It's kind of funny how things play out in "real life" sometimes. We all know that h. P. Lovecraft 'invented' the Trans-Neptunian Planet of Yuggoth in his weird fiction and poetry. He wrote about the imaginary planet as part of his Yog Sothoth/Cthulhu Mythos, and most notably in his set of 30+ sonnets titled Fungi From Yuggoth...as well as the Whisperer in Darkness, where there is a very nice connection made to Machen's work, but that's a digression for another time. Ahem. So, if you take a look at this article posted at Nature:
A Sedna-like body with a perihelion of 80 astronomical units, you'll see the current evidence that there really is an Oort Cloud, Virginia...and that it mat be teeming with dwarf planets and other bodies. but wait, that's not all, not by a long shot. If you click over to The Guardian, there's an article that will warm the heart of any die-hard HPL-fan. Based upon what we currently know, there is compelling evidence, based upon observations of Sedna, and VP-113 ("Biden"), and their respective orbits,that there could very well could be a Trans-Neptunian 'Super-Earth' orbiting out there. Sure, NASA has pretty-much ruled-out the notion that there might be a Saturn-sized 'Planet-X' out there, but a 'super-Earth,' only 10-times the mass of Earth might have slipped by unnoticed. So far. A very real Yuggoth might still be waiting discovery out there, rolling along the black rim of the solar system...
IA!
Wouldn't that be something if they actually found it . . .
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. If HPL were around to see such a thing unfold before us all, it would probably fill him with more cosmic dread than even he might have imagined.
DeleteOf course, Planet X could also be some alien artifact Big Dumb Object.
ReplyDeleteWhen you read the mentions of Yuggoth in HPL's stories & sonnets, the place is permeated with the sense of having been massively reconstructed and transformed by more than one species' intervention. The Mi-Go were only the most recent tenants to claim/occupy the thing. I rather like the notion that Yuggoth is more of a Big Dumb Object, less of a naturally-occurring dwarf-planet. It opens some interesting doors, so to speak...
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