Hunt for Planet X back on
Discussion
Interesting news - the hunt for Planet X is back on. Old Percival Lowell might be proved right after all.
http://www.space.com/31672-planet-nine-evidence-an...
http://www.space.com/31672-planet-nine-evidence-an...
The daft thought crossed my mind this morning that it would have been a bit of a shock if either of the Voyager probes had happened to bump into the elusive planet....
The odds of course would be a tad worse than the National Lottery, but remarkable to think that something that big is lurking so relatively close in galactic terms.
Listening to one of the latest "In Our Time" episodes about Saturn it was calmly stated that Cassini will be travelling through the rings again. Remarkable.
The odds of course would be a tad worse than the National Lottery, but remarkable to think that something that big is lurking so relatively close in galactic terms.
Listening to one of the latest "In Our Time" episodes about Saturn it was calmly stated that Cassini will be travelling through the rings again. Remarkable.
callmedave said:
I laughed when my mrs told me 'they have discovered a ninth planet'
if there is anything its a 10th planet, but i dont believe this 10th planet exists, it orbits further out than Pluto, yet its bigger than earth, and they never saw it before? yeah ok.
It is probably WAY out further than Pluto (or Neptune). When you consider that it could take between 10,000 years and 20,000 year to orbit the sun and Pluto orbits the sun once every 248 years, that gives you an idea of how far away such a planet might be. if there is anything its a 10th planet, but i dont believe this 10th planet exists, it orbits further out than Pluto, yet its bigger than earth, and they never saw it before? yeah ok.
And we have found a number of "wandering" non solar system planets much further away already.
Also, even if it is a Uranus/Neptune class planet, the light levels out there will be so dim that seeing this thing from earth would be very, very difficult using old style observational techniques.
It's certainly worthwhile organising a search - now that there are some calculations that can give us its approximate location in the sky. And with automated surveillance system available, it could be found quite quickly, once you know roughly where to start looking.
Eric Mc said:
It is probably WAY out further than Pluto (or Neptune). When you consider that it could take between 10,000 years and 20,000 year to orbit the sun and Pluto orbits the sun once every 248 years, that gives you an idea of how far away such a planet might be.
And we have found a number of "wandering" non solar system planets much further away already.
Also, even if it is a Uranus/Neptune class planet, the light levels out there will be so dim that seeing this thing from earth would be very, very difficult using old style observational techniques.
It's certainly worthwhile organising a search - now that there are some calculations that can give us its approximate location in the sky. And with automated surveillance system available, it could be found quite quickly, once you know roughly where to start looking.
I never considered an elliptical orbit, good point! And we have found a number of "wandering" non solar system planets much further away already.
Also, even if it is a Uranus/Neptune class planet, the light levels out there will be so dim that seeing this thing from earth would be very, very difficult using old style observational techniques.
It's certainly worthwhile organising a search - now that there are some calculations that can give us its approximate location in the sky. And with automated surveillance system available, it could be found quite quickly, once you know roughly where to start looking.
hornet said:
callmedave said:
I laughed when my mrs told me 'they have discovered a ninth planet'
if there is anything its a 10th planet, but i dont believe this 10th planet exists, it orbits further out than Pluto, yet its bigger than earth, and they never saw it before? yeah ok.
Very dim...if there is anything its a 10th planet, but i dont believe this 10th planet exists, it orbits further out than Pluto, yet its bigger than earth, and they never saw it before? yeah ok.
callmedave said:
Please tell me what im missing, taking into account Erics post above.
Why exactly do you not accept that an object of that size (still not exactly huge) could remain undiscovered in the Solar System? If it exists as proposed, it's staggeringly distant even at perihelion, and on such a long orbit that it'll be much, much more distant on average. If it's really out there, it's not been spotted up to now because it's incredibly faint, incredibly distant, in an uncertain orbit, at the limits of current telescopes and, ultimately, nobody has been actively looking for it. Even the team proposing it only "found" it by accident, as they were actually looking at the behaviour of other bodies. Your instant "yeah right" response feels very much like argument from incredulity and just kills what could be a really interesting discussion.
hornet said:
Why exactly do you not accept that an object of that size (still not exactly huge) could remain undiscovered in the Solar System? If it exists as proposed, it's staggeringly distant even at perihelion, and on such a long orbit that it'll be much, much more distant on average. If it's really out there, it's not been spotted up to now because it's incredibly faint, incredibly distant, in an uncertain orbit, at the limits of current telescopes and, ultimately, nobody has been actively looking for it. Even the team proposing it only "found" it by accident, as they were actually looking at the behaviour of other bodies.
Your instant "yeah right" response feels very much like argument from incredulity and just kills what could be a really interesting discussion.
For this to go unseen for so long, it owuld have to be a long way out, i dont know how far behind pluto the Suns SOI is, but if it reaches that far for such a huge mass, how are there not other objects out out beyond pluto orbiting our sun? If there are more objects orbiting our sun, how have we not found those either? Your instant "yeah right" response feels very much like argument from incredulity and just kills what could be a really interesting discussion.
I feel that these objects would have been found a lot sooner than 2016. - Im happy to be proven wrong - another planet in our solar system is very exciting and i kept up to date with the recent Pluto findings.
You could quite easily miss it, if you didn't know you needed to look for it:
Bit that interests me is the guys who've come across this have been looking at computer modelling of the solar system, and up until they introduced a 9th planet into the equation, they couldn't get Earth to end up where it has ended up. As soon as this other planet was introduced, some of the results did wind up with Earth being in the green zone.
The decision to add another planet only came about because astronomers in Hawaii (I think) discovered a planet that had no star to orbit. As far as we know, a planet can only be formed by star formation, so the suggestion was that this planet had been booted out of whatever solar system it originated in. Hence this 9th planet idea.
Now they think there's a chance it's actually still orbiting the sun......that's pretty exciting! How many others might there be?
Bit that interests me is the guys who've come across this have been looking at computer modelling of the solar system, and up until they introduced a 9th planet into the equation, they couldn't get Earth to end up where it has ended up. As soon as this other planet was introduced, some of the results did wind up with Earth being in the green zone.
The decision to add another planet only came about because astronomers in Hawaii (I think) discovered a planet that had no star to orbit. As far as we know, a planet can only be formed by star formation, so the suggestion was that this planet had been booted out of whatever solar system it originated in. Hence this 9th planet idea.
Now they think there's a chance it's actually still orbiting the sun......that's pretty exciting! How many others might there be?
Exactly, we haven't systematically hunted for remote planets since the 1930s as far as I am aware. And we certainly haven't systematically been looking since the advent of automated computerised scanning techniques.
I reckon there may be quite a few genuine planets (as opposed to Dwarf Planets and KBOs) out there in the far outskirts of the Solar System - and many of them will be in highly eccentric and inclined orbits - which will make them that bit more difficult to find.
The Solar System is turning out to be a lot more complex and interesting than was thought even only 40 years ago.
I reckon there may be quite a few genuine planets (as opposed to Dwarf Planets and KBOs) out there in the far outskirts of the Solar System - and many of them will be in highly eccentric and inclined orbits - which will make them that bit more difficult to find.
The Solar System is turning out to be a lot more complex and interesting than was thought even only 40 years ago.
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