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Theoretical Evidence For a Ninth Planet Beyond Pluto May Be Premature (forbes.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the maybe-maybe-not dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Earlier today, the team of Pluto-killer Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin announced that they had found evidence of a ninth planet in our Solar System beyond the orbit of Pluto, larger and more massive than even Earth. However, a closer inspection of the work shows that they predict a few things that haven't been observed, including a population of Kuiper belt objects with large inclinations and retrograde orbits, long-period Kuiper belt objects with opposite ecliptic latitudes and longitudes, and infrared data showing the emission from such an outer world. There are many good reasons to be skeptical, and not conclude that there's a ninth planet without more (and better) evidence.

11 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Skeptical by Skeptical1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course there are good reasons to be skeptical. It's just the way to be. Nothing to do with this article.

  2. Forbes doesn't like AdBlock by Kazymyr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Oh well. Article will go unread.

    --
    I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
    1. Re:Forbes doesn't like AdBlock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is Slashdot so not reading TFA is expected.

      Using a Forbes link is just ensures things are as they should around here.

    2. Re:Forbes doesn't like AdBlock by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

      I don't use AdBlock and yet Forbes thinks I'm using it. So I can't read it.

      But I can say, at least the infrared claim doesn't hold up. Wise ruled out Saturn-sized bodies out to 10k AU (based not on reflection but, due to the distances, more the internal heat they'd give off), but here we're talking about a body that's far smaller than Saturn and would have much less internal heat. The theoretical planet is 1/10th the mass of Saturn, and its IR from internal heat would be much less than that. And while one could argue that due to being closer its additional solar reflection would overcome that, I wouldn't be so sure. Neptune is 1,7x heavier than the theoretical planet yet still has a cross sectional area less than 18% that of Saturn. And you can't just scale down by that 1,7x to around 10% the cross sectional area of Saturn - it's probably much less because its colder (the reason why Neptune has a smaller radius than Uranus despite being heavier). And even more than what you'd get simply from cooling gases - at aphelion it could well be cold enough to chill liquid hydrogen out of its atmosphere into hydrogen seas. And that would make it dramatically smaller.

      In short, if it's even remotely near aphelion, WISE could well have missed it. And elliptical-orbiting bodies spend much more of their time near aphelion than perihelion.

      As for the required observations about KBOs, I don't know enough about the types of bodies and their orbits being referred to in the summary to know if we should already have seen them or not. But either way, we need *something* to explain the similar arguments of perihelion of the sednoids. It's hard enough just to explain how something with such a distant perihelion ended up in an elliptical orbit to begin with, let alone multiple such objects sharing similar arguments of perihelion.

      --
      What the hells goin on in the engine room? Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?
    3. Re:Forbes doesn't like AdBlock by avandesande · · Score: 4, Informative

      It says right in the article that Wise had a hard time detecting Neptune which is relatively close.

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      love is just extroverted narcissism
  3. I'm Skeptical by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm Skeptical that it's ever going to be worth following a Forbes link.

    --
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    1. Re:I'm Skeptical by Rob+Lister · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I do not get why so many articles here are sourced at Forbes when almost everyone here can't see them.

    2. Re:I'm Skeptical by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe it's to force people to turn off their ad-blockers, so that when they come back to Slashdot they'll see ads... if so, well played DICE, well played...

      That said, even when I turn off my ad blocker, I can't read Forbes, so I never bother trying any more anyway.

      --
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    3. Re:I'm Skeptical by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I do not get why so many articles here are sourced at Forbes when almost everyone here can't see them.

      They are all submitted and posted by one person. Look at starts with a bang's profile. One single post on slashdot, but some 300 story submission attempts of which all are to his personal blog on Forbes, and of which a sadly high number is being accepted.

  4. I blame the media by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Every time some scientist comes out with even the most untested hypothesis, the media starts touting it as some great new discovery. The headlines were "New Planet Found!" when there should have been no headlines at all (not until it can be verified by many other astronomers).

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  5. ridiculous by Ken+D · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The 'blogger' complains that the authors predict things that have not yet been observed, but that is exactly the point. A proposal that only explained things that are known is awfully convenient and cannot be confirmed or disproven by new observations.