth is called Antichthon, and though it may seem strange to think that there would be another Earth hidden from view, it answered a lot of questions back then.
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For example, it could potentially explain lunar eclipses.
Aristotle famously believed that lunar eclipses were caused by the ‘interposition’ of counter Earth, and that our Earth and Sun rotate around a ‘central fire’, which cannot be seen and casts a shadow on the moon.
Obviously, when we started to look at the Solar System away from being Earth-centric, the idea of Antichthon started to be forgotten.
However, there may be a possibility that it could be true.
According to Olga Balsalobre-Ruza, lead author on the theory, this type of world could exist.
She said in a statement: “Who could imagine two worlds that share the duration of the year and the habitability conditions? Our work is the first evidence that this kind of world could exist.”
“We can imagine that a planet can share its orbit with thousands of asteroids as in the case of Jupiter, but it is mind-blowing to me that planets could share the same orbit.”
Even though it could happen in another Solar System, it’s just not happening with ours.
Sorry, guys.
You might think that because we can’t see behind the Sun that we don’t know what’s lurking behind it, but we do.
This is because we can see how planets influence others, which is how Neptune was discovered.
By observing that Uranus's orbit was being influenced by an unknown planet beyond it, researchers realised that there had to be another planet.
So, because we haven’t seen this type of influence, we know that there isn’t something behind out Sun.
There was even an experiment which looked at the orbits of the planets to see if an "anti-Earth" dubbed "Clarion" was added into our current models, but it was soon found that it would be disturbed by the orbit of Venus, and become visible to us very quickly.
The authors of this study said: "During the 112 years covered by the integration the separation becomes large enough in all cases that Clarion should have been directly observed, particularly at times of morning or evening twilight and during total solar eclipses.”
"The most obvious effect of the presence of Clarion, however, is its influence on the positions of the other planets. During the past 150 years precise observations by means of meridian circles have been made of the motions of the principal planets of the Solar System. Differences introduced, by the presence of an anti-Earth (Clarion) of non-negligible mass, in the motions of Venus, Earth, and Mars could not have remained undetected in this period."
So, there really is nothing there after all.
