This topic is the winner. :')
NASA Funded Scientists Discover Tenth Planet
NASA.gov | 7.29.05 | Jane Platt
Posted on 07/29/2005 6:21:26 PM PDT by gopwinsin04
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1453550/posts
Distant object found orbiting Sun (Planet X aka 'Nibiru' Found by American Astronomers)
BBC | July 29, 2005 | Dr David Whitehouse
Posted on 07/29/2005 10:11:24 PM PDT by ThoreauHD
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1453628/posts
Astronomers claim discovery of 10th planet in solar system
Outlook | July 30,2005 | AFP
Posted on 07/30/2005 12:09:55 AM PDT by Srirangan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1453658/posts
New Planet Discovered Beyond Pluto
the Proctoscope | 07/30/2005 | donprocto
Posted on 07/30/2005 4:26:35 AM PDT by donprocto
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1453688/posts
Planet or Not, Pluto Now Has Far-Out Rival
New York Times | July 30, 2005 | KENNETH CHANG and DENNIS OVERBYE
Posted on 07/30/2005 4:50:22 AM PDT by infocats
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1453694/posts
just a ping to this topic.
http://www.nineplanets.org/hypo.html#planetx
[after his discovery of Pluto, astronomer Clyde] Tombaugh continued his search another 13 years, and examined the sky from the north celestial pole to 50 deg. south declination, down to magnitude 16-17, sometimes even 18. Tombaugh examined some 90 million images of some 30 million stars over more than 30,000 square degrees on the sky. He found one new globular cluster, 5 new open star clusters, one new supercluster of 1800 galaxies and several new small galaxy clusters, one new comet, about 775 new asteroids -- but no new planet except Pluto. Tombaugh concluded that no unknown planet brighter than magnitude 16.5 did exist -- only a planet in an almost polar orbit and situated near the south celestial pole could have escaped his detection. He could have picked up a Neptune-sized planet at seven times the distance of Pluto, or a Pluto-sized planet out to 60 a.u.
Tenth Planet Has a Moon!
Space and Earth science | October 03, 2005 | E-Mail Newsletter
Posted on 10/22/2005 9:33:39 PM PDT by vannrox
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1507542/posts
bump; see also #61:
Massive Object Calls Planet Discoveries into Question
Space dot com (via Yahoo) | Thu, Jan 20, 2005 | Robert Roy Britt
Posted on 01/21/2005 9:19:56 AM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1325494/posts
Far-out worlds, just waiting to be found
New Scientist | 23 July 2005 (issue date) | Stuart Clark
Posted on 07/20/2005 10:54:18 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1447339/posts
a few that escaped my attention in message 61, including the real winner:
Large New World Discovered Beyond Neptune
space.com | 07-29-05 | WestVirginiaRebel
Posted on 07/29/2005 1:42:31 PM PDT by WestVirginiaRebel
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1453403/posts
'Planet Xena' has a sidekick: Gabrielle
AP
Posted on 10/01/2005 6:35:34 PM PDT by jmc1969
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1495045/posts
New Planet Is Bigger Than Pluto
AP on Yahoo | 2/1/06 | Alicia Chang - ap
Posted on 02/01/2006 11:04:55 AM PST by NormsRevenge
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1569542/posts
adding to the list:
'Tenth Planet' found to be a whopper
news@nature.com | 1 February 2006 | Mark Peplow
Posted on 02/02/2006 9:25:14 PM PST by neverdem
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1570726/posts
http://www.gizmag.com/go/5170/
The solar system no longer has nine planets
February 8, 2006
Since 1930 when American Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, schoolchildren have been taught that Planet Earth is one of nine planets which orbit the sun, and that Pluto is the outermost planet in the solar system. Then last July 30, an American team found a more distant and quite large object circling the sun some 15 billion kilometers beyond earth. Dubbed UB313, an enormous debate has erupted over whether it should be classified as the tenth planet. More fuel was added to the debate last week when a group lead by Bonn astrophysicists determined that this putative planet is bigger than Pluto. By measuring its thermal emission, the scientists were able to determine a diameter of about 3000 km, which makes it 700 km larger than Pluto and thereby marks it as the largest solar system object found since the discovery of Neptune in 1846. For the last six months, many astronomers have argued that UB313 should be classified as a Kuiper belt object (KBO) but Pluto is also in the Kuiper belt, and the revelations about its size will weigh heavily when the special 19-member panel set up by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) determines exactly what constitutes a planet. Either way, the official planetary count will no longer be nine.
Like Pluto, 2003 UB313 is one of the icy bodies in the so-called Kuiper belt that swarms beyond Neptune. It is the most distant object ever seen in the Solar System. Its very elongated orbit takes it up to 97 times farther from the Sun than is the Earth - almost twice as far as the most distant point of Pluto's orbit – so that it takes twice as long as Pluto to go around the Sun.
When it was first seen, UB313 appeared to be at least as big as Pluto, but an accurate estimate of its size was not possible without knowing how reflective it was. A team lead by Prof. Frank Bertoldi from the University of Bonn and the Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy (MPIfR) and the MPIfR's Dr. Wilhelm Altenhoff has now resolved this problem by using measurements of the amount of heat UB313 radiates to determine its size, which when combined with the optical observations also allows them to determine its reflectivity. "Since UB313 is decidedly larger than Pluto," Frank Bertoldi remarks, "it is now increasingly hard to justify calling Pluto a planet if UB313 is not also given this status."
UB313 was discovered in January 2005 by Prof. Mike Brown and his colleagues from the Californian Institute of Technology in a sky survey using a wide field digital camera that searches for distant minor planets at visible wavelengths. They discovered a slowly moving, spatially unresolved source, the apparent speed of which allowed them to determine its distance and orbital shape. However, they were not able to determine the size of the object, although from its optical brightness it was believed to be larger than Pluto.
Astronomers have found small planetary object beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto since 1992, confirming a then 40-year old prediction by astronomers Kenneth Edgeworth (1880-1972) and Gerard P. Kuiper (1905-1973) for the existence of a belt of smaller planetary objects beyond Neptune. The so-called Kuiper Belt contains objects left from the formation of our planetary system some 4.5 billion years ago. In their distant orbits they were able to survive the gravitational clean-up of similar objects by the large planets in the inner solar system. Some Kuiper Belt objects are still occasionally deflected to then enter the inner solar system and may appear as short period comets.
In optically visible light, the solar system objects are visible through the light they reflect from the Sun. Thereby the apparent brightness depends on their size as well as on the surface reflectivity. Latter is known to vary between 4% for most comets to over 50% for Pluto, which makes any accurate size determination from the optical light alone impossible.
The Bonn group therefore used the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Spain, equipped with the sensitive Max-Planck Millimeter Bolometer (MAMBO) detector developed and built at the MPIfR, to measure the heat radiation of UB313 at a wavelength of 1.2 mm, where reflected sunlight is negligible and the object brightness only depends on the surface temperature and the object size. The temperature can be well estimated from the distance to the sun, and thus the observed 1.2 mm brightness allows a good size measurement. One can further conclude that the UB313 surface is such that it reflects about 60% of the incident solar light, which is very similar to the reflectivity of Pluto.
"The discovery of a solar system object larger than Pluto is very exciting," Dr. Altenhoff exclaims, who has researched minor planets and comets for decades. "It tells us that Pluto, who should properly also be counted to the Kuiper Belt, is not such an unusual object. Maybe we can find even other small planets out there, which could teach us more about how the solar system formed and evolved. The Kuiper Belt objects are the debris from its formation, an archeological site containing pristine remnants of the solar nebula, from which the sun and the planets formed." Dr. Altenhoff made the pioneering discovery of heat radiation from Pluto in 1988 with a predecessor of the current detector at the IRAM 30-meter telescope.
The size measurement of 2003 UB313 is published in the 2 February 2006 issue of Nature. The research team includes Prof. Dr. Frank Bertoldi (Bonn University and MPIfR), Dr. Wilhelm Altenhoff (MPIfR), Dr. Axel Weiss (MPIfR), Prof. Dr. Karl M. Menten (MPIfR), and Dr. Clemens Thum (IRAM).
New Planet Is Bigger Than Pluto
AP on Yahoo | 2/1/06 | Alicia Chang - ap
Posted on 02/01/2006 2:04:55 PM EST by NormsRevenge
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1569542/posts
Possible new planet is larger than Pluto-research (Reuters demonstrates their ignorance yet again)
Reuters | 2/1/06 | Patricia Reaney
Posted on 02/01/2006 5:50:01 PM EST by Freedumb
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1569687/posts
Solar system '10th planet' is bigger than Pluto
http://news.telegraph.co.uk
Posted on 02/02/2006 4:43:14 PM EST by Grendel9
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1570443/posts
'Tenth Planet' found to be a whopper
news@nature.com | 1 February 2006 | Mark Peplow
Posted on 02/03/2006 12:25:14 AM EST by neverdem
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1570726/posts