in 1961, according to several by new age sources, Paul Otto Hesse discovered a "photon belt" circling the central sun of the Pleiades, and, we are told, our solar system passes through it every 12,500 years, and will next be fully immersed in it in "2011-2012". UPDATE:  However, it now transpires that the original article was probably a hoax, and that there are at least 3 major errors involved in the story:

1) No photon belt or other such region of increased energy has been discovered. Photons in any case are merely particles of electromagnetic energy, which we commonly experience as light. Upon exposure to excess photons the most common transformation of your being is sunburn.

(2) There's no "anomaly" near the Pleiades star cluster. The Pleiades are surrounded by a nebula, or gas cloud. This cloud is composed not of photons but of dust and hydrogen gas.

(3) The earth isn't heading toward the Pleiades but away from them. In the 1850s it was conjectured that the earth orbited the Pleiades, but this has long since been discredited.

(4) Paul Otto Hesse is a German author of a book on Judgement Day and is unknown to astronomers.

Dr. Paul LaViolette, Galactic Center Disinformation, which suggests that although it is wrong in many ways, the photon belt myth can be seen as an analogy for a galactic superwave (see item 48). It is also an analogy for precession, (diagram at item 31) but the 25,000-26,000 - year movement is the movement of the equinoxes and solstices around the zodiac, not the solar system around the Pleiades. HOWEVER, it just so happens that the Maya used the Pleiades to measure precession, and our proximity to the 2012 end-point (see item 34).

Other scientists such as Alexey Dmitriev have also developed theories that relate to this issue. Dmitriev has analysed solar system changes and concluded that the solar system is entering an "area of magnetised plasma"

Photon Belt