I find this gap of awareness quite peculiar considering all the recorded history of the 17th century. It literally saw the birth of astronomy as we know it, including the invention of the telescope just in time to see and study comets. We brought
it up in this thread and sott.net.
Here's another synthesis.
ISBN: 9780471610113 - 1st Edition. - Hardcover - Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, John - 1991 - Condition: Good - Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. - Comets : A Chronological History of Observation, Science...
www.abebooks.com
Comment: The following was written by SOTT's founding editor Laura Knight-Jadczyk over 20 years ago. Thus it was written during the first Bush administration and predicted, correctly, that the psychopaths and lunatics who emerged from the shadows...
www.sott.net
In the sixteenth century, a time of religious and social upheaval, naturalistic theories of generation were joined to ideas that monstrous births were divine signs. In this paper, we explore how medicine and theology were combined to explain the
www.academia.edu
The Thirty Years' War was fought between 1618 and 1648, principally on the territory of today's Germany, and involved most of the major European powers. It began as an ostensible religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics and
www.academia.edu
Unless you have fancy telescopes, not available for the public. Past sessions must be seen with this new awareness, considering that there were some assumptions in the past. Laura explains it very well in her article Independence Day.
Thank you for the additional information. I must add that when I first read the C's comments posing the question as to what would happen if the brown star got close enough to be illuminated by the sun many years ago now, I was excited at the prospect of seeing such an event and even imagined something like Nostradamus's 'King of Terror' sending everyone into an apocalyptic panic. Hence, to find that the dark star, sometimes referred to as Nemesis, made its closest approach a few hundred years ago is, I would admit, a tad disappointing for me.
You mention in your response the famous comet of 1664. This was certainly seen in England and was viewed by many as a harbinger of doom, which in many ways was fulfilled over the following two years, since 1665 saw the last major outbreak of bubonic plague in England and 1666 (with people readily recognising the significance of the number "666" as the Mark of the Beast) seeing the Great Fire of London, which almost wiped out the entirety of the medieval City of London. Many commentators at the time, particularly those of a more Christian fundamentalist disposition, actually believed that this was the Apocalypse heralding the end of the world and saw these events as a just punishment of the profane, irreligious and licentious who had revelled in the years of merriment following the restoration of King Charles II (known to history as the "Merry Monarch") to the throne after the dour times Oliver Cromwell (as Lord Protector) and his Puritan supporters had imposed on the populace when they even cancelled the traditional festivities surrounding the Christmas period. Quoting selectively from Wikipedia:
The
Great Plague of London, lasting from 1665 to 1666, was the most recent major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England.
The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people — almost a quarter of London's population — in 18 months.
The 1665–66 epidemic was on a much smaller scale than the earlier Black Death pandemic. It became known afterwards as the "great" plague mainly because it was the last widespread outbreak of bubonic plague in England during the 400-year Second Pandemic.
In late 1664, a bright comet was seen in the sky and the people of London became fearful, wondering what evil event it portended.
[In] September [1666], the
Great Fire of London destroyed much of the City of London, and some people believed that the fire put an end to the epidemic. It is now thought that the plague had largely subsided before the fire took place. Most of the later cases of plague were found in the suburbs, and it was the City of London that was destroyed by the fire.
Ironically, in spite of the gloomy prognostications of the fundamentalists, London saw a rapid resurgence after the Great Fire with a major rebuilding programme and trade quickly recovering to pre-epidemic and pre-Great Fire levels. Quoting from Wikipedia again:
Not only was the capital rejuvenated, but it became a healthier environment in which to live. Londoners had a greater sense of community after they had overcome the great adversities of 1665 and 1666
However, for Londoners living through those two grim years following the sighting of the comet, it must have seemed to them that they really were living at the end of the world, particularly after having experienced a brutal civil war just a few years before these events that had seen death and destruction on a huge scale and the whole social order turned upside down.
You said:
Unless you have fancy telescopes, not available for the public.
Unfortunately, I don't have a fancy telescope but then even those that do have not been able to detect the Dark Star in spite of their best efforts. Quoting from a 2017 Space.com article on the Nemesis Star Theory:
A solar companion may be hard to find, but it would still be visible by sensitive telescopes. Astronomers have scoured the sky using the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), which studied the sky over four years in three infrared wavelengths. The instrument discovered
173 brown dwarfs farther away than our solar system, but none near enough to be the infamous Nemesis.
NASA's
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer completed its 1.25-year mission in February 2011, having discovered a number of brown dwarfs within 20 light-years. Again, none of these were located near the solar system.
See:
Nemesis Star Theory: The Sun's 'Death Star' Companion
However, diving into conspiracy theory here, I recall reading years ago about an astronomer using a powerful infrared telescope who had been able to spot Nemesis and was going public over it. Unfortunately, he then met a sudden demise and the story never broke. I can't remember his name and have not been able to track the story down again but maybe someone else may have a better handle on it than me and a better memory for these things
.
Although it is believed that most stars start life as part of a binary star system, many astronomers take the view that if our sun had been part of a binary system, its twin escaped off into the galaxy billion of years ago. Quoting Space,com again:
In 2017, a new study suggested that nearly all stars like the sun were born with companions. The astronomers did detailed studies of young stars in the Perseus molecular cloud and backed up their work with modelling. But "Nemesis," if it did indeed exist at that time,
broke free of the sun early in its history and moved into the rest of the Milky Way's population, the astronomers said.
Well obviously the C's think otherwise. Nevertheless, searching for our sun's twin brown dwarf star, is no doubt like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
