Nibiru, a solar lunacy

The Wind From The Sun aka Sunjammer is an iconic short story by Arthur C Clarke. It features a race between solar yachts — space vehicles powered by solar radiation, using mirrors that capture charged particles emanating from the sun.

There is a continuous stream of such particles. Though the power of the solar radiation is low, it could impart a small, continuous acceleration to a low-mass yacht. Given zero friction, as is the case in space, such a vehicle could move faster and faster and faster.

In the story, Sunjammer, a yacht developed by a lone eccentric, competes with the Lebedev, a spacecraft developed by a Soviet university, as other competitors drop out to mechanical failures. Eventually the race is called off, because of a huge solar flare that could fry all the pilots. Sunjammer’s inventor abandons his craft, knowing that it will continue to accelerate as it heads out of the Solar System. 

The pressure of solar radiation and the possibility of utilising for motive power have been recognised for at least 400 years. It must be compensated for when designing and navigating spacecraft. Johannes Kepler speculated about the possibility of using solar radiation as a propulsive source way back in 1610, when he wrote about it in a letter to Galileo. 

By the 1870s, James Clerk Maxwell’s Electromagnetic Equations had confirmed such particles had momentum and, thus, made the concept theoretically sound. Pyotr Lebedev (who receives a nod in the story) experimentally verified it in the late 19th century. Albert Einstein added another layer of theory with the General Theory of Relativity and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, in Pasadena, started experimenting with it in the 1970s.

Solar flares are also well known. The sun is a ball of plasma consisting of gases which have been ionised due to the electrons stripped off by heat and pressure. Every so often, the sun ejects massive tongues of material that flow out of the surface of the “ball”. Those flares lead to a sudden increase in brightness and interfere with radio waves, causing high static when they reach the Earth. The big ones can knock out radio communications (and radar) at specific wave-lengths for brief periods. Along with sunspots — storms on the solar surface that cause dark “pimples” — these flares can be the bane of communication engineers. 

Solar radiation, which carries quantities of x-rays and ultra-violet, can cause cancers and damage DNA. The Earth’s magnetic field protects biological entities from the potentially dangerous effects of such solar activity by capturing charged particles in the upper atmosphere in what is called the Van Allen Belt. Mars may be unfit for human colonisation precisely because it lacks a strong magnetic field, which means that the planet is open to unshielded radiation.

As the above should make it clear, scientists have been studying these phenomena for centuries. And no, as every scientist will admit, they don’t understand everything about these processes. But they do understand a great deal, and they expect to understand more as the research continues. It is quite possible, for example, that these phenomena have an impact on climate since they certainly lead to changes in the brightness of the sun. That’s one area of focus.

Charlatans who know nothing whatsoever about these processes insist on coming up with weird explanations for them. Sadly, such charlatans are also taken seriously by supposedly educated people who insist on giving them a “fair hearing”.

There’s heightened solar flare activity at the moment. This is being linked by lunatic conspiracy theorists to “Nibiru”. Nibiru is a non-existent giant planet, which will destroy 1) the Earth 2) Jupiter 3) Insert your favoured choice, sometime this November-December.

Nibiru was invented circa 1995. It is invoked whenever there’s an earthquake, tsunami, or solar activity. It’s the astronomical equivalent of a werewolf. It has been debunked multiple times by scientists who are sick of being asked about it. But the lack of proof about its existence is dismissed as a global conspiracy to hide evidence. The fact that it still continues to generate headlines would be funny if it wasn’t sad. 

Twitter: @devangshudatta