QUICK! Send a probe to Pluto!
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 ...
That might work, since convention is the names of mythological beings.
QUICK! Send a probe to Pluto!
There are nine recognized dwarf planets beyond the orbit of Pluto. With the exception of Eris (formerly known as Xena), none of these objects are as large as Pluto. Eris is more massive, but slightly smaller in size than Pluto.
When they find it, they should name it Hillary, because it is cold and sinister.
Too bad we can’t send her there for retirement.
Humm, let’s see if as you say there is only life on this planet, we need to do some calculations.
In one quadrant of the universe so far imaged there are something like 52 billion galaxies or all four at the same rate would be 208 billion galaxies each with around 300 billion stars 208x300=624,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in all.
So you are saying that G-d got lucky in one of those galaxies, on one of those stars, on the fringe of that one galaxy, on one planet?
Boy! Those are such long odds, its a wonder G-d even bothered rolling the dice ...
See. Santa works also.
It’s Nibiru and it’s moving in and we’re all gonna die. Seriously, I saw it on the internet.
What will be it’s name?
Boy! Those are such long odds, its a wonder G-d even bothered rolling the dice ...
But only if you believe that God does need to "get lucky."
And, actually, my belief has very little to do with God. I just look at the evidence and I have seen very little to support the belief that life exists elsewhere aside from "chances are." And that's not enough for me.
Chances are that if life arose once on this planet using DNA, it should have arose more than once using something similar but not the same. It didn't.
I vote for "Planet Claire."
More taxpayer money needed, obviously. /sarc
I suggest Vulcan........................
Actually, Judaism has little opinion on the issue of intelligent life elsewhere.
The Rebbe was of the opinion that it was possible.
There is some argument to be made that the Book of Judges 5:23, Devorah the prophetess sings about the victory of Barak over Sisera. In her song, she says, “Cursed be Maroz! Cursed, cursed be its inhabitants, says the angel of G-d!”
The Talmud says that Maroz is a star or planet.
Entities from heavenly bodies had also come to help the Israelites, as Devorah stated just one verse earlier,”From the heavens they fought, the stars from their orbits…”.
Maroz, however, which was the dominant star of Sisera, apparently did not come to their aid. And so, General Barak penalized Maroz—and its inhabitants.
That would be the 10th planet.
I think the orbits of the known dwarf planets are quite convincing that there is another large planet. The predicted orbit in the following image is orange. All the other orbits are of known dwarf planets.
There is something causing the orbits to bunch up on one side of the solar system.
http://mediaassets.caltech.edu/documents/45-p9_kbo_extras_orbits_2_.jpg
“... it should have arose more than once using something similar but not the same. It didn’t.”
You, of course, have this on the best of authorities? How do you know what is on those 600,000,000,000,000 stars with 10X that number of planets?
You seem to have a closed mind - unwilling to accept that G-d is greater than you are willing to permit Him to be.
Does life exist? That wouldn't shock me. Particularly if it's not "as we know it" - say, silicon based instead of carbon-based.
Is it intelligent? As we define it? I'd call that "A whole lot less likely".
Will we ever find intelligent life? And communicate with it? I'd call those chances "Slim to none, and Slim just left town". Figure that enormous times and distances work against any life forms (intelligent or not) travelling across space. Additionally, if there is "intelligent" life, what makes us think that it wants to communicate with us? For instance - you're aware of the ants in your driveway, but you don't stand around outside trying to talk to them.
However, with that being said, we can throw out roughly 2 thirds of the stars in the universe for being either too close (too much radiation) or two far away (heavier elements are too scarce) from their galactic centers. Of these (extrapolating from what we've learned from Kepler) one in five may have planets in the habitable zone of its respective solar system. Of these, perhaps one in eight is a rocky planet with the right mass. Of these, perhaps nine out of ten were around for the billion years or so of chance chemical interactions we think were necessary to produce life. Of these perhaps one in 100 has the liquid liquid core, magnetic field, and cosmic bombardment period necessary to deposit and retain water on its surface. Of these, perhaps one in a billion has a suitable moon large enough to control its seasons and create the tides we think were necessary for the initial steps to life. And so it goes, until the conditions necessary to produce life are not just rare, but possibly a unique exception to the rule. Nevertheless, statistics suggests that, given a wide enough sample, it is true that a small number of candidates will exist. But at that point you still have to take it on faith that if the conditions necessary for life exist it will always or at least usually do so. We are not there yet.
I thought Pluto got voted of the island as a planet.
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