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Space

A New World's Extraordinary Orbit Points to Planet Nine (wired.com) 82

Posted by msmash from the far-far-away dept.
In early 2016, two planetary scientists declared that a ghost planet is hiding in the depths of the solar system, well beyond the orbit of Pluto. Their claim, which they made based on the curious orbits of distant icy worlds, quickly sparked a race to find this so-called Planet Nine -- a planet that is estimated to be about 10 times the mass of Earth. From a report: Now, astronomers are reporting that they have spotted another distant world -- perhaps as large as a dwarf planet -- whose orbit is so odd that it is likely to have been shepherded by Planet Nine. The object confirms a specific prediction made by Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown, the astronomers at the California Institute of Technology who first argued for Planet Nine's existence. "It's not proof that Planet Nine exists," said David Gerdes, an astronomer at the University of Michigan and a co-author on the new paper. "But I would say the presence of an object like this in our solar system bolsters the case for Planet Nine."

Gerdes and his colleagues spotted the new object in data from the Dark Energy Survey, a project that probes the acceleration in the expansion of the universe by surveying a region well above the plane of the solar system. This makes it an unlikely tool for finding objects inside the solar system, since they mostly orbit within the plane. But that is exactly what makes the new object unique: Its orbit is tilted 54 degrees with respect to the plane of the solar system. It's something Gerdes did not expect to see. Batygin and Brown, however, predicted it. The rocky body is being described as 2015 BP519. Quanta magazine has more details.
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A New World's Extraordinary Orbit Points to Planet Nine More

A New World's Extraordinary Orbit Points to Planet Nine

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  • 9th planet = Pluto (Score:2, Informative)

    by _Sharp'r_ ( 649297 )

    Yes, Pluto is still a planet [washingtonpost.com].

    • Re:9th planet = Pluto (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21, 2018 @04:01PM (#56649444)

      So this new one would be...Planet X?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Megol ( 3135005 )

      Yes it is - if you think it is. No, if not.

      In further news what you (likely) call the (opt:dwarf) planet Pluto I call the basketball Screwdriver IV.

    • That's not really true, Michael Brown killed it before he got shot by the police.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's funny and a bit pathetic how people of a certain age and above are so sentimental about this subject.

      • I've seen an observation that this could be a nationalist matter. After all, Pluto was the one planet discovered by a scientist from the New World.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I've seen an observation that this could be a nationalist matter. After all, Pluto was the one planet discovered by a scientist from the New World.

          Maybe, but no one I've talked to who refuses to give up on Pluto knows this. To a one, they say, "but I learned it in grade school." Which is bizarre to me, because pretty much everything you learn in grade school is so oversimplified it is effectively wrong if you stick to that version as an adult. Often they did a report on Pluto because it was obviously special among the planets, which is just icing on the irony cake.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jythie ( 914043 )
            One of the strange things about nationalism is that as it gets attached to particular things, the meme survives long after the original motivation is forgotten. The attachment Americans have to pluto was originally part of a nationalistic push, but today people just remember how much it was a part of their childhood (and cartoons). They know it is important, they know it is part of their identity, but the visible connection is long lost.
            • Long after the argument for removing or reinstating Pluto's planethood is settled, it's important to remember the people whose views really matter are the ones arguing for and against... the mainstream citizen is on the Facebook commenting on the lateset Kardashian thingie.

              • The only web site where I ever heard about "Kardashian's" is /.
                I admit I googled about a year ago to get a clue what this is about. A rich man and a girl with a much to fat ass ... and that is worth talking about?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Eh, there is a bit of nationalism and anti-intellectualism in there.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

        It's funny and a bit pathetic how people of a certain age and above are so sentimental about this subject.

        Then it must be downright hilarious how anyone with any experience with classification systems could support one in which [adjective]+[noun] can be called "not a [noun]."

        That's a red house, not a house.

        Amongst those with an interest in astronomy it has nothing to do with sentimentality and quite a lot to do with the slipshod and rushed way in which the change was crammed through as a fait accompli by a

    • Indeed the Washington post says it's so.

      Don't worry though, eventually you'll all die off. We all do eventually. In the meantime our school textbooks have been updated to stop at Neptune so in a couple of generations people will forget that Pluto was ever a planet and this can be relegated to the encyclopedia of history under a section labelled: Famous petty arguments.

  • I saw an episode of "The Universe" on the History Channel where Mike Brown was talking about his belief that such a planet existed. He was lumped in with a bunch of 2012 Doomsdayers who suggested that such a planet would spell doom for us. Given his track-record of planet* discovery, I thought his interview may have been taken out of context, but it sounds like he actually believes this is the case (the planet part, not the doomsday part).

    *dwarf-planet, extra-solar body, or whatever name we use nowadays

    • I watched a lecture by one of the guys who did the math showing where to look for Planet 9. It's very convincing.

      Essentially, if there ISN'T a Neptune-sized object in the orbit they're predicting, there is something extremely odd happening in the outer Solar system that will still require explaining. There are KBOs with orbits that are most easily explained by a small gas giant in a long, elliptical orbit - if you assume more than one body (excluding the possibility of a dual-planet arrangement like Plut

      • I remember hearing that Neptune's orbit could only be explained by some other gas giant affecting it (which spurred the hunt that found Pluto), but it turned out that Neptune's orbit had been calculated incorrectly based off of bogus calculations of it's mass. I wonder if that's the case here.

  • ... even if it's premature speculation.

    An object as remotely located as "planet nine," would be part of the Kuiper belt.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slew ( 2918 )

      ... even if it's premature speculation.

      An object as remotely located as "planet nine," would be part of the Kuiper belt.

      Like most of the planets in the solar system are mostly in a similar plane, the Kuiper belt (like the asteroid belt) is mostly like a disc also on a plane (maxing out at about 15 degree inclination from that plane)

      The recently discovered dwarf object BP519 [wikipedia.org] is on a different plane about 50 degrees inclined (Pluto is only about 17 degrees inclined) which is why some scientists think it is potential evidence of another planet at extreme inclination: the postulated highly inclined "planet 9".

      Of course if an obj

  • "Plan 9".

    Damn. I was really looking forward to meeting Vampira.

  • Pluto aka Hades was the god of death and the underworld. Should we name the new planet if it exists "Satan"? Plutonium is so dangerous it was consciously named after Pluto. A dark god for a dark element.

    • Hades: "What? What do the Romans call me? Pluto? Gee, I wouldn't even name my dog like that!"

    • Seeing the Plutonium was found 10 years after the planet Pluto was found, and the previous two elements are Uranium and Neptunium, I find your claim highly suspect that Plutonium was named after the God Pluto. Do you have an authoritative reference for that?

  • This is just begging for a low budget Corman script.

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