Slashdot Mirror
Curious Tilt of the Sun Traced To Undiscovered Planet (spacedaily.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Planet Nine - the undiscovered planet at the edge of the solar system that was predicted by the work of Caltech's Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown in January 2016 -- appears to be responsible for the unusual tilt of the Sun, according to a new study. The large and distant planet may be adding a wobble to the solar system, giving the appearance that the Sun is tilted slightly. "Because Planet Nine is so massive and has an orbit tilted compared to the other planets, the solar system has no choice but to slowly twist out of alignment," says Elizabeth Bailey, a graduate student at Caltech and lead author of a study announcing the discovery. All of the planets orbit in a flat plane with respect to the Sun, roughly within a couple degrees of each other. That plane, however, rotates at a six-degree tilt with respect to the Sun -- giving the appearance that the Sun itself is cocked off at an angle. Until now, no one had found a compelling explanation to produce such an effect. "It's such a deep-rooted mystery and so difficult to explain that people just don't talk about it," says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy.
How is it that we have an undiscovered planet in our solar system, yet we're able to find earth-like planets orbiting stars that are light-years away?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Lets name it Pluto!
you call me a dwarf now, I'll tilt your sun..
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The sun is tilting towards the left. Obviously it's rigged that way.
Damn pot-smoking tree-hugging sandal-wearing hippies.
I'm holding out for planet 10. When are we going?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Would have been nice if they explained that... is it the sun's rotational plane?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Since Pluto was originally a calculated mass based on its affecting of other objects, and was the ninth planet, and this magical mystery mass is calculated by its effects on other objects and is a proposed ninth planet, can we do the obvious course?
Rename the dwarf planet formerly known as Pluto and its co-orbitals "Cerberus." Name this Pluto. Update the art in the elementary school general science books. Teach a little more about dwarf planets in school, because Ceres and Eris are interesting enough to get some class time.
"How massive is it?"
"It's so massive that even at an insane distance, this Oort Cloud body can out-twist the masses of both Jupiter AND Saturn."
Wait? How massive is it? How is it able to tilt the axis of the sun, since tilting an axis is a TIDAL action? IMHO (as a degreed rocket scientist) that Occam's Razor would indicate that it's easier to shift the orbital planes of the planets, rather than tidally torque the sun. Remember, for the tidal action, the Planet IX must be very close to Sol to work its magic.
This planet is likely 6x the distance from the sun to pluto. It would be difficult to find. I'm sure there are more than one undiscovered planets in our system.
For perspective, "so massive" is still less massive than any of the other gas giants in our solar system.
I knew Ed Wood was a genius of the cinema but he also predicted the future! I suggest we call it Angora.
I don't even know where to begin with all the ignorance on display in this comment... Maybe start by reading about the difference between the visible spectrum and what Hubble does?
Where are we going?
Planet 10!
When?
Real soon !
That would be a bad omen.
Not a difficult guess, I mean, Trump has the support of 35% of Americans and 0% of anyone else outside of Russia and ISIS. Law of averages says any random person you meet who isn't obviously a flaming racist is not a Trump supporter.
maybe he's referring to his waist or height. :-)
get your mind out of the gutter, you pig
Distance. Planet Nine is estimated to be between 200 and 1200 AU. For comparison, Pluto only varies between 30 and 50 AU.
It's further than you think it is but much closer than you'd ever like a black hole to be.
It's not currently active (E.G nothing is currently falling into it, no gases etc) so it's not very easy to detect. It also isn't large enough to easily notice the bending light,
Global Warming is the fault of the mysterious 9th planet!!!
It is leaning the sun towards the earth on that "wobble"..and hence we're getting warmer!!
Whew...great. Now I can go back to 'normal' life with big gas sucking engine cars, leaving the lights on..WITH nice incandescent bulbs, etc.
Doesn't it feel better with the pressure off us (mankind)??
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The real reason for the tilt of the sun is to secure more grant money for watching the stars float by.
Its not the sun that's tilted, its the orbital planes of the planets. Its even stated in the summary"
"All of the planets orbit in a flat plane with respect to the Sun, roughly within a couple degrees of each other. That plane, however, rotates at a six-degree tilt with respect to the Sun -- giving the appearance that the Sun itself is cocked off at an angle. "
Is this reminding anyone else of the old theory of an second sun in our system who's eccentric orbit through the Kuiper Belt could be blamed for sending out showers of debris that helped create mass extinctions?
Seems to fit one of the mass profiles of a primordial black hole. Would be very hard to detect. Or a cloaked ship...
...rejoice! There's still a chance they'll call it Rykros
This thing was around before Pluto got demoted, so we should call it "planet 10" or "planet X" and leave "Planet 9" as "deleted" from the list to avoid confusion.
I prefer "X" because "X" is cool.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Do you really have to puff yourself up with anon posts? And before you deny it the IP address matches.
~Slashdot staff.
... then they must surely know what direction it lies in, from the sun. Working backwards from there, they should be able to narrow the area to search sufficiently that they ought to at least figure out exactly where they need to be looking to find this object.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Maybe it's his mom.
Too many variables. The mass of the planet. Its angular tilt. Its angular path/velocity. They don't know exactly where to look. Computer modelling suggested the existence of this planet, but even if we're able to predict its orbital path correctly that's still going to be a literal 360 degree arc of the sky needing to be searched. Always assuming of course that the purported ninth planet isn't currently occluded by the Sun.
Something as far out as this is purported to be is going to be nearly impossible to spot. It's not getting any light from the Sun to speak of, so it'll be visually black. It's also far enough out that it will be too small to occlude anything visually, and any gravitational lensing it produces would be insignificant against the background.
We're not going to find this without a major event happening. Something like a rogue asteroid detected swinging in towards the sun from somewhere out in the Oort cloud. Something like that, angled from 6 degrees away from the ecliptic, would suggest gravitational deflection from this ninth planet, and would actually give us one specific direction to search in.
Um... Hubble is nearly all visible.
...and pass close to other stars. Furthermore the Sun probably evolved in a densely packed globular cluster. The solar system is therefore susceptible to random and drastic gravitational chaos. No need to invoke the presence of giant invisible constant companion planets. Rather consider a periodic drive by shooting wreaking mayhem and havoc in the Oort cloud.
I hope they call it Hades when they find it.
... then they must surely know what direction it lies in, from the sun. Working backwards from there, they should be able to narrow the area to search sufficiently that they ought to at least figure out exactly where they need to be looking to find this object.
The researchers did not infer the existence of this new planet from looking at the sun tilt, the tilt was reasoned to be potentially explainable by a theorized planet that we haven't discovered yet.
The planet in question was inferred by looking at the statistical orbital distribution of Kuiper Belt Objects. They have a general idea of it's orbital inclination for this mysterious new planet they only have a general range of mass (~10x earth) and orbital distance (~20x Neptune's orbit). That makes a pretty big chunk of space to search for a relatively small object that is not luminous among very slowly moving objects (~15K year orbit).
The original analysis that suggested this new planet is currently only statistical using orbital dynamics, not some specific N-body problem they are solving. They are only attempting to estimate the potential orbital objects that could cause of perturbation of the Sedna-like objects and KBOs relative to long term evolution of orbits. AFAIK, to do their analysis they replaced the orbit of the planet with equivalent massive "wires" that traced currently know orbits because the planets orbit in a timescale much shorter than the proposed planet (and thus exchange angular momentum between themselves and a distant perturb-er which they are analyzing at different timescale). Statistic analysis also showed it likely to have a perihelion opposite to the aggregate distribution of the KBOs. This means they only have a few orbital parameters for this object relative to long-term orbital evolution, not a realistic way of determining where along this 10K-20K year orbit it actually is today.
It's been quite a few years since I've been in school, and I don't use astrophysics or orbital mechanics for work. But according to TFA this planet is only 10 times the size of the earth (I'm assuming they mean mass) and it's orbit is 20 times more distant than Neptune. It's believed to be 30 degrees off of the orbital plane of the other planets. It seems like a fairly small object at that distance to cause a 6 degree axial tilt in something as large as the sun. Thanks in advance.
TEN, you fucking cunts.
Signed,
Pluto.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The existence of far off planet is consistent with Sumerian sources: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sumer_anunnaki/esp_sumer_annunaki22.htm
I don't know what I believe either the study from TFA or Zecharia Sitchin (author from link above), but the consistency is a bit curious.
I am becoming afraid. It looks more and more like Zechariah Sitchin was right.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
The original post meant to say "mysterious planet 10" as everyone knows that Pluto is the 9th planet and always will be.
Predicted by isaac asimov,
predicted by joe haldeman.
propbably by other too.
Pluto is not a planet
Lameness filter fodder here
Is real bitches! All hail our galactic birthplace and overlord!
I heard Brown talk about the search in Denver last year. If it is at the distant part of its orbit, as musch as 20,000 AU it would be magnitude mid-20s way to faint to directly image.
General Relativity explained the 40-second frame-dragging effect on Mercury. A six degree tilt is 500 times larger than this.
Pluto was not demoted from planet status based on its size. It was demoted based on not clearing its orbit of other objects, namely Neptune.
Saturn is not a greased up anal plug.
See, I can make non-sequiturs too!
Good humorous observation.
It seems to me that the requirement for clearing its orbit is unreasonable, given the eccentricity of Pluto's orbit. Pluto would have to clear a ring 2 billion miles wide. Also, Pluto's orbit is inclined 17 degrees off the orbital plane of other planets, so it would also have to clear the ring of the other planets' orbital disk at the diameter where it intersects Pluto's. A planet in an non-inclined circular orbit only has to clear a ring of a few tens of thousands of miles.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Given the vagueness of the estimates and the proposed distance and orbital period, can we actually say with a good probability that this object is actually orbiting the sun? We haven't been doing really precise measurements of planet's orbits all that long. Couldn't it just be an object passing by the solar system that isn't even orbiting?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Nightfall
There is publicly available evidence that Russia was behind it. It's not nearly conclusive evidence. There is a plausible motive for messing in US elections. So, are you stupid enough to dismiss the possibility? Or stupid enough to trust the Russians not to make changes in what they leak?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes