An artist's impression of a possible ninth planet. It would be quite large — at least as big as Earth — with a thick atmosphere around a rocky core. Credit California Institute of Techonology
Posted on 01/20/2016 12:01:57 PM PST by presidio9
There might be a ninth planet in the solar system after all - and it is not Pluto.
Two astronomers reported on Wednesday that they had compelling signs of something bigger and farther away — something that would definitely satisfy the current definition of a planet, where Pluto falls short.
"We are pretty sure there's one out there," said Michael E. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.
What Dr. Brown and a fellow Caltech professor, Konstantin Batygin, have not done is actually find that planet, so it would be premature to revise mnemonics of the planets just yet.
Rather, in a paper published Wednesday in The Astronomical Journal, Dr. Brown and Dr. Batygin lay out a detailed circumstantial argument for the planet’s existence in what astronomers have observed - a half-dozen small bodies in distant, highly elliptical orbits.
What is striking, the scientists said, is that the orbits of all six loop outward in the same quadrant of the solar system and are tilted at about the same angle. The odds of that happening by chance are about 1 in 14,000, Dr. Batygin said.
A ninth planet could be gravitationally herding them into these orbits.
For the calculations to work, the planet would be quite large — at least as big as Earth, and likely much bigger - a mini-Neptune with a thick atmosphere around a rocky core, with perhaps 10 times the mass of Earth.
It would dwarf Pluto, at about 4,500 times its mass.
Pluto, at its most distant, is 4.6 billion miles from the sun. The potential ninth planet, at its closest, would be about 20 billion miles away; at its farthest, it could be 100 billion miles away. It would take
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
I hope they name it “Nemesis.”
Or at least “Krypton.”
Planet X fools! We’re all gonna die!
How much will Disney pay for the naming rights to THIS one??
You mean “10th planet”.
Pictures or it doesn’t exist....
If it were big enough and rocky enough....
It may be big enough to generate enough internal heat to be habitable, as long as the atmosphere isn’t too thin or thick it could even have life!
But that is being really really hopeful!
!
An artist's impression of a possible ninth planet. It would be quite large — at least as big as Earth — with a thick atmosphere around a rocky core. Credit California Institute of Techonology
Planet X fools! We’re all gonna die!
Considering the PC climate these days, it's more likely to be called "Trayvon" or "Obama."
Probably quite a lot.
Wanna bet his real birth certificate is up there?
Nibiru, Nibiru, where for art thou????
Until proven otherwise, belief that life exists elsewhere in this solar system remains the only secularly accepted religion in Western culture (with the possible exception of Buddhism and perhaps Islam).
Every new discovery that we make in astrophysics increases the odds against the possibility of life (and certainly intelligent life) existing anywhere else in the universe.
Actually, some years ago, it was decided Pluto wasn’t a planet.
But I was taught that it is, and so I’m with you. Ten planets.
We have to approach it at light speed to get past the deflector shields.
Muhammad ...
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