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New evidence suggests a ninth planet lurking at the edge of the solar system

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C

CreeperBlocks

Banned
Ego.jpg
 
S

Sesha

Member
Ten years later and we finally have a replacement for Pluto.

Are there any appropriate names left they haven't given to some dumb asteroid yet?
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
CreeperBlocks said:
Ego.jpg
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I'm still not sure why a planet would have a face. Sure artistic license and all but I still don't get why a planet would have or need a face, just blinking its eyes would probably need more energy than a thousand Krakatoa's erupting.

Even Mogo didn't have a face.
 
Melon Husk

Melon Husk

Member
Well, he has a good track record:

Article said:
Championing a new ninth planet is an ironic role for Brown; he is better known as a planet slayer. His 2005 discovery of Eris, a remote icy world nearly the same size as Pluto, revealed that what was seen as the outermost planet was just one of many worlds in the Kuiper belt. Astronomers promptly reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet—a saga Brown recounted in his book How I Killed Pluto.
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Brown got his first inkling of his current quarry in 2003, when he led a team that found Sedna, an object a bit smaller than both Eris and Pluto. Sedna’s odd, far-flung orbit made it the most distant known object in the solar system at the time. Its perihelion, or closest point to the sun, lay at 76 AU, beyond the Kuiper belt and far outside the influence of Neptune’s gravity. The implication was clear: Something massive, well beyond Neptune, must have pulled Sedna into its distant orbit.
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SolVanderlyn said:
Out of the Roman deity names left I hope they choose Terminus or Minerva.
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I like Terminus, because, ya know, "goal, end, final point," from Latin terminus (plural termini) "end, boundary line".

"In ancient Rome, Terminus was the name of the deity who presided over boundaries and landmarks, focus of the important Roman festival of Terminalia (held Feb. 23, the end of the old Roman year)."

Too perfect.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
lastflowers said:
The universe is an incredible place, and our knowledge is surprisingly vast for how small we are within it. I read a passage from Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" 2003) a couple of weeks ago and found it fitting. it's a bit shortened in places, and perhaps paraphrased a bit, but mostly remains intact:



I'm not sure how scientifically accurate everything he discusses in here, but it's a really nice read thus far.
Click to expand...

This is why more people need to download Space Engine. It's one of the best ways I've seen to really communicate how much empty space there is in space.
 
P

PatThePassive

Member
Grexeno said:
I would flip my shit if the mythical Planet X actually ended up being a real thing.
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I loath this idea that conspiracy nuts make up stuff and once in a blue moon they are kinda right and they start praising themselves.

I will fight tooth and nail in arguing that its not planet X until it hits the earth like they were saying it would.

I'm gonna snap when we finally make contact with alien life for the first time and they get all smug saying they were right all along.
 
H

Herne

Member
Such a planet has long been suspected to exist, hasn't it? The reason they found Pluto is because of perturbations of Neptune's orbit, which they proposed came from a bigger planet further out. When Pluto was found, everyone was surprised because it did not explain the pull on Neptune's orbit. I'm pretty sure I remember reading that multiple times over the years. Maybe I'm getting confused with something else, I dunno.

Very exciting if something is there.
 
I

infinitys_7th

Member
PatThePassive said:
I loath this idea that conspiracy nuts make up stuff and once in a blue moon they are kinda right and they start praising themselves.

I will fight tooth and nail in arguing that its not planet X until it hits the earth like they were saying it would.

I'm gonna snap when we finally make contact with alien life for the first time and they get all smug saying they were right all along.
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It definitely isn't Nibiru or whatever rogue planet they think enters the inner solar system regularly (without, you know, slinging planets around and everything like would happen if it was real).

It has a very elliptical orbit far out beyond the actual solar system. I would love to learn how some thing so massive formed in what is, traditionally, a cloud of dust too thin to aggregate. Makes you wonder if there are other far off massive planets.

And it's not really comparable to believing in alien life in general. Maybe if we meet a race like the Greys or something (lol), but there would be nothing wrong in assuming alien life exists (or that it doesn't exist).
 
F

Fenderputty

Banned
Interesting. In 2014 NASA was pretty sure it didn't exist:

http://earthsky.org/science-wire/planet-x-still-doesnt-exist

It's cool they monitored orbits of other things to infer it's existence indirectly. If the closest approach is 7 Neptunes and the further approach was something like 40 Neptunes,would we actually be able to "see" this planet in the visible light spectrum? Like if we were hypothetically able to reach it one day.
 
P

PatThePassive

Member
infinitys_7th said:
It definitely isn't Nibiru or whatever rogue planet they think enters the inner solar system regularly (without, you know, slinging planets around and everything like would happen if it was real).

It has a very elliptical orbit far out beyond the actual solar system. I would love to learn how some thing so massive formed in what is, traditionally, a cloud of dust too thin to aggregate. Makes you wonder if there are other far off massive planets.

And it's not really comparable to believing in alien life in general. Maybe if we meet a race like the Greys or something (lol), but there would be nothing wrong in assuming alien life exists (or that it doesn't exist).
Click to expand...

I believe there's alien life out there but what I'm talking about are the people who say the greys or reptiles run the government and have secret mars bases, and that if we were to make contact with an alien race of tree people they would claim that they were right about the greys or reptiles running the government and mars bases.
 
V

Valjean Lafitte

Banned
How can they tell it's an icy planet without observing it?

Also, nuts to that Planet X/Nibiru nonsense--it's got to have a Roman or Greek deity name. My vote:

specws2.png
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Herne said:
Such a plant has long been suspected to exist, hasn't it? The reason they found Pluto is because of perturbations of Neptune's orbit, which they proposed came from a bigger planet further out. When Pluto was found, everyone was surprised because it did not explain the pull on Neptune's orbit. I'm pretty sure I remember reading that multiple times over the years. Maybe I'm getting confused with something else, I dunno.

Very exciting if something is there.
Click to expand...

Hasnt it been suggested that the current configuration of the solar system is difficult to recreate in simulations unless they allow for another planet to have been here earlier, and ejected by Jupiter. Wonder if this might help simulates of the creation of the solar system?
 
dukeoflegs

dukeoflegs

Member
It hasn't been seen because it is very dim, or because its orbit is so long it jist looks like a star in the sky that doesn't move, or is it a combination of both?
 
Insane Metal

Insane Metal

Member
Holy shit space never ceases to amaze me. This is incredible! And it never comes closer to the sun than 4x the distance of pluto... damn!
 
O

Obliterator

Member
Fenderputty said:
If the closest approach is 7 Neptunes and the further approach was something like 40 Neptunes,would we actually be able to "see" this planet in the visible light spectrum? Like if we were hypothetically able to reach it one day.
Click to expand...

This is something I asked earlier, if its that far away would the planet even be visible in a traditional sense? Like does enough light even reach that far to illuminate it? It would be just pitch black I would presume.
 
D

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
This is pretty amazing. I would have thought any object that big would have been discovered long ago once scientists were able to account for gravity pull of planets.
 
F

Fenderputty

Banned
Obliterator said:
This is something I asked earlier, if its that far away would the planet even be visible in a traditional sense? Like does enough light even reach that far to illuminate it? It would be just pitch black I would presume.
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Whatever light might be reaching it so weak we can't perceive it's reflection back to us. Visible light on Pluto is like twilight here. This thing at it's closest would be 7 Neptunes from us.

It could be too far? It could be because it's not a reflective material? It could be both?
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Obliterator said:
This is something I asked earlier, if its that far away would the planet even be visible in a traditional sense? Like does enough light even reach that far to illuminate it? It would be just pitch black I would presume.
Click to expand...


I doubt it. https://www.quora.com/Pluto-dwarf-planet-1/Despite-having-telescopes-like-Hubble-that-can-look-at-galaxies-billions-of-lightyears-away-why-is-the-best-image-of-Pluto-we-have-a-smudge

They'd probably have to detect it like they detect exoplanets, by the gravitational influence it has over other bodies (in this case the planets in our solar system). I guess it hasn't been noticed before because nobody has been looking for such a thing on our own doorstep
 
F

Fenderputty

Banned
mrklaw said:
They'd probably have to detect it like they detect exoplanets, by the gravitational influence it has over other bodies (in this case the planets in our solar system). I guess it hasn't been noticed before because nobody has been looking for such a thing on our own doorstep
Click to expand...

The current evidence proposed in the new research is doing just that. Detecting the planet indirectly through it's effects on other know bodies and their orbits.

We have tried to look for it previously using infrared. In 2014 NASA said it wasn't real.

http://earthsky.org/science-wire/planet-x-still-doesnt-exist

I looked in the current articles to see if the scientists addressed this but they didn't.
 
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