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THE ANSWER TO THE PLANET NINE MYSTERY COULD COME SOONER THAN YOU THINK
Inverse ^

Posted on 06/20/2022 8:18:06 AM PDT by BenLurkin

“If Planet Nine is real, it would be on such an odd orbit and so far out in the outer Solar System, that it would really challenge our ideas of planet formation and dynamics,” Ann-Marie Madigan, assistant professor of astrophysics...

Madigan isn’t searching for just one planet — she’s looking for an entire belt of celestial objects. Like Planet Nine, this proposed Zderic-Madigan, or ZM, belt would be really out there, far beyond the Kuiper belt, with some of its closest bodies being more than twice as far from the Sun as Pluto at perihelion.

Unlike the Kuiper belt, this ZM belt tilts off the orbital plane, exhibits orbital clustering, and contains upwards of 10 Earth masses of material — similar to the prediction of Planet Nine’s mass. That’s a lot of unknown debris floating out there, considering the Kuiper belt contains less mass than even one Earth.

Running simulations focused on the gravitational interaction between the bodies in this hypothetical belt, Madigan and her team discovered that their theory explained why some bodies all uniformly orbit around the Sun in such a strange way. Madigan believes that some already-discovered dwarf planets, like Sedna and 2012 VP113...are members of this ZM belt. Sedna, for example, has a perihelion of 76 AU and could represent the inner edge of this hypothetical belt.

The ZM belt isn’t the only alternative to the Planet Nine mystery. Harvard astronomers think this unexplained gravitational effect could be coming from a primordial black hole about the size of a grapefruit. In contrast, others think all of this is just a problem of a poor sample size and selection bias, suggesting there’s no need for a Planet Nine or any theory whatsoever.

(Excerpt) Read more at inverse.com ...


TOPICS: Astronomy; Science
KEYWORDS: 2012vp113; adrianmelott; annmariemadigan; astronomy; cometfocusing; cometfocussing; darrenorf; davidjewitt; johnmatese; konstantinbatygin; kuiperbelt; mikebrown; science; sedna; selectionbias; xplanets; zdericmadiganbelt; zmbelt
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1 posted on 06/20/2022 8:18:06 AM PDT by BenLurkin
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To: BenLurkin

I liked it better when it was “Planet X”
(roman numeral 10)


2 posted on 06/20/2022 8:22:05 AM PDT by Mr. K (No consequence of repealing obamacare is worse than obamacare itself)
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To: BenLurkin

Is this why my horoscope is always wrong?


3 posted on 06/20/2022 8:27:39 AM PDT by gundog ( It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: BenLurkin

It’s as if Pluto wasn’t enough.


4 posted on 06/20/2022 8:31:57 AM PDT by sasquatch
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To: gundog
Is this why my horoscope is always wrong?

I find it odd that modern astrology has roles for Pluto, Neptune and Uranus even though they were discovered long after western Astrology was widely practiced. We never learn who deduced the influences of those planets, and how they came to their conclusions.
5 posted on 06/20/2022 8:34:09 AM PDT by Dr. Sivana ("It's one thing if it's a minor incursion" - Joe Biden)
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To: BenLurkin

6 posted on 06/20/2022 8:36:04 AM PDT by Seruzawa ("The Political left is the Garden of Eden of incompetence" - Marx the Smarter (Groucho))
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To: BenLurkin

I’m so old that I remember when we had nine planets. That was back before our planet was on fire and men were getting pregnant.


7 posted on 06/20/2022 8:40:02 AM PDT by GMMC0987
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To: sasquatch; BenLurkin; Kaslin; SunkenCiv

As long as they don’t make a bad movie about ... With a weird title like “Planet 9 From Outer Space.”

That would just be, like, out of this world.


8 posted on 06/20/2022 8:42:02 AM PDT by Robert A Cook PE (Method, motive, and opportunity: No morals, shear madness and hatred by those who cheat.)
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To: GMMC0987

Pluto will always be a Planet to me, anyone who says otherwise is just Goofy


9 posted on 06/20/2022 8:44:46 AM PDT by algore
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To: Mr. K

Does this mean the anunaki are back again? 🙄


10 posted on 06/20/2022 8:52:31 AM PDT by z3n (Kakistocracy)
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To: Robert A Cook PE; KevinDavis; annie laurie; Knitting A Conundrum; Viking2002; ...
Thanks RACPE. Virtual balloon bouquet for this ping of yours is (I think) your first to an astronomy topic. But hey, my memory is getting sucked into a black hole, so...
· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark ·
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Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar ·
X-Planets
Giant-planet Influence on the Collective Gravity of a Primordial Scattered Disk
A. Zderic, A. Madigan | Published 31 March 2020
Axisymmetric disks of high eccentricity, low mass bodies on near-Keplerian orbits are unstable to an out-of-plane buckling. This "inclination instability" exponentially grows the orbital inclinations, raises perihelia distances and clusters in argument of perihelion. Here we examine the instability in a massive primordial scattered disk including the orbit-averaged gravitational influence of the giant planets. We show that differential apsidal precession induced by the giant planets will suppress the inclination instability unless the primordial mass is $\gtrsim 20$ Earth masses. We also show that the instability should produce a "perihelion gap" at semi-major axes of hundreds of AU, as the orbits of the remnant population are more likely to have extremely large perihelion distances ... than intermediate values.

11 posted on 06/20/2022 9:01:54 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: algore
The demotion of Pluto was a political act by a supposedly scientific org, was a gratuitous and unnecessary action, carried out to belittle the US. IMHO of course. I'll stick with David Levy's view:
"To Pluto And Far Beyond" By David H. Levy, Parade, January 15, 2006 -- We don't have a dictionary definition yet that includes all the contingencies. In the wake of the new discovery, however, the International Astronomical Union has set up a group to develop a workable definition of planet. For our part, in consultation with several experienced planetary astronomers, Parade offers this definition: A planet is a body large enough that, when it formed, it condensed under its own gravity to be shaped like a sphere. It orbits a star directly and is not a moon of another planet.To Pluto -- And Far Beyond

12 posted on 06/20/2022 9:03:03 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: algore

Can’t Pluto just identify as a planet?


13 posted on 06/20/2022 9:04:52 AM PDT by Fido969 (45 is Superman! )
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To: BenLurkin

It should be named “Nyarlathotep”


14 posted on 06/20/2022 9:09:09 AM PDT by P.O.E.
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KEYWORDS: adrianmelott; annmariemadigan; cometfocusing; davidjewitt; johnmatese; konstantinbatygin; mikebrown; zdericmadiganbelt; zmbelt

15 posted on 06/20/2022 9:10:40 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: z3n

anunaki? Do you be sumerian? My understanding is that the arabs think adam and eve were space aliens.


16 posted on 06/20/2022 9:14:39 AM PDT by ckilmer (qui)
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To: GMMC0987
"... back before our planet was on fire ..."

The planet is on FIRE?
Geez - Should I recharge my fire extinguishers - or something?

/s

17 posted on 06/20/2022 9:20:19 AM PDT by GaltAdonis
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To: SunkenCiv

I’ve seen the little nerd that led the effort to remove planet status from Pluto. His name IIRC is Mike Brown. Their stated reasoning at the time was total SJW logic, saying it wasn’t ‘fair’ to other objects out in the Kuiper Belt that were of similar size to Pluto, that Pluto gets planet status and the other large objects do not. What an argument!


18 posted on 06/20/2022 9:22:05 AM PDT by KobraKai
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To: BenLurkin

Pluto is still there...


19 posted on 06/20/2022 9:24:14 AM PDT by Bikkuri (I am proud to be a PureBlood.)
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To: gundog
Is this why my horoscope is always wrong?

No, this is probably why
20 posted on 06/20/2022 9:29:41 AM PDT by Karma_Sherab
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