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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.
Sorry, Pluto is taken.
How about Pluto1088549?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
The Earth is round and also tilted... same concept.
"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.
That would be a bad omen.
Well, neither one is perfectly round; both are oblate spheroids, though this is trickier to measure in the case of the Sun.
We can do better:
The mysterious 9th planet was caused by Climate Change!
Required reading for internet skeptics
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.