Phaeton (alternatively Phaethon or Phaëton ; from grc, Φαέθων, Phaéthōn, ) was the

hypothetical planet Various unknown astronomical objects have been hypothesized throughout recorded history. For example, in the 5th century BCE, the philosopher Philolaus defined a hypothetical astronomical object which he called the "Central Fire", around whic ...

hypothesized by the

Titius–Bode law The Titius–Bode law (sometimes termed just Bode's law) is a formulaic prediction of spacing between planets in any given solar system. The formula suggests that, extending outward, each planet should be approximately twice as far from the Sun as ...

to have existed between the

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as a p ...

s of

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...

and

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...

, the destruction of which supposedly led to the formation of the

asteroid belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...

(including the

dwarf planet A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit of the Sun, smaller than any of the eight classical planets but still a world in its own right. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto. The interest of dwarf planets to p ...

Ceres Ceres most commonly refers to: * Ceres (dwarf planet), the largest asteroid * Ceres (mythology), the Roman goddess of agriculture Ceres may also refer to: Places Brazil * Ceres, Goiás, Brazil * Ceres Microregion, in north-central Goiás ...

). The hypothetical planet was named for

Phaethon Phaethon (; grc, Φαέθων, Phaéthōn, ), also spelled Phaëthon, was the son of the Oceanid Clymene and the sun-god Helios in Greek mythology. According to most authors, Phaethon is the son of Helios, and out of desire to have his par ...

, the son of the sun god

Helios In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Helios (; grc, , , Sun; Homeric Greek: ) is the deity, god and personification of the Sun (Solar deity). His name is also Latinized as Helius, and he is often given the epithets Hyper ...

Greek mythology A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...

, who attempted to drive his father's solar chariot for a day with disastrous results and was ultimately destroyed by

Zeus Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label=Genitive case, genitive Aeolic Greek, Boeotian Aeolic and Doric Greek#Laconian, Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label=Genitive case, genitive el, Δίας, ''D� ...

Phaeton hypothesis

''Sturz des Phaeton'' (Fall of the Phaeton) by Johann Michael Franz upHeinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, who formulated the planet Phaeton hypothesis According to the hypothesized

, a planet was believed to exist between Mars and Jupiter. After learning of the regular sequence discovered by the German astronomer and mathematician

Johann Daniel Titius Johann Daniel Titius (born Johann Daniel Tietz(e), 2 January 1729 – 16 December 1796) was a German astronomer and a professor at Wittenberg.

, astronomer Johann E. Bode urged a search for the fifth planet corresponding to a gap in the sequence. (1) Ceres, the largest

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

in the asteroid belt (now considered a

), was serendipitously discovered in 1801 by the Italian

Giuseppe Piazzi Giuseppe Piazzi ( , ; 16 July 1746 – 22 July 1826) was an Italian Catholic priest of the Theatine order, mathematician, and astronomer. He established an observatory at Palermo, now the '' Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo – Giuseppe ...

and found to closely match the "empty" position in Titius' sequence, which led many to believe it to be the "missing planet". However, in 1802

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers (; ; 11 October 1758 – 2 March 1840) was a German physician and astronomer. Life and career Olbers was born in Arbergen, Germany, today part of Bremen, and studied to be a physician at Göttingen (1777–80) ...

discovered and named the asteroid (2) Pallas, a second object in roughly the same orbit as (1) Ceres. Olbers proposed that these two discoveries were the fragments of a

disrupted planet In astronomy, a disrupted planet is a planet or exoplanet or, perhaps on a somewhat smaller scale, a planetary-mass object, planetesimal, moon, exomoon or asteroid that has been disrupted or destroyed by a nearby or passing astronomical body or o ...

that had formerly orbited the Sun, and predicted that more of these pieces would be found. The discovery of the asteroid (3) Juno by

Karl Ludwig Harding Karl Ludwig Harding (29 September 1765 – 31 August 1834) was a German astronomer, who discovered 3 Juno, the third asteroid of the main-belt in 1804. The lunar crater '' Harding'' and the asteroid 2003 Harding are named in his honor. ...

and (4) Vesta by Olbers, buttressed his hypothesis. In 1823, German linguist and retired teacher called Olbers' destroyed planet ''Phaëthon'', linking it to the

Greek myths and legends A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities of ...

about

and others. In 1927,

Franz Xaver Kugler Franz Xaver Kugler (27 November 1862 – 25 January 1929) was a German chemist, mathematician, Assyriologist, and Jesuit priest.. Kugler was born in Königsbach, Palatinate, then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria. He earned a Ph.D. in chemist ...

wrote a short book titled ''Sibyllinischer Sternkampf und Phaëthon in naturgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung'' (The Sybilline Battle of the Stars and Phaeton Seen as Natural History). The central idea in Kugler's book is that the myth of Phaethon was based on a real event: Making use of ancient sources, Kugler argued that Phaeton had been a very bright celestial object that appeared around 1500 BC which fell to Earth not long afterwards as a shower of large meteorites, causing catastrophic fires and floods in Africa and elsewhere. Hypotheses regarding the formation of the asteroid belt from the destruction of a hypothetical fifth planet are today collectively referred to as " the disruption theory". These hypotheses state that there was once a major planetary member of the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar S ...

circulating in the present gap between Mars and Jupiter, which was destroyed by one or more of the following hypothetical processes: * it veered too close to Jupiter and was torn apart by its powerful tides * it was struck by another large celestial body * it was destroyed by a hypothetical

brown dwarf Brown dwarfs (also called failed stars) are substellar objects that are not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen ( 1H) into helium in their cores, unlike a main-sequence star. Instead, they have a mass between the most ...

, the companion star to the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

, known as

Nemesis In ancient Greek religion, Nemesis, also called Rhamnousia or Rhamnusia ( grc, Ῥαμνουσία, Rhamnousía, the goddess of Rhamnous), was the goddess who personifies retribution, a central concept in the Greek world view. Etymology The n ...

* it was shattered by some internal catastrophe In 1953, Soviet Russian astronomer Ivan I. Putilin suggested that Phaeton was destroyed due to centrifugal forces, giving it a diameter of approximately 6,880 kilometers (slightly larger than Mars' diameter of 6,779 km) and a rotational speed of 2.6 hours. Eventually, the planet became so distorted that parts of it near its equator were spun off into space.

Outgassing Outgassing (sometimes called offgassing, particularly when in reference to indoor air quality) is the release of a gas that was dissolved, trapped, frozen, or absorbed in some material. Outgassing can include sublimation and evaporation (which a ...

of gases once stored in Phaeton's interior caused multiple explosions, sending material into space and forming

asteroid families An asteroid is a minor planet of the Solar System#Inner solar system, inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic o ...

. However, his theory was not widely accepted. Two years later in 1955,

Odessa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...

n astronomer Konstantin N. Savchenko suggested that Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta were not fragments of Phaeton, but rather its former moons. Phaeton had an additional fifth satellite, assumed to be the size of Ceres, orbiting near the planet's

Hill sphere The Hill sphere of an astronomical body is the region in which it dominates the attraction of satellites. To be retained by a planet, a moon must have an orbit that lies within the planet's Hill sphere. That moon would, in turn, have a Hill sp ...

, and thus more subject to gravitational perturbations from Jupiter. As a result, the fifth satellite became tidally detached and orbited the Sun for millions of years afterward, making periodic close misses with Phaeton that slowly increased its velocity. Once the escaped satellite re-entered Phaeton's Hill sphere, it collided with the planet at high speed, shattering it while Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta assumed heliocentric orbits. Simulations showed that for such a Ceres-sized body to shatter Phaeton, it would need to be travelling at nearly 20 kilometers per second. The disrupted planet hypothesis has also been supported by French–Italian mathematician and astronomer

Joseph-Louis Lagrange Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi LagrangiaReginald Daly in 1943; American geochemists

Harrison Brown Harrison Scott Brown (September 26, 1917 – December 8, 1986) was an American nuclear chemist and geochemist. He was a political activist, who lectured and wrote on the issues of arms limitation, natural resources and world hunger. During Worl ...

and

Clair Patterson Clair Cameron Patterson (June 2, 1922 – December 5, 1995) was an American geochemist. Born in Mitchellville, Iowa, Patterson graduated from Grinnell College. He later received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and spent his entire profe ...

in 1948; Soviet academics Alexander Zavaritskiy in 1948,

Vasily Fesenkov Vasiliy Grigorievich Fesenkov (13 January 1889 – 12 March 1972) was a Soviet Union, Soviet Russian astrophysicist. Biography He was born in Novocherkassk. After graduating from the Kharkov University (1911) he entered the University of Paris ...

in 1950 (who later rejected his own model) and

Otto Schmidt Otto Yulyevich Shmidt, be, Ота Юльевіч Шміт, Ota Juljevič Šmit (born Otto Friedrich Julius Schmidt; – 7 September 1956), better known as Otto Schmidt, was a Soviet scientist, mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, statesm ...

(died 1956); British–Canadian astronomer Michael Ovenden in 1972–1973; and American astronomer

Donald Menzel Donald Howard Menzel (April 11, 1901 – December 14, 1976) was one of the first theoretical astronomers and astrophysicists in the United States. He discovered the physical properties of the solar chromosphere, the chemistry of stars, the atmos ...

in 1978. Ovenden suggested that the planet be named "

Krypton Krypton (from grc, κρυπτός, translit=kryptos 'the hidden one') is a chemical element with the symbol Kr and atomic number 36. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas that occurs in trace amounts in the atmosphere and is often ...

" after the destroyed native world of

Superman Superman is a superhero who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, and debuted in the comic book ''Action Comics'' #1 (cover-dated June 1938 and publi ...

, as well as believing it to have been a

gas giant A gas giant is a giant planet composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. Gas giants are also called failed stars because they contain the same basic elements as a star. Jupiter and Saturn are the gas giants of the Solar System. The term "gas giant" ...

roughly eighty-five to ninety

Earth mass An Earth mass (denoted as M_\mathrm or M_\oplus, where ⊕ is the standard astronomical symbol for Earth), is a unit of mass equal to the mass of the planet Earth. The current best estimate for the mass of Earth is , with a relative uncertainty ...

es in mass and nearly the size of

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...

. Today, the Phaeton hypothesis has been superseded by the accretion model. Most astronomers today believe that the asteroids in the main belt are remnants of the

protoplanetary disk A protoplanetary disk is a rotating circumstellar disc of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star, a T Tauri star, or Herbig Ae/Be star. The protoplanetary disk may also be considered an accretion disk for the star itself, be ...

that never formed a planet, and that in this region the amalgamation of protoplanets into a planet was prevented by the disruptive gravitational perturbations of Jupiter during the formative period of the

Other hypotheses

Some scientists and non-scientists continue to advocate for the existence and destruction of a Phaeton-like planet.

Zecharia Sitchin Zecharia Sitchin (July 11, 1920 – October 9, 2010) was an author of a number of books proposing an explanation for human origins involving ancient astronauts. Sitchin attributed the creation of the ancient Sumerian culture to the ''Anunnaki'' ...

suggested that the goddess known to the Sumerians as

Tiamat In Mesopotamian religion, Tiamat ( akk, or , grc, Θαλάττη, Thaláttē) is a primordial goddess of the sea, mating with Abzû, the god of the groundwater, to produce younger gods. She is the symbol of the chaos of primordial creati ...

in fact relates to a planet that was destroyed by a

rogue planet A rogue planet (also termed a free-floating planet (FFP), interstellar, nomad, orphan, starless, unbound or wandering planet) is an interstellar object of planetary-mass, therefore smaller than fusors (stars and brown dwarfs) and without a h ...

known as Nibiru, creating both Earth and the asteroid belt. His work is widely regarded as

pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...

. The astronomer and author Tom Van Flandern held that Phaeton (which he called "Planet V", with V representing the Roman numeral for five and not to be confused with the other postulated former fifth planet not attributed to the formation of the asteroid belt) exploded through some internal mechanism. In his "Exploded Planet Hypothesis 2000", he lists possible reasons for its explosion: a runaway nuclear reaction of uranium in its core, a change of state as the planet cooled down creating a density phase change, or through continual absorption of heat in the core from

graviton In theories of quantum gravity, the graviton is the hypothetical quantum of gravity, an elementary particle that mediates the force of gravitational interaction. There is no complete quantum field theory of gravitons due to an outstanding mathem ...

s. Van Flandern even suggested that Mars itself may have been a moon of Planet V, due to its craters hinting to exposure to meteorite storms and its relatively low density compared to the other inner planets. In 1972,

Soyuzmultfilm Soyuzmultfilm ( rus, Союзмультфи́льм, p=səˌjʉsmʊlʲtˈfʲilʲm , ''Union Cartoon'') (also known as SMF Animation Studio in English, Formerly known as Soyuzdetmultfilm) is a Russian animation studio based in Moscow. Launched in ...

studios produced an animated

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

titled ''Phaeton: The Son of Sun'' (russian: Фаэтон – Сын Солнца), directed by Vasiliy Livanov, in which the asteroid belt is portrayed as the remains of a planet. The film also has numerous references to

ancient astronauts Ancient astronauts (or ancient aliens) refers to a pseudoscientific hypothesis which holds that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. Proponents suggest that this ...

."Phaeton - the Son of the Sun" with English subtitles
''Animatsiya.net''

Phaeton in literature

Several works of fiction feature a supposed planet (sometimes named Phaeton or Maldek) existing in the past between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, which somehow became the Solar System's asteroid belt.

References

Sources

* * * * * , Records of meetings 1808–1916 in v. 11–27, p. 872.

External links