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Planet Nine / Planet 9: Hypothetical 9th Planet In Our Solar System

eburacum

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http://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-researchers-find-evidence-real-ninth-planet-49523

P9_KBO_orbits_labeled-NEWS-WEB.png

Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun.
The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet's existence through mathematical modeling and computer simulations but have not yet observed the object directly.
Not the first time this has been suggested; Planet IX presumably.
 
Perhaps it will be called Nibiru?
If the discovery is confirmed, presumably they'll be looking for a name for it. I'd like to suggest Hercules (or Heracles), because it's big and wanders about, like the strongman of legend. Or The Hulk, for the same reason.
 
Fascinating. According to the report calculations indicate that the closest it comes to the sun is 15 times the distance to Pluto.

A colossal distance away but "the planet is so large that with sensitive enough telescopes, astronomers should be able to see it crossing the night sky. The search has already begun with the Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Brown said he would be surprised if the planet was not found in the next five years."
 
Fascinating. According to the report calculations indicate that the closest it comes to the sun is 15 times the distance to Pluto.

A colossal distance away but "the planet is so large that with sensitive enough telescopes, astronomers should be able to see it crossing the night sky. The search has already begun with the Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Brown said he would be surprised if the planet was not found in the next five years."

The new space telescope, The James Webb Telescope which will come after Hubble should be able. It will be so sensitive it will be possible to photograph geological features and colours on exoplanets.

james webb.jpg


And just in case, we can wait for the European Extremely Large Telescope which will be ready in 6-8 years.

E-ELT compared in size to a modern airliner.

elt_plane.jpg
 
http://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-researchers-find-evidence-real-ninth-planet-49523

P9_KBO_orbits_labeled-NEWS-WEB.png


Not the first time this has been suggested; Planet IX presumably.
This is discuscussed on Sky at Night, tonight
8pm - 8:30pm
BBC Four

Chris Lintott and Maggie Aderin-Pocock examine how two astronomers found evidence that there might be a previously undiscovered planet on the edge of the solar system, which could completely change scientific understanding of how the system formed. The programme looks at how the world's biggest telescopes are being used to try and prove conclusively whether it exists or not, and reveals how some scientists remain sceptical about the discovery.

http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/dzm9fb/the-sky-at-night--episode-756-planet-9-from-outer-space
 
It's now on iPlayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07176xp/the-sky-at-night-planet-9-from-outer-space

Edit 2119: Have just watched this - excellent stuff!

I must admit that when Chris Lintott first started appearing on Sky at Night (when the sainted Patrick Moore was still alive), I wasn't very impressed - he seemed like a rather boring geek.

But in the years since then Chris has mellowed and become a much more amiable soul. Also, he clearly knows his stuff, and with the advantage of 21st century computer graphics he is churning out some superb presentations, like this one.

But it's good that the Sky at Night theme music has remained the same, even if everything else has changed. :)
 
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The lady presenter on The Sky at Night (can't remember her name) has a lovely, soothing voice. Just right for an often complicated science programme.
 
It's now on iPlayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07176xp/the-sky-at-night-planet-9-from-outer-space

Edit 2119: Have just watched this - excellent stuff!

I must admit that when Chris Lintott first started appearing on Sky at Night (when the sainted Patrick Moore was still alive), I wasn't very impressed - he seemed like a rather boring geek.

But in the years since then Chris has mellowed and become a much more amiable soul. Also, he clearly knows his stuff, and with the advantage of 21st century computer graphics he is churning out some superb presentations, like this one.

But it's good that the Sky at Night theme music has remained the same, even if everything else has changed. :)

That was really interesting. They're pretty convinced Planet 9 is out there.

Agree with you that Chris Lintott has become a worthy successor to Patrick.
 
The lady presenter on The Sky at Night (can't remember her name) has a lovely, soothing voice. Just right for an often complicated science programme.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock? Ok, if you say so. o_O ;)
 
Planet Nine: Mysterious planet is to blame for mass extinctions of life on Earth, scientist claims
The mysterious, hypothetical planet could every so often knock comets into the solar system and towards us, researcher says
Andrew Griffin

A mysterious, hidden planet that could be sitting on the edge of our solar system might be linked with periodic extinctions on Earth, according to a researcher.

The unconfirmed planet might trigger comet showers, bringing huge extinction events, according to a new paper by Daniel Whitmire, a retired astrophysics professor. The paper links the periodic extinction events that happen on Earth — which can be seen in the fossil record to wipe out huge parts of life on Earth about every 27 million years — with the unknown Planet 9.

Planet 9 has been said by some to exist for years. But in recent months two scientists claim to have found strong evidence that it exists — and one of those researchers said again recently that he had found further proof of the mysterious planet.
If those researchers are correct, then Planet 9 would be 10 times as big as Earth and would be 1,000 times further from the Sun than we are.

The mystery of the extinction events that happen every 27 million or so years is an equally long-investigated and mysterious problem. Nobody is really clear why the comets tend to arrive on such an apparently regular schedule — but potential other explanations include a companion star to our own sun or extra risk as we travel through the spiral arms of the Milky Way.

But the new theory suggests that if the idea of the periodic extinctions is true, then it may be that the particular orbit of Planet 9 is to blame. It proposes that as the planet moves around the solar system, it passes through the Kuiper Belt — an area of the outer solar system full of icy objects — every 27 million years, knocking comets towards us and into the inner solar system.

Once they arrive there, they can smash into the Earth and reduce the sunlight getting to us, potentially leading to the extinction events, the researchers claim.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-life-on-earth-scientist-claims-a6959776.html

This is not a new theory. Astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier published a book in 1982 called the Cosmic Serpent, which proposed much the same thing, although obviously back then they didn't know what we think we know now about Planet 9. I have a copy of the Cosmic Serpent, and I've been flogging their ideas for years on this MB, for those who care to look.
They followed that book up with The Cosmic Winter, 1990, dotting the i's and crossing the t's.

Victor Clube is still with us, but I thought Bill Napier has passed away, although his Wiki page doesn't give a DoD and I can't find an Obit for him.

But if their "coherent catastrophism" theory is supported by the new discovery of Planet 9, I hope Clube and Napier will be recognised for their early work on the subject.
 
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... Victor Clube is still with us, but I thought Bill Napier has passed away, although his Wiki page doesn't give a DoD and I can't find an Obit for him. ...

If Napier has died, it's been recently. He was affiliated with a graduate-level astrobiology program at Cardiff which has migrated to the University of Buckingham:

http://www.buckingham.ac.uk/directory/professor-william-m-napier/

... and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) site still lists him as an active member:

http://www.iau.org/administration/membership/individual/2783/
 
Is it time yet for a separate thread for Planet Nine?

Daily news 20 April 2016
We are closing in on possible whereabouts of Planet Nine
By Shannon Hall


The search zone is growing smaller. Astronomers have further constrained the likely whereabouts of Planet Nine: the planet that, if it exists, is more massive than the Earth and roams the outer reaches of the solar system.

etc...

Reference: arxiv.org/abs/1604.03180

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...2804-newGLOBAL&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS
 
Solar System may hold ten planets or more, say scientists
Sarah Knapton, Science Editor
13 June 2016 6:33pm

he Solar System may hold 10 or 11 planets, scientists have predicted after running new computer models on the data which led to the announcement of Planet Nine.
In January, astronomers Professor Konstantin Batygin and Professor Mike Brown from California Institute of Technology predicted the existence of a ninth planet after discovering that 13 objects in the Kuiper Belt – an area beyond Neptune – were all moving together as if ‘lassooed’ by the gravity of a huge object.

Now scientists from Cambridge University and Spain have discovered that the paths of the dwarf planets are not as stable as they thought, meaning they could be falling under the influence of more planets further out.
Sverre Aarseth from the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, two freelance Spanish astronomers, said that the orbit of Planet Nine would have to change to allow the dwarf planet to maintain stability for a long time.
Otherwise more planets would need to be involved.
“We believe that in addition to a Planet Nine, there could also be a Planet Ten and even more,” said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos.

The new study, which is published in the journal ‘Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society’ is one of several to have addressed the question of Planet Nine in recent months.
Researcher Alexander Mustill from Lund University, Sweden , said the new planet may have come from outside the Solar System, and so could be an exoplanet.
His hypothesis is that around 4.5 billion years ago, our then young Sun “stole” this planet from a neighbouring star.
‘Planet Nine’ is believed to be 10 times the mass of Earth and takes between 10,000 and 20,000 years to orbit the Sun. It is so big that researchers have branded it ‘the most planety planet of the solar system.’
[Planety McPlanet face?!]

Astronomers are eagerly searching the skies for Planet Nine. Only the planet’s rough orbit is known, not the precise location of the planet on that elliptical path. If the planet happens to be close to its perihelion - the closest point it gets to the Sun - astronomers should be able to spot it in images captured by previous surveys.

If it is in the most distant part of its orbit, the world’s largest telescopes, such as the twin 10-meter telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Subaru Telescope, all on Maunakea in Hawaii will be needed to see it.

If, however, Planet Nine is now located anywhere in between, many telescopes have a shot at finding it. Pluto used to be regarded as the ninth planet but was downgraded in 2006 to a dwarf-planet or ‘plutoid’ and is now known unceremoniously as ‘asteroid number 134340.’

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...-may-hold-ten-planets-or-more-say-scientists/
 
Citizen scientists have identified four candidates for planet nine.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/citizen-scientists-spot-candidates-for-planet-nine/

more at link above
--------------
Citizen scientists have flagged four objects for follow-up study in the hunt for the hypothetical Planet Nine.

The four unknown objects were spotted in images of the southern sky captured recently by the SkyMapper telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. More than 60,000 people from around the world scoured these photos, making about 5 million classifications, said researchers with the Australian National University (ANU), which organized the citizen-science project.

Astronomers will now use Siding Spring and other telescopes around the world to investigate the four objects to determine if they're viable Planet Nine candidates. But even if they're not, the search has still yielded valuable information, project team members said.
 
The 'Planet Nine' search goes on ...

New evidence in support of the Planet Nine hypothesis

Last year, the existence of an unknown planet in our Solar system was announced. However, this hypothesis was subsequently called into question as biases in the observational data were detected. Now Spanish astronomers have used a novel technique to analyse the orbits of the so-called extreme trans-Neptunian objects and, once again, they point out that there is something perturbing them: a planet located at a distance between 300 to 400 times the Earth-Sun separation.

Scientists continue to argue about the existence of a ninth planet within our Solar System. At the beginning of 2016, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech, USA) announced that they had evidence of the existence of this object, located at an average distance of 700 AU or astronomical units (700 times the Earth-Sun separation) and with a mass ten times that of the Earth. ...

But wait - there's more ...

Is there also a Planet Ten?

De la Fuente Marcos explains that the hypothetical Planet Nine suggested in this study has nothing to do with another possible planet or planetoid situated much closer to us, and hinted at by other recent findings. Also applying data mining to the orbits of the TNOs of the Kuiper Belt, astronomers Kathryn Volk and Renu Malhotra from the University of Arizona (USA) have found that the plane on which these objects orbit the Sun is slightly warped, a fact that could be explained if there is a perturber of the size of Mars at 60 AU from the Sun. ...

The new paper being cited here:

C. de la Fuente Marcos, R. de la Fuente Marcos. "Evidence for a possible bimodal distribution of the nodal distances of the extreme trans-Neptunian objects: avoiding a trans-Plutonian planet or just plain bias?". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, July 2017. DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slx106. (Preprint: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017arXiv170606981D).


FULL STORY: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-07/f-sf-nei071217.php
 

Solar System may hold ten planets or more, say scientists
he Solar System may hold 10 or 11 planets, scientists have predicted after running new computer models on the data which led to the announcement of Planet Nine.

In January, astronomers Professor Konstantin Batygin and Professor Mike Brown from California Institute of Technology predicted the existence of a ninth planet after discovering that 13 objects in the Kuiper Belt – an area beyond Neptune – were all moving together as if ‘lassooed’ by the gravity of a huge object. ...

This new study undermines some of the evidence cited back in 2016 in confidently announcing there is a Planet Nine out there waiting to be discovered ...

A New Study Could Explain Away Some Evidence for Planet Nine
... A giant gas planet orbiting in outskirts of the solar system, 20 times as far as Neptune, meandering its way around the sun every 10,000 or 20,000 years. It's a tantalizing prospect.

Planet Nine, if it exists, would be the first planet discovered orbiting the sun since Uranus in 1846 (RIP Pluto, discovered 1930). Such a discovery would rock the foundations of everything we thought we knew about our little neighborhood in space. But no one has ever observed Planet Nine directly. All the evidence for its possible existence is written in the gravitational dance of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs)—small, cold bodies that lie far beyond the eighth planet.

However, a new model from the University of Colorado at Boulder, presented June 4 at the 232nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Denver, suggests a simpler explanation for these gravitational oddities: The accumulation of small encounters over many years may have knocked the objects into their strange orbits.

If it's true, then maybe there really is no ninth planet. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a21070825/planet-nine-orbits-gravity-study/
 
‘Planet Nine’ may actually be a black hole

For nearly 5 years, growing numbers of scientists have blamed the weird orbits of distant solar system objects on the gravitational effects of an as-yet-undiscovered “Planet Nine” that lies in the icy realm far beyond Neptune. But a pair of physicists is now floating an intriguing idea that could offer a new way to search for the object: What if that supposed planet is actually a small black hole

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/planet-nine-may-actually-be-black-hole
 
‘Planet Nine’ may actually be a black hole

For nearly 5 years, growing numbers of scientists have blamed the weird orbits of distant solar system objects on the gravitational effects of an as-yet-undiscovered “Planet Nine” that lies in the icy realm far beyond Neptune. But a pair of physicists is now floating an intriguing idea that could offer a new way to search for the object: What if that supposed planet is actually a small black hole

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/planet-nine-may-actually-be-black-hole
If it is, we're doomed.
 
Trouble is, there is no known mechanism by which a planet-mass black hole could form, and end up orbiting in our Oort Cloud. Black holes that are formed from the collapse of supernovae are invariably larger than the Chandrasekhar Limit, i.e, more than 1.4 solar masses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrasekhar_limit

Planetary mass black holes are possible in theory, but they would need to be primordial - i.e. formed during the Big Bang. These would (hopefully) be very rare objects, and there would be no easy mechanism for a wandering primordial black hole to become entangled in our own system.
 
Hopes for finding the hypothetical Planet Nine has been intermittently elevated in recent years. Newly published research (pending peer review) suggests the bases for these recent hopes are illusory because they are based on biased analysis and modeling.
Planet Nine Might Be a Giant Illusion, Scientists Say, And Here's Why

A hypothetical mystery planet thought to be responsible for strange orbits in the outer Solar System just got dealt one of its biggest blows yet.

According to a comprehensive analysis of extremely distant objects, led by physicist Kevin Napier of the University of Michigan, Planet Nine may not exist - because the evidence for its existence doesn't exist. Rather, what astronomers took to be the influence of a planet's gravity is instead selection bias in the observations.

The pre-print paper has been uploaded to arXiv, and awaits peer review. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/new-pa...em-objects-contain-no-evidence-of-planet-nine

RESEARCH REPORT (Awaiting Peer Review): https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.05601
 
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