New (ninth) planet

[2hats]

Caltech astronomers have determined, after analysing the orbits of several minor planets (Sedna and five others) that there is most likely an as yet unobserved planet, around the size of Neptune (and just over half the mass), in an elliptical orbit, some 200AU from the Sun (well outside the Kuiper belt), taking 15000 years to complete an orbit.

Note how the points of closest approach of the minor planets concerned are clustered together (those points are also all close to the ecliptic). This suggests a larger object, outside their orbits, influencing all and tidally driving (shepherding) them towards similar orbits (a process akin to that guiding material around Saturn into the rings and divisions that are seen there).

doi:10.3847/0004-6256/151/2/22

 

[Ax^]

 

[camouflage]

Caltech astronomers have determined, after analysing the orbits of several minor planets (Sedna and five others) that there is most likely an as yet unobserved planet, around the size of Neptune (and just over half the mass), in an elliptical orbit, some 200AU from the Sun (well outside the Kuiper belt), taking 15000 years to complete an orbit.

Note how the points of closest approach of the minor planets concerned are clustered together (those points are also all close to the ecliptic). This suggests a larger object, outside their orbits, influencing all and tidally driving (shepherding) them towards similar orbits (a process akin to that guiding material around Saturn into the rings and divisions that are seen there).

doi:10.3847/0004-6256/151/2/22

Conspiraloon bonkery... you'll have us believe its the jooz and the queen is a lizard and something something holographic lazers next. Wibble.

Soz. Couldn't resist.


Amazaballs news this... reminds me of the plot in Blindsight... after which I wondered about the possibility of an as-yet undiscovered gas giant beyond the Oort cloud (in Blindsight it was actually a brown dwarf out there.. but surely we would have spotted something that big and warm by now). Wonder how many more trans-Oort planets might be out there... Ceres to Neptune sized objects that is... some might actually be time-shares with Alpha Centauri...

 

[krtek a houby]

Didn't we already have 9 planets or was one downgraded? Anyway, kudos to 2hats for yet another space thread that will no doubt blow our minds

 

[fishfinger]

Didn't we already have 9 planets or was one downgraded? Anyway, kudos to 2hats for yet another space thread that will no doubt blow our minds

Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet 10 years ago.

 

[Pickman's model]

i'm throwing 'pan' into the ring as the name for this proposed new object

the great god pan

 

[2hats]

Didn't we already have 9 planets or was one downgraded? Anyway, kudos to 2hats for yet another space thread that will no doubt blow our minds

Eight major planets since Pluto was reclassified as a minor planet - one of many trans-Neptunian objects (a dwarf planet that is a Kuiper object, to be more precise).

The new suspect would be a planet if the calculations are borne out by observations.

 

[DotCommunist]

'plutoid object' is nicer

 

[camouflage]

i'm throwing 'pan' into the ring as the name for this proposed new object

the great god pan

Why always classical? Why not Ogun... Yoruba god of iron and thunder? In fact why not Nabiru..just ta takes da piss.

 

[Pickman's model]

Why always classical? Why not Ogun... Yoruba god of iron and thunder? In fact why not Nabiru..just ta takes da piss.

because we don't want planet bush or blair or churchill

 

[fishfinger]

because we don't want planet bush or blair or churchill

What about Planet Claire?

 

[camouflage]

because we don't want planet bush or blair or churchill

Plenty of other cultures out there beside Roman and Greek... just sayin.

 

[Pickman's model]

Plenty of other cultures out there beside Roman and Greek... just sayin.

planet putin

 

[camouflage]

planet putin

Why bring politicians into this??

 

[Pickman's model]

Why bring politicians into this??

that's how it will end up, with shoddy politicians having whole planets named after them

 

[camouflage]

that's how it will end up, with shoddy politicians having whole planets named after them

Well not looking to threadjack about it... just that as far as naming planets after gods etc... well, there are thousands of mythologies to choose from. Be nice to have a Sol planet named not in the Greek/Roman tradition. Having said that... be cool if this very cold and dark world (assuming it does exist) was called Hades.

 

[Pickman's model]

Well not looking to threadjack about it... just that as far as naming planets after gods etc... well, there are thousands of mythologies to choose from. Be nice to have a Sol planet named not in the Greek/Roman tradition. Having said that... be cool if this very cold and dark world (assuming it does exist) was called Hades.

or morden

 

[xes]

It's all a load of old bollocks, as any fool knows. Because none of the planets exist! That's right, there are no such things as planets...

 

[Lord Camomile]

Voyager's somewhere out there, could we not ask it to swing by and take a look?

 

[2hats]

Informally it is known in the research team as 'Planet Phattie'.

Unfortunately Voyager's 1 and 2 are most likely too far from where this planet is located for trajectory variations, due to the gravitational influence of it, to be detectable. Pioneers 10 and 11, though roughly in the right location, are long since dead.

New Horizons is heading in a better direction. Doubtless there will be an analysis of that probe's trajectory in the coming years (but it might still be too small to provide evidence).

One major problem in positively locating this ninth planet is that it is most likely currently close to, in the region of, the galactic centre. So searching for it (at most wavelengths) isn't going to be easy - it would be very slow moving in a sea of 'noise'. Direct discovery might need to wait for the next generation of survey telescopes such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (due to start operating in around 6 years time).

Failing that you might have to wait some years for new tech, or alternatively thousands or tens of thousands of years for it to emerge from the galactic 'glare' .

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

In fact why not Nabiru..just ta takes da piss.

We really should. Just to mess with the conspiracy crowd.

(Nibiru cataclysm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

 

[stdP]

Surely "Planet 9 From Outer Space" is the obvious contender?

Curse ye for linking to a wikipedia page abut conspiraloons... now I've spent a goodly portion of the afternoon ratcheting my jaw up from the floor and cleaning up the drool

 

[Steel Icarus]

i'm throwing 'pan' into the ring as the name for this proposed new object

the great god pan

Already a heavenly body called Pan, one of Saturn's moons situated within the actual rings Pan (moon) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Pickman's model]

Already a heavenly body called Pan, one of Saturn's moons situated within the actual rings Pan (moon) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

in that case it should be called cthulhu

 

[Steel Icarus]

in that case it should be called cthulhu

Now THAT I could get behind

 

[Epona]

If it is there, I hope they hurry up and find it, I've been seeing these news stories crop up about twice a decade for my entire life!

 

[gosub]

It's all a load of old bollocks, as any fool knows. Because none of the planets exist! That's right, there are no such things as planets...

 

[camouflage]

Hades is the correct name.

The origin of Hades' name is uncertain, but has generally been seen as meaning "The Unseen One" since antiquity. An extensive section of Plato's dialogue Cratylus is devoted to the etymology of the god's name, in which Socrates is arguing for a folk etymology not from "unseen" but from "his knowledge (eidenai) of all noble things". Modern linguists have proposed the Proto-Greek form *Awides ("unseen").[n 2][n 3] The earliest attested form is Aḯdēs (Ἀΐδης), which lacks the proposed digamma. West argues instead for an original meaning of "the one who presides over meeting up" from the universality of death.[9]

Hades - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Vintage Paw]

It's got to be named in the same tradition as the others or it will feel left out, and no one likes an angry large planet.

2hats - the orbits of the minor planets are so striking in how they correspond to where they think this planet is... as it moves further along in its orbit, how would it affect their orbits? As it is now, it seems that they are perfectly aligned to where it is, but would they shift in some way in relation to it or are those shifts likely to be very very slow and very very gradual so as to not be detectable except over millennia?

 

[2hats]

If it exists, over many millions of years it will drive those minor planets into similar orbits. It would also occasionally perturb other Kuiper belt objects out into such orbits (if this is what is happening we are inevitably currently only seeing the largest/brightest objects that have undergone this).