Another day, another incredibly stupid conspiracy theory resurfaces on the Internet. According to various – for want of a better word – numbskulls, the Solar System has a second sun, hiding behind our real Sun.
In the latest iteration of the conspiracy theory, posted to the Facebook group “Nibiru Followers Anonymous”, their evidence appears to be a haze of light sometimes seen around the Sun. In reality, these are the result of atmospheric phenomena known as “sun halos”.
“A halo is a ring or light that forms around the Sun or Moon as the Sun or Moon light refracts off ice crystals present in a thin veil of cirrus clouds,” the National Weather Service explains. “The halo is usually seen as a bright, white ring although sometimes it can have color.”
As inane as the conspiracy theory is (think for a second why anybody would want to conceal the existence of a second sun), there are stupider iterations. In 2016, astronomer Paul Cox was livestreaming a transit of Mercury across the Sun when an orb appeared on screen, likely an optical error.
“You may be asking yourself, what is that large round thing to the right of the Sun? Well, that’s our second sun. I don’t know if you knew that we had a second sun,” Cox said. “But there it is. It is normally hidden from view. NASA and other organisations usually hide that stuff away from us.”
Though a dry joke, it was leapt on by conspiracy theorists as proof of the second sun’s existence.
If we did have a second sun, you would know about it. Astronomers have studied the orbits of the planets for hundreds of years, and have built up a model of it. Slight disturbances in their orbits are noticed and have been used to discover other planets that are influencing their orbits through their gravity. We are simply not missing an object with the mass of a star within our Solar System.
Unlike the Moon, which is tidally locked to Earth, the Sun rotates every 27 days, meaning we see the whole of it over the course of a month. A second sun would have to orbit the actual real Sun at precisely the right speed that it is never visible from Earth as it orbits, and even then spacecraft sent out into the Solar System would have seen it from their different vantage points. And they haven’t, because there isn’t one.
[H/T: Fraudulent Astronomy Wall of Shame]
Source Link: The Incredibly Stupid Conspiracy Theory That The Solar System Has Two Suns