Could the Sun be part of a binary system ?

I was surfing around astronomical sites recently, when I stumbled across the Binary Research Institute. Very interesting. I can't pretend that I understand all the maths (never my strongest subject), but it seems to be well thought out and offers a fascinating alternative explanation for the precession of the equinoxes.

Any thoughts ? Could Nibiru be a reality after all ?

i doubt it /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif

If it were, it would have tides due to the gravitational effects of its sister. I've never heard of any tides on the Sun.

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i doubt it

[/ QUOTE ] Why ? Any chance of qualifying that rather brief statement ?

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If it were, it would have tides due to the gravitational effects of its sister. I've never heard of any tides on the Sun.

[/ QUOTE ] Neither have I, but then again we're talking about a 26,000 year orbit here, at a distance of billions of miles, so any tides would be very hard to notice or measure.

what could we be in the system with? a black hole? don't you think that would've been spotted by now?

I'd think that any object as large as a star in our planetary system (even a burnt-out star) would have been detected by now.
That's my 2¢ in this matter; individual results may vary.

Every myth or legend has a kernel of truth in it. Everything the Ancients knew has been trashed by Orthodox Science as Impossible for no other reason than it is Ancient. 'They were unwashed primitives and these are their delusional Cults, blah, blah, blah....'

Troy was declared to not exist, yet it was found. Why is Nibiru impossible?? Oh, the 26,000 Earth Year orbit is NOT Nibiru. Nibiru was a planet, not a star.

Binary system = 2 stars

What may this other one may be, is a brown dwarf or some such.

what do you mean by the ancients Chuck?

my ancestors knew quite a bit about the stars /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Edit:
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BlindedByTheLite said:
i quote Graham Hancock:
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In modern Western society we still make use of a solar calendar which was introduced in Europe in 1582 and is based on the best scientific knowledge then available: the famous Gregorian calendar. The Julian calendar, which it replaced, computed the period of the Earth's orbit around the sun @ 365.25 days. Pope Gregory the 13th's reform substituted a finer and more accurate calculation: 365.2425 days. Thanks to scientific advances since 1582 we now know that the exact length of the solar year is 365.2422 days. The Gregorian calendar therefore incorporates a very small plus error, just 0.0003 of a day - pretty impressive accuracy for the 16th century.
Strangely enough, tho its origins are wrapped in the mists of antiquity far deeper than the 16th century, the Mayan calendar achieved even greater accuracy. It calculated the solar year @ 365.2420 days, a minus error of only 0.0002 of a day.
Similarly, the Maya knew the time taken by the moon to orbit the Earth. Their estimate of this period was 29.528395 days - extremely close to the true figure of 29.530588 days computed by the finest modern methods.
The Mayan priests also had in their possession very accurate tables for the prediction of solar and lunar eclipses and were aware that these could occur only within plus or minus 18 days of the node. Finally, the Mayan were remarkably accomplished methematicians. They possessed an advanced technique of metrical calculation by means of a chequerboard device we ourselves have only discovered (or rediscovered?) in the last century. They also understood perfectly and used the abstract concept of zero and were acquainted with place numerations.

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now can you believe that? that's quite an accomplishment.. not even the Greek or the Romans had the knowledge of zero or place numerations!
try writing 1848 in Roman numerals, it takes 11 letters..
but the Mayan had a system very similar to our own system we use today, and they were using it even when the Romans were still using numerals!

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From the Binary Research Institute home page (which nobody seems to have read yet)...[ QUOTE ]
Researchers at BRI have noticed a number of problems related to the current theory of precession... we have found that a binary orbit motion of our sun and solar system is a simpler way to reproduce the same observable without any of the problems associated with current precession theory... a binary orbit motion of our sun provides a single elegant solution to a number of current solar system formation theory enigmas... BRI has concluded our sun is most likely part of a long cycle binary system.

A binary system is two stars gravitationally bound orbiting a common center of mass. The stars can be of the same or differing sizes and orbits can be as short as a few days or as long as thousands of years. The short ones are easy to detect, the long ones difficult, some probably impossible to detect because of the very long observation period required.

While there is no obvious visible companion star to our Sun, there could be a dark binary... which might be very difficult to detect, without accurate and lengthy analysis.

Beyond direct detection – one way to determine if we are in a binary system is to see if the Sun is curving through space...

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Hmmm. Methinks the celestial mechanics at the BRI have too much time on their hands as they contemplate the heavens with their feet dangling over the edge of their flat Earth..

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whiskypapa3 said:
Methinks... BRI... too much time on... hands... contemplate... heavens... feet dangling... edge of... flat Earth..

[/ QUOTE ]No disrespect to all, but I had hoped to stimulate a slightly more intellectual debate with this question, particularly given the number of professional scientists and engineers in the CPF membership and particularly given the (understandable) success of the recent "Science v. Religion" thread.

While I freely admit I am excited by the ideas expressed by the BRI, I'm trying to keep an open mind and would genuinely love to hear the considered opinions of those who are better technically qualified than I am, to speak on such matters, so that I can maybe develop a more informed and balanced opinion of my own. This is not a bait or a troll.

The new discovery of "planet" Sedna has again shown us once again that there is more to our Solar System than we previously knew. Indeed, the planet Neptune was observed, yet unrecognised for many years and Pluto had been photographed many times before it was officially "discovered" less than a century ago. Plate Tectonics (something we now regard as a matter of fact) was regarded as scientific heresy until the late 1960s.

So, come on you CPF'ers, open those wonderful minds of yours and sing out, for the Good Of All Mankind (and me) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

If there were a brown dwarf of significant size or mass somewhere out there, it would have been noticed by now. If they've just now picked up Sedna, they would have found something larger by now.

Also, the shape of the sun would be distorted somewhat by the gravity of any undiscovered sister of the Sun. This distortion would have been noticed long ago if it existed.

I'm not into celestial mechanics myself, but I think any twin of the Sun would disrupt the orbits of the Sun's planets, either destroying them completely or creating orbits far more exotic than the current stable ones we see today. The Sun itself would not be rotating around its center of gravity but around a point somewhere between the Sun and its twin. I think this would affect the orbits of the planets to a significant degree. But what do I know?

I remember reading a book years ago called "The Nemesis Star" about a star (pos colapsed) that disturbed the oort cloud and periodically dropped comets/debris into our orbital disc and by doing so,explained many extinction catastrophes.
A fascinating read,and strangely dificult to contradict.However if we can now detect far off planets by orbital wobbles of infinately small amounts,would it follow that we should have found this star by now?Clyde Tombough(SP) found Pluto by using maths and working out the "wobbles" in 1930s didn't he?
Interesting idea though...

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If they've just now picked up Sedna, they would have found something larger by now.

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However if we can now detect far off planets by orbital wobbles of infinately small amounts,would it follow that we should have found this star by now?

[/ QUOTE ] Quite possibly, but maybe the reason we haven't as yet, is that because so far we haven't actually been looking for these things.

I'm pretty certain that the answer to this question, whatever it might be, may well lie in existing data. After all the IRAS satellite (to name but one) logged many thousands of previously undiscovered objects. The BRI suggestion that a virtual observatory be used to analyse such data, in order to obtain an answer, certainly makes sense to me.

Re: the earlier "flat earth" comment... Wasn't it the "radical" thinking of Christopher Columbus and his ilk that exposed the falsehood of this idea ? Might not the "radical" thinking of the BRI lead us to a new understanding of our own Solar System, even if it turns out to be something totally different from that expected by the BRI themselves ?

These last two posts represent the sort of quality of debate I'm looking for here, so bring it on. More, more, more /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/buttrock.gif

i thought scientists have been looking for those things since the Nemesis theory in the 1980's..
i'd think a companion to our sun would show up easily in IR imaging, as it'd be giving off alot of heat.. probly comparable to the heat the sun gives off.
if there was indeed a companion to our sun, it'd have to be very very faint.. but it seems like it would've interacted with the sun in some detectable way by now.. we watch the sun constantly.

i'm not an astronomer, but i can't think of any binary system that our sun would fit into.

Edit:
nevermind i forgot what i was thinking.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/B/browndwarf.html

"The upper mass for a brown dwarf is that which is just insufficient for normal hydrogen fusion to be triggered in the core. Based on theoretical considerations, this is believed to be about 0.084 solar mass, or about 84 times the mass of Jupiter. The lower mass limit is somewhat arbitrary as there is no obvious point of transition between a high-mass planet and a low-mass brown dwarf, but it is generally taken to be about 0.013 solar mass, or about 13 Jupter masses."

This is obviously *much* larger than Sedna. Any brown dwarf would have been found long ago, although I don't think any of our planets would exist were it present.

it's fun to imagine possibilities, but there is no such brown dwarf in our system. At this point, unless more information comes into the system (in the spirit of good science we must accept new information ), the final word for me is from Phil Plait on his Bad Astronomy site. He even specifically deals with the possibility of a brown dwarf a little further down that page linked there.

At this point I see no information that would cause me to have a problem making the very specific statement that there is no brown dwarf and there is no planet X.