If you had a long lost brother or sister, would you try and find them? Of course they are a part of you.
The idea that earth has two suns seems outlandish at first. If you look at the sky, one sun rises during the day.
Why would anyone ever think that our solar system has two suns?
To begin, we know very little about how our own sun, or star, came to be. Current models suggest that the solar system formed in a nebular and gas cloud are just guesses.
Today, new research into star formation and dynamic galaxy systems are telling a new story. They reveal the likelihood of our sun being a binary star (having a twin or sibling).
Do we really have two suns?
It’s a very big question. The binary-star hypothesis is building momentum. So, what is the binary star partner of our sun? Everything we know about our sun relates to our calendar. It measures the earth’s orbit and other bodies in the solar system.
Calendars have their roots, all over the planet in ancient astronomy. Do these ancient societies understand the binary twin?
Sirius mythology was the focus of ancient folklore all around the world.
When we combine a modern and ancient view of the calendar system the evidence for a Sun-Sirius star partner becomes very apparent.
Could the Sirius star, not only be the brightest star in the sky but our second sun? Would it prove Sirius mythology to be real?
It’s a mystery, that if solved, would be a critical piece of the human origin story.
Do binary stars exist?
Astronomy moved from an earth-centered universe to a solar system model very slowly. In 1532 Copernicus wrote his sun planet model, which he was too scared to publish. In 1632 Galileo was brave enough to do so. He was persecuted by the church for his efforts. It then took two hundred years until 1835 for the solar system to be finally published again.
Since the 20th century, astronomers are moving towards a similar leap in human thought. It is a known fact that most stars exist in binary systems. Today astronomy is in the pursuit of the sibling of our own sun. It could be the biggest advancement of human thought, since the discovery of the solar system.
Our reality is that the sun is a tiny star in a sea of potential brothers and sisters. The dynamic universe theory explains our solar system is in a spinning spiral galaxy. Within this swirling corkscrew, stars have orbital siblings or binaries. They come from star nurseries that birth multiple star partners.
Research confirms binary star systems are more normal than single systems. Nasa states that 90% of stars begin with a binary partner.
It also confirms that our solar system was once a binary system. We have stopped short of saying what that partner is.
Let’s now explore Sirius mythology alongside modern astronomy.
The Gregorian Calendar and Leap Year Paradox
We take it for granted the idea that the earth rotates the sun. It’s the most influential force for life on earth. From day-night cycles to seasonal change, in modern society, it’s easy to forget your deep connection to the sun.
Have you stopped to think about how your calendar tracks the movements of the solar system? The earth rotates on its axis for day and night. It also orbits around the sun for the year.
The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used system today. It states the date as Month, Day, and Year.
Years are split into twelve months. It’s designed to measure the movement of the earth around the sun. Time is divided into day or the rotation of the earth on its axis. Months, or the lunar cycle. And years, the rotation of the earth around the sun.
The problem is that it doesn’t quite work. Gregorian calendar years are an estimation. It uses leap years, as fudging method to stop the drift between solar and lunar years (there are actually 12.37 lunar months to a solar year). That means without leap years, the calendar falls out of sync with the day and month cycles. Even with leap years, our calendar loses a day over the space of 3200 years.
That may not seem like a lot. However, today research has recorded the Gregorian Calendar results in seasonal drift. It’s proof the system does not work properly.
The Gregorian calendar nearly works. Is the reason that it is out of sync due to a missing factor? Is the missing piece really that our solar system revolves around another star. Otherwise known as a binary partner for the sun. That orbit would influence the orbit of planets within our own solar system. Exactly what calendars are supposed to measure.
A binary star or two sun system could fix the Gregorian calendar. As it turns out, ancient calendar systems are more accurate.
The dog star, Greek Calendar and Sirius mythology
The Gregorian Calendar system was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582. Roman dating systems were being adjusted on previous attempts to line the solar and lunar years. The Gregorian calendar was designed to improve the Julian calendar that was losing one day every 128 years! That’s very inaccurate.
If we explore ancient calendars, we find different methods of measuring the solar year. The Greeks used the Hellenic calendar. There was actually no one set Hellenic Calendar used across Classical Greece.
The calendars were different, but most used Sirius to calibrate the beginning of the year. That’s the cycle that measures the rise of Sirius, also known as the Dog Star, known to the Greeks as Sothis. The cycle takes roughly 1460 days, depending on what calendar system you use. It’s why Sirius mythology was built into Greek philosophy.
The Greek calendar didn’t start the year from an arbitrary date like ours. Instead, they would observe the rise of Sirius on the dawn of the longest day of the year. Known as the summer solstice, Sirius would appear just after the moment of sunrise. This is named the heliacal rising of Sirius. The Greek system began when this moment was observed. The moment when Sirius rose like a second sun in the sky.
It may explain why there was no need for leap years. The Greeks used the rise of our second sun, or binary star partner Sirius, to calibrate the solar and lunar calendars.
Egyptian astronomy, Sirius mythology, and ancient calendars.
The Greeks weren’t the first or only culture to use Sirius to begin the calendar year. The Egyptian calendar was also based on Sirius. In fact, the Greeks in all likely-hood acquired the method from Egypt.
In ancient Egypt, New Year’s Day was signaled by the annual heliacal rising of the star Sirius. In Egyptian, it’s known as Sothic. For a long time, it was thought this longer cycle was calibrated to the rise and fall of the river Nile. However, the tidal flooding of the Nile is highly unpredictable.
Sirius in Egypt could be observed on the eastern horizon just before dawn on the summer solstice. The timing of its rise would determine whether an extra month with a few days would be employed that year. The rise of Sirius determined the calendar year.
This method allowed for incredibly accurate date-keeping. The various lunar calendars governed by a 365-day civil calendar moved forward through the season without ever being corrected throughout the entire Egyptian history. Unlike the Gregorian calendar, the seasons stayed alongside the important first day of the first month of the solar year.
Across the globe, ancient cultures would use this system. In ancient Mesopotamia, to the Dogon tribe in Mali, to the Hindu Yuga traditions across India, to the ancient Mayans in Mexico, New Zealand, and China, Sirius would set the beginning of the year. They all had Sirius mythology outlining its importance.
By the time the Roman calendar was employed it lost the calibration point. Without setting the year to the rise of Sirius, the imperfect leap year method was needed to stop drifting of the seasons.
Ancient calendar systems could be evidence that our solar system is rotating around its binary partner Sirius.
What is a binary star?
Here’s how a binary star system works. Two stars rotate around a center of mass, known as the barycentre.
Binary stars orbit around a center of mass known as the barycentre.
If the two objects have equal mass, the size of orbits will be equal. If the two have different masses, the lighter star follows a larger path around the barycentre.
Binary stars systems can exist in double, triple, and quadruple partners. Which may even be possible for our sun.
The types of binary partners for our sun includes:
- Another star
- A brown dwarf
- A black hole
Actually detecting the partner isn’t as easy as it sounds.
The star sibling could be a difficult to detect brown dwarf. Or it could be another invisible object. Astronomers are only just detecting low magnitude, distant objects.
NASA has been on the lookout for binary stars. In 2011 the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) completed its 1.25-year mission. It discovered a number of brown dwarfs within 20 light-years. However, none of these were located near the solar system making them unlikely binary partners.
The largest non-planet, non-moon object in our solar system was found recently. Sedna, and the year before this, KX76 a body larger than Pluto’s moon was found. It was discovered after using virtual observatory techniques to comb through 18 years of data in 1-1/2 months.
One possible distance of our second sun (under Newtonian dynamics) is 20 to 30 times farther than Pluto.
Had ancient cultures identified the partner already in the dog-star Sirius?
How does a two sun solar system work?
Sirius A compared to our own sun and earth.
A sun Sirius binary system would mean our sun is the smaller sibling. At 8.6 light years away, Sirius is 71 percent larger than the sun. Sirius isn’t a single star but a dual binary (and likely triple star) system.
That means Sirius provides at least two larger siblings. The visible blue giant we see in the sky is called Sirius A. It has an almost invisible partner known as the white dwarf Sirius B. A white dwarf star has reached a part of its life-cycle and collapsed to a very dense form.
So dense, Sirius B is 92 000 times the density of our own sun.
Bothse mass and density differences affect a potential binary system. In a dual orbit, our tiny sun would take an extremely wide orbit around Sirius A and Sirius B.
So wide, we may not have developed the technology to detect Sirius as our binary yet.
In our solar system, the planets orbit the sun. In the binary star system, the whole solar system orbits Sirius A and Sirius B.
If this is the case, there may be ways to detect Sirius as our second sun.
The precession of the equinoxes and the motion of the solar system
One line of evidence for a binary-star system is the cause of the precession of the equinox. Precession is the very slow movement of the background stars in the sky. It’s like a huge celestial clock that moves over a time period of roughly 24 000 years.
The constellation that the sun rises into on the spring equinox acts a the arm of the clock pointing at the hour. Today, the sun rises very close between Pisces and Aquarius. The slow shift of these constellations is the precession of the equinoxes. What causes precession is still thought to be the Lunisolar theory. It’s the wobble of the earth due to the gravity of the moon and sun.
The dynamic universe model has revealed serious problems with the wobble or Lunisolar theory. Newtonian equations that use the Lunisolar theory to calculate the rate of precession don’t work. They set the movement of the sun at zero (motionless). However, it’s now well known that our solar system is moving.
Precession of the equinox is far better explained as a movement of our entire solar system against the background stars. The binary-star system helps fix the Lunisolar theory. It includes the speed of movement of the sun, with the motion of the whole solar system that follows.
If precession is the movement of the entire solar system, the question remains. What are we orbiting around?
Can we now link this orbit to the binary partner Sirius?
Sirius, the Flooding of the Nile and Precession Paradox
Precession is the measure of the sunrise against the background of star constellations on the spring equinox. The constellations move like a 12-handed clock across the sky.
If Sirius is the sun’s binary partner, like the sun, it should have no motion against the star background. In other words, Sirius should not precess, as the rest of the star background do.
For evidence, we can look at the history of Sirius in the sky. In Egypt, the rise of Sirius on the horizon marked the beginning calendar. For agricultural importance alone, it signals the flooding of the Nile that happens soon after.
This method defies observations of precession of stars. Why would Sirius remain in this one spot? Sirius should precess along with the other constellations. That’s if it’s not in a binary orbit with our sun. In which case it would stay steady and rise in the same place.
If Sirius precesses would not be an inaccurate measurement for the flooding of the Nile. Today, the flooding occurs after the June rainy season in Ethiopia. It’s where the Blue Nile rises. Sirius’ heliacal rising remains a central marker of the year throughout Egyptian history.
So despite precession of the equinoxes, Sirius, and the solstice remained locked at the same distance from one another during most of Egyptian history.
The Egyptian calendar could be evidence that Sirius is steady in the sky. As a binary partner would be.
Today we can calculate the movement of Sirius compared to the precession of the equinox.
Measuring the precession of Sirius– The Sirius Research Group
The Sirius Research group has studied whether Sirius does indeed move with the sun. Since 1988 they have recorded the position of Sirius for approximately 20 years. To date, they have recorded NO movement in its location relative to the precession of other constellations.
Every year, on July 4, the sunrise at 30 degrees’ latitude (the Giza Plateau or Memphis) the rise of Sirius can be seen.
Throughout history, many accounts have observed Sirius, and the sun locked together.
The research looks at the movement of Sirius relative to the position of the sun, compared to background stars. Sirius is displaced in the same direction, almost exactly.
The following graph displays actual measured daily transit readings of Sirius (blue line). It compares this to readings of the precession rate (red line). That’s the rest of the stars in the sky.
The data is clear evidence that demonstrates that Sirius does not precess.
Transit of Sirius compared to the precession of other stars in the sky. Source
Is Sirius our Solar System’s second sun?
The heliacal rise of Sirius just before sunrise on the eastern horizon of the Egyptian Desert. Source
Proving that our sun is a binary sibling to Sirius could be one of the biggest finds of the 21st century. The evidence is etched into thousands of years of ancient astronomy and calendar systems.
The Gregorian calendar deviates precisely in its start point from the heliacal rise of Sirius. Leap years are a fudging method to stop the drift, but it still happens, and the shift in seasons is now recorded by climate scientists.
Today, astronomers have confirmed both theory and observations that support a binary system. Unlike all the other stars in the sky, Sirius does not move against the sun during the precession of the equinoxes.
The 4th of July rise of Sirius may be the precise way to measure the beginning of the year. That’s the point in time when the earth, the sun, and Sirius all line-up together. It occurs during their orbit around a central point. That central point may be a third binary partner. Let’s leave possible third binary partners for another day.
From there, our sun and Sirius continue their majestic dance, moving apart, and inevitably back together.
This was a short exploration of the basis of the binary star theory. The Human Origin Project will be following the evidence of Sirius as a binary partner to our sun.
Now we want to hear from you. What evidence do you believe is most compelling behind Sirius mythology, the two-sun theory, and the problems of the Gregorian calendar.
Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
Further reading:
- Henry, Todd J. (2006-07-01). “The One Hundred Nearest Star Systems”. RECONS.
- http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/articles/3-3/uwe.pdf
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/592540?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
- https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2008GL035209
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275033106_The_Heliacal_Rising_of_Sirius
- http://www.binaryresearchinstitute.org/srg/SiriusResearch.shtml
- http://binaryresearchinstitute.com/bri/sirius-research-group/
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