by Jean-Jacques COURTEY, Doctor in Economic Geography, Ph. D
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This new article of Just Science Fiction is dedicated to our real Solar System, which appears totally different presently, with the most recent discoveries of astronomy !
We are now far from the very old system based only upon seven planets. In this perspective, the discovery of Haumea at the end of 2004 profoundly revolutionized our vision of the nearby Cosmos !
Indeed, Haumea is not at all an exoplanet, but a dwarf planet full of iced water, from the confines of our Solar System. In a way, this cosmic "rugby ball", with all its oddities has totally redesigned it !
And this should amaze us, or at the very least make us wonder about our real position in the Universe. Haumea is certainly the most puzzling trans-neptunian planet of all !
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Haumea (136108) is not at all an exo-planet, discovered among many others by astronomers with the most recent radio-telescopes. And yet, it's almost totally ignored by most people on Earth.If you asked an educated person to quote the different planets of our Solar System, she would only quote the Moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. But she wouldn't mention Charon (now also used by astrologers), Makemake, Eris, or Haumea in the Kuiper belt. She never learnt about their existence at school, or even since she has left school !
Haumea is not either a dead planet. Some astronomers think it has no atmosphere, which is difficult to sustain with a so considerable presence of water on its surface : there is automatically Oxygen and Hydrogen at least, and probably Nitrogen like on Earth. It is a fast spinning planet (3.9 hours). Its width is similar to that of Pluto in its larger part, because of its strange shape of rugby ball. It has got two moons : Namaka (mouth of Haumea) and Hi'iaka (a spirit of water), both children of Goddess Haumea. Its radius is 816 km. It's a dwarf trans-neptunian planet !
It was discovered on December 28th, 2004 by Michael E. Brown (born in 1965 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA), from Caltech. But there was a question of authorship with José Luis Ortiz Moreno (born in Spain in 1967), from the Observatory of Sierra Nevada in Granada - Andalusia, Spain. However, a solution of co-authorship seems to have happened naturally for its discovery. Haumea is the name finally given in 2008 to this dwarf planet, initially named Santa (after Santa Claus) by Michael E. Brown. Its gravity is very low : a man of 100 kg on Earth would weigh roughly 4 kg and a woman of 50 kg only 2 kg then !
So, it has finally being named after the name of the Goddess of fertility and birth of Hawaï, Haumea (the Mother of Goddess Pelé from Hawaï). There is lot of water on Haumea, in the shape of crystalline iced water on 75% of its surface. The NASA describes it as a "weird Solar system object". Often, we are informed about the discovery of another exoplanet where there is water, and then where life could exist. Yet, it is so far that we don't pay much attention. But Haumea is on the contrary a planet of our Solar system (not at all an exoplanet then), and not so far comparatively. And still, few people seem to bother really about its strange disruptive existence !
Sustaining without evidences it has no atmosphere, is allowing to bypass the question of life existence on Haumea. If there is so much water on its surface (even iced), molecules of Hydrogen and Oxygen have to come from somewhere anyway. Above that, it's not very scientific, neither respectuous. But it's true that it has the merit to maintain the illusion of the human beings uniqueness in the Solar system. In a way, this question of Earthlings' unicity is a cognitive bias made to comfort a fake superiority, and to conjure an excessive fear not to be so important in the Cosmos. At a certain level, it is too a refusal to confront reality. In rugby, there are not only tries, there are also conversions. And a conversion is adding two points to the try scored (5points) in rugby fifteen !
The surprising Haumea has also a ring of 70 km width (discovered by Ortiz in 2017) that mimics Saturn, at a distance of 2287 km from its surface. What is unusual about it, is effectively its strange shape in rugby ball ! At the moment, because of this exceptional shape, Haumea should be a curiosity, not only outside our Solar system, but also inside. Nobody is understanding the anomaly of its rugby ball shape. Haumea is at the moment the only known planet, with such an exceptional and unique shape. But at the same time who is wondering which exceptional capacities it is giving to it ?
If Haumea is really 4.5 billion years (like Earth), was there any connection in the ancient past with Earth, through the Annunaki of the Enuma Elish for instance ? Or could this link have been still more singular, through the strange Ubaidians (from Tell-Al-ubaid, South of Irak) who had a human body and the face of a snake or a lizard, just at the edge of History ? We may never know the answer if human beings are so poorly interested in the Cosmos. But perhaps are they disliking to be able to discover one day they are not unique at all in the universe, even in our Solar system, and not only outside our galaxy ?
The discovery of Haumea should have totally revolutionized astronomy, but it wasn't really the case. Only specialists are usually interrogating themselves about it. Why ? In 2012, we were wondering about the return of Annunaki on Earth, and questioning the existence of Nibiru, their planet of origin in our Solar System. But, we never cogitate on the fact we might have already discovered it, under another name. The revolution of Haumea around the Sun is lasting 287 years. Perhaps are we disconcerted by its small size and its unique shape in the Cosmos ?
We don't know why this planet has got such an unusual shape of rugby ball ? And we ignore too if it correspond to a particular function at the edge of our Solar system. We bet some astronomers in the world must be scratching their head, to try explaining the existence of this dwarf planet in situation of anomaly. Another question could be : was this planet already there for a long time, or is its coming relatively recent ? Normally, if it's 4.5 billion years old, it should always have been there, because planets don't move like huge spatial vessels. Is it an outpost of the next Solar system ? But it doesn't seem so many people are interested in it. After all, human beings are not so curious about their cosmic environment. In the past, when we were a small boy, people had an incredible capacity of amazement about the Cosmos. But nowadays, they feel accustomed, and they get easily bored !
Haumea is situated between Makemake (another dwarf planet discovered on March 31st, 2005) and Pluto, and not so far from Eris, another trans-neptunian object equally discovered in 2005. Pluto was for long considered as the last planet of the Solar System, since its discovery on February 18th, 1930 by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh (1906 - 1997). He did it from the Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff, in Arizona (USA). Pluto was the first trans-neptunian planet discovered. Whatever you call it a planet or a dwarf planet (since 2006), Pluto is stubborn : it is existing and it is not alone. Above that it is mocking earthly denominations. And that's the same thing for Haumea !
Trans-neptunian dwarves (also called Trans-Neptunian Objects or TNO) are mischievous with human being. They make him scratch his head and use his brain, by disrupting his automatic thought processes. They force him to completely rethink what he thought he knew. It's a bit the same thing than with Vesta, Juno, Ceres, and Pallas, the strange asteroids - also used by modern astrologers - of the asteroids belt between Mars and Jupiter (Internal Solar system). Indeed, Ceres is now considered as a dwarf planet instead with enormous water resources (far more than Earth). It's always funny to see scientists hesitating so much about the classification of stars : it shows the limits of their knowledge and understanding. In reality, human beings are like children who are groping around !
What is astonishing is the number of stars which have got water in the Solar system. Even if astronomers are now cutting our Solar system in two (with the internal Solar system till Neptun, and the external Solar system from Neptun to Pluto area in the Kuiper belt beside the Oort Cloud), you can find more and more planets posssessing water, even most of them are moons - 414 at the moment -, or dwarf planets. If human being has got a certain inability to detect life in this near universe, at least he is now able to recognize the existence of water outside Earth. And that's already a great revolution of the mind. Still a century more, and human beings will progress anew, if they didn't destroy themselves in the meantime in the stupid Third World War they are too aggressively preaching for !
They may get it when they least expect it, and sooner than they think. It's not a question of budget, but of bad luck coming any time, and not especially in 2027 or 2030 : why not in November 2026 for instance, with the electromagnetic perturbations of Haumea ? As a matter of fact, targeting without any discernment any Russian base protected by the "Perimeter system" is extremely dangerous for the survival of Paris and its region for example. It is always possible to pull off a spectacular coup by destroying such a base with drones or another mean. But so far, we have been incredibly lucky : the Russians have been able to stop just in time the totally automated responses with the launching of nuclear missiles in direction of their considered main enemies, Paris...or another western capital. But, with what difficulties ! We were at only three minutes from our unexpected death or the nuclear winter. Perhaps next time will be the right one : just try to remember the beginning of the very famous movie "Terminator" (1984), with the uncontrollable AI "Skynet" !
Human beings are not able yet to get across the Oort Cloud and to enter the next Solar system to visit the most proximate star of Alpha Centauri. But Alpha Centauri could have been able to do it from a long time at the opposite (Civilization of Atlantis on Earth, with some famous remains in the Bermuda Triangle in the Atlantic Ocean, and the Devil Triangle near Japan). Potential ETs who could be far less dogmatic than us, would have less difficulty to find the truth about life in the universe. For instance, their beliefs wouldn't be a strange and contradictive mixture of Christianism and Darwinism, as for them they should be logically totally incompatible !
If the Positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857) could help those who didn't know how to think by themselves in the 19th century, the same philosophy in the 21st century hardly helps people to free from a science that is too dogmatic and not always so convincing. Thus, it's not a bad thing if the Vatican is having its own observatory in Castel Gandolfo, near Rome in Italy (lead by Jesuits), and equally its own large binocular telescopes in Safford (Mount Graham, Arizona, USA), and a more discrete one in South America as well, both called humorously LUCIFER !
The idea would be to detect a mysterious Cosmic Object with their piercing sight : the Wormwood Star ("l'Etoile Absinthe" in French) of the Apocalypse of Saint John, with its strong smell of Raspberry. It is expected to plunge the world into Darkness and Fright for three days, with the eradication of human pettiness and human falsehood in beliefs as well. It could have something to do with the sinful molasse resulting from the unacknowledged merger of Christianity with Social Darwinism, in the sense of the Virgin of Fatima (Portugal, three times on the 13th of the month in 1917), or Akita (Japan, in 1973 and from 1975 to 1981) !
For information purpose, it has to be mentioned that in Latin Lucifer is the name of planet Venus, where life might be possible not on its surface, but inside this star. If Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969), president of the USA and his vice-president at that time, Richard Nixon (1913 - 1994), have really met the Venusian Commander Valiant Thor in Washington - in 1957 in the Pentagon, where he was lodging -, it seems the same was true thereafter for the Pope John XXIII (1958 - 1963) in Castel Gandolfo. Valiant Thor was justly saying he was living inside Venus, as a member of the Council of Twelve !
In some way, not only Venus but Haumea as well are challenging Earth's overlordship on the Solar system, while redesigning completely our near Cosmos. With this very strange dwarf planet, we are at last unvoluntarily discovering human beings' real position in the Solar system. If we didn't think in such an obsessively Darwinian way, we would be less tired, and it could be even exciting to discover new truths about our Solar system...and about us !
During the next periods of Haumea's approach to Earth (in November 2026, September 2037 or October 2038), the potential "Haumeans" might have fewer questions than our Earth astronomers about exploring Earth. The favorable periods of configuration mentioned above for a probe launch in direction of Haumea could symmetrically be used by them. And they might be bolder than Earthlings : they might not be afraid at all of a third type encounter with chosen human beings as many specialists are about ETs, even it would cause them a great psychological and civilizational shock !
