Posted on 07/05/2016 6:11:20 PM PDT by MtnClimber
More clues about where to search for a possible ninth planet lurking in the fringes of our solar system are emerging from the Kuiper belt, the icy debris field beyond Neptune. And new calculations suggest that the putative planet might be brighter — and a bit easier to find — than once thought.
Evidence for the existence of Planet Nine is scant, based on apparent alignments among the orbits of the six most distant denizens of the Kuiper belt (SN: 2/20/16, p. 6). Their oval orbits all point in roughly the same direction and lie in about the same plane, suggesting that a hidden planet, about five to 20 times as massive as Earth, has herded them onto similar trajectories.
Planetary scientists Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin, both at Caltech, announced this evidence in January. ....
Planet Nine’s average distance from the sun is most likely between 500 and 600 times as far as Earth’s, Brown and Batygin report. Its orbit is highly stretched and tipped by about 30 degrees relative to the rest of the solar system, taking it well above and below the orbits of the eight known worlds. And right now, it’s probably near its farthest point from the sun — possibly as far as 250 billion kilometers away — in a large patch of sky around the constellation Orion.
But the evidence depends on orbital oddities among just six frozen worlds. “The argument that a planet is there is not ironclad,” cautions Renu Malhotra, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “I think it’s worth studying. There’s enough there to not ignore this evidence,” she adds. “We just shouldn’t get depressed if the planet’s not there.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Thanx for the linkz....
Yeah, but it's like a bonus dwarf planet too. About as half as big as Pluto...
Pluto's moon Charon is over half the size of Pluto itself, leading astronomers to originally classify the Pluto-Charon system as a "double planet." They were also considered "binary planets" because the smaller Charon doesn't actually orbit around Pluto, rather Pluto and Charon orbit a common gravitational center (the "barycenter') located above Pluto's surface.
So call it a planet helper. Pluto has a heck-of-a-job keeping its orbit clean....
Here on Erf we call it "tides".
I remember when the photos of Pluto were posted.
At first they were really disappointing then the next day, Wow! Great pictures.
I also remember they didn’t look anything like the scientists had predicted.
No, that’s PLAN 9...
My favorite movie of all time. I still get scary goose bumps seeing those two, Thor and Vampira. I won’t be able to sleep tonight.
What ever happened to Bela Lugosi’s dentist who filled in for him after Bela died during the filming of this cinematic masterpiece?
Some of the Pluto photos were simply amazing. Just getting the spacecraft to intercept the Pluto orbit is pretty amazing too.
Festus and Morticia, the Early Years.
Thanks MtnClimber.
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