Posted on 01/15/2015 3:45:27 PM PST by BenLurkin
In their studies, the team analyzed the effects of what is called the Kozai mechanism, which is related to the gravitational perturbation that a large body exerts on the orbit of another much smaller and further away object. They looked at how the highly eccentric comet 96P/Machholz1 is influenced by Jupiter (it will come near the orbit of Mercury in 2017, but it travels as much as 6 AU at aphelion) and it may provide the key to explain the puzzling clustering of orbits around argument of perihelion close to 0° recently found for the population of ETNOs, the team wrote in one of their papers.
They also looked at the dwarf planet discovered last year called 2012 VP113 in the Oort cloud (its closest approach to the Sun is about 80 astronomical units) and how some researchers say it appears its orbit might be influenced by the possible presence of a dark and icy super-Earth, up to ten times larger than our planet.
This Sedna-like object has the most distant perihelion of any known minor planet and the value of its argument of perihelion is close to 0°, the team writes in their second paper. This property appears to be shared by almost all known asteroids with semimajor axis greater than 150 au and perihelion greater than 30 au (the extreme trans-Neptunian objects or ETNOs), and this fact has been interpreted as evidence for the existence of a super-Earth at 250 au. In this scenario, a population of stable asteroids may be shepherded by a distant, undiscovered planet larger than the Earth that keeps the value of their argument of perihelion librating around 0° as a result of the Kozai mechanism.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
wow. That would be some distance.
Bump!
Where's Quix? This is right up his alley.
Back in my day, one sailed West to reach the Orient with no land in between. Thankfully, someone tried it.
Nice recipe, here is another; http://almashriq.hiof.no/general/600/640/641/khayat/vegetable-dishes/mahshi-warak-areesh.html
All this talk of more planets is very “perturbing” to me.
Unless it’s going to be the Tropical Planet of Naked Women I’m not much interested.
Sedna looks just about far enough away to send the Islamics there...
Perhaps more likely is that our Sun is part of a binary star system.
About ten bucks at Trader Joe's.
LOL!
Whoa, what a coincidence! Me and my homies was discussing that very subject during half time of the Packers game Sunday.......
Its possible since most stars are binary. There could be a red or brown dwarf out there that we haven’t spotted yet.
Danggit! If they find more planets, I'll have to have my tatt updated! (No 'Uranus' jokes, PLEASE!)
Don’t like the canned stuff. Sadaf label is about three bucks at ethnic stores; fair but homemade is infinetely better.
A lot of those look like....growths......
If they orbit within the Oort cloud, they are between 5,000 and 100,000 times farther away from the sun than we are. That makes the orbital period, very roughly, something like 5,000 to 100,000 years.
Another reminder of why it’s so important to demand that anyone that you are considering interacting with for anything beyond a cup of coffee must strip down to the buff so that you can examine whatever tattoos they may have emblazoned on their body.
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