Planet X

Astronomers now say that they've discovered a tenth planet in the solar system about ten billion miles out. This would be exciting, except now they're quibbling about whether or not Pluto should be a planet or not. They think it might be too small, or made of too much ice or some such. ('They' are the astronomer people who have some sort of real official organization and I don't know what it's called.) So, even if there really is another planet out there, we're still back to nine planets. I suppose if they find yet another planet even further out then they'll demote this newest planet down to something else so that it'll still be nine no matter what.

It's not like this new planet is going to affect much. School children will have to learn the new name of this new planet - some Greek God, I'm sure - but that'll be about it. We can barely see the brand new planet as it is and
gravitationally it doesn't do much, either.

Now, what we might care about is that some scientists have the theory that the Sun has a companion star circling it, a secret black dwarf that has a very eccentric orbit so that when it visits our solar system it rains death down on all our planets. The name of this proposed star is Nemesis, because it's so cool and dangerous and sounding. The orbit of Nemesis is supposed to be about twenty three million years which sort of coincides with mass extinctions on Earth. Sort of. Give or take a million years.

God hasn't been exactly clear on why he chose the number of planets that he did. It made a lot of sense when everyone thought that seven was a sacred number and there were seven known planets and that worked out
swell and everywhere people looked it was sevens. (That's why Newton chose seven color names for the light spectrum - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. Ever wonder what Indigo was doing in there? That's why. He wanted it to be seven) Now there are nine or ten. And an asteroid belt. And a belt full of comets. And what's so sacred about this arrangement?

Numerology was very important in ancient times. The Hebrew alphabet also doubled as their number system, as did the Greek and Roman alphabets doubling for theirs. Words were numbers. Which would be really great if they'd just used this curious fact for party games, but they didn't. Geometry was sacred, too, so that anything that could have a number put to it, must also have a mystical relationship. It does, but it all depends on how inventive you are.

How this might affect the Apocalypse: Don't you wish God would make up his mind? I thought he finished creation in seven days, but it looks like he didn't. He's still flip-flopping about the solar system, so maybe he'll take more time deciding when to destroy everything.