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Something Big Is Warping Our Outer Solar System (futurity.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the son-of-Pluto dept.

schwit1 quotes Futurity: The plane of our solar system is warped in the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt, suggesting the presence of an unknown Mars-to-Earth-mass planetary object far beyond Pluto -- but much closer than Planet Nine. An unknown, unseen "planetary mass object" may lurk in the outer reaches of our solar system, according to new research on the orbits of minor planets.

The object would be different from -- and much closer than -- the so-called Planet Nine, a planet whose existence has yet to be confirmed... "The most likely explanation for our results is that there is some unseen mass," says Kat Volk, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and lead author of the study in the Astronomical Journal. "According to our calculations, something as massive as Mars would be needed to cause the warp that we measured."

24 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Spock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Captain, that is definitely a Klingon warp signature."

    Greekgeek :-)

  2. Don't panic... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Funny

    But it's probably V'Ger.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Don't panic... by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's a breach in the Immaterium. Prepare for the warp storms, pray that the god-emperor will see us through safely.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  3. Super-massive by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Funny

    The plane of our solar system is warped in the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt, suggesting the presence of an unknown Mars-to-Earth-mass planetary object

    I figured out what's warping the solar system:

    http://static.deathandtaxesmag...

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Super-massive by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      Bigly fake moon! So sad.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  4. Not again! by Telephone+Sanitizer · · Score: 4, Informative

    We only just knocked the last "Planet Nine" theory and now we've got ANOTHER ONE?!

    See:
    https://medium.com/starts-with...

    1. Re:Not again! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The planets, they go all the way to eleven!!

    2. Re: Not again! by murdocj · · Score: 2

      righty science is "god waved a magic wand, poof, we don't need no stinking cause and effect"

    3. Re: Not again! by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 2

      God made it.

    4. Re:Not again! by RockDoctor · · Score: 2
      Strange, but I was swapping messages with Konstantin just yesterday and he's of the opinion that the evidence is moderately stronger than this time last year. Which is how I read Friday's (or was it Thursday?) paper on the subject too. Planet Nine (sense : Batygin-Brown 2016) is still pretty firm. 3 to 4 sigma.

      Regardless of which , with this proposed "planet" being around 1xMars mass, it's also around 0.1xEarth mass and 0.01xP9(BB2016). Literally, it and it's effects would fit in the error bars of the P9(BB2016) parameters. Both could be correct simultaneously.

      But, if this newly proposed planet were to exist with the described parameters, then we've already found plenty of considerably dimmer dwarf planets in comparable orbital parameters, which raises the question of why it hasn't been seen yet.

      Ethan StartsWithABang knows his science perfectly well, and seems to have found a balance between advertising revenue from clickbait and keeping his sanity and dignity. Since I loathe the interface of Medium, and it never works with advertising and scripts disabled, I don't know this particular page, but if I were you, I'd read it at least three times to check what he actually says, rather than what you want to hear said.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  5. Must be the Deathstar by gweihir · · Score: 3, Funny

    The Empire obviously decided to park it here and then forgot all about it...

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  6. Mars mass object inside 100 AU? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2

    If its a kuiper belt object, then it must be huge to have that much mass, because of its low density. Or it could be a rocky object, like Vesta or Mercury, but then its hard to explain how it got to be so far from the sun.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  7. Protomolecule at work. by Walter+White · · Score: 2

    Probably the ring.

  8. Re:inb4 "brown planet" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Zecharia Sitchin was a hugely influential man who changed the way that many people view human life, human nature, and our role in the cosmos.

    1. The ancient Mesopotamian gods were actually real, only they were not actually gods. They were alien beings. Lacking the language to discuss extraterrestrial life, the ancients simply referred to them as “gods.”

    2. There is another planet in our solar system which is presently undiscovered by modern scientists. It follows a slow elliptical orbit somewhere beyond Neptune, and crosses into the inner solar system ever 3,600 years or so. This planet may be referred to as Marduk or Planet Nibiru.

    3. A collision between Nibiru and Tiamat (another hypothesized planet which no longer exists—if it ever did) created the Earth as well as the asteroid belt and the comets. This is the “twelfth planet” (the sun and moon are counted along with Pluto).

    4. Nibiru is home to a race of extraterrestrials. These are the Anunnaki of Sumerian lore, and may also be the Nephilim as referenced in Genesis.

    5. The Anunnaki visited earth during the times of the ancient Sumerians. Searching for gold to sustain their homeworld, they needed workers to help them mine it. For this purpose, they genetically engineered a slave race—humans. This corresponds with the Mesopotamian story involving Enki and Enlil.

    6. Human civilization was for a time overseen entirely by alien forces. Human kings were appointed however to serve as intermediaries. Eventually however conflict set in between the Anunnaki themselves. The “evil wind” written about in the Lament for Ur is actually nuclear weapon fallout.

    7. The Great Flood as discussed in Judeo-Christian and Mesopotamian lore was actually caused by Nibiru the last time it came close to Earth.

    The next time Nibiru returns, it may again cause global devastation. This could take the form of natural disaster and/or the return of our alien overlords.

  9. Re: inb4 "brown planet" by murdocj · · Score: 2

    You mean that they got the Antarctica gate, flew it to a black hole and then dialed THAT gate from Nibiru in order to freeze Nibiru in an area of time dialation, don't you?

  10. How do they do this? by AlanObject · · Score: 3

    I have read articles like this for many years (I recall that the outer planets were detected before they were known this way) and have always wondered something that maybe someone here can explain.

    I understand at a high level the theory behind detecting unseen objects by their fanatic effect on known bodies but just how can you make measurements that precise? How many digits of precision do you need to do the calculation? Intuitively the angles involved must be far smaller than typical mechanical tools could measure so how do they do it?

    1. Re: How do they do this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Because they're really, really dark. Think about this for scale. Pluto is so far out there that the sun's light warms it only enough to melt nitrogen. It is amazingly dark. And Pluto is relatively close compared to the KBOs. Now, the KBOs are, at least the ones we've seen, very dark. They don't reflect any light. And, IIRC, they're about 7 times the distance, so roughly 2% as much light is getti to them. Then, once only a tiny fraction of the light that hits them reflects, it's still an amazingly long way back to earth, with inverse square law dominating the light dissipation. That puts us on the order of maybe a photon hitting a ten million dollar, 8 meter telescope per hour. We get more light off dust in the atmosphere. Finding them, even with Hubble, is incredibly difficult.

      I'd love to build an occultation network in orbit, but that's a several billion dollar project, and the data analysis piece is probably not achievable, as they're moving holy shit fast. So, they'd be blocking distant stars for hundredths of a second. It's not an impossible problem, but it's not achievable with current technology or funding.

      Next not as bad bet is to toss a telescope out past Pluto to get some more light gathered, but that is a huge, expensive project that probably isn't worth the effort. But, I hope that I'm very wrong on that.

  11. Oh No It Is by oldgraybeard · · Score: 2

    Nemesis!!

    Nemesis (Issac Asimov)

  12. Re:How do they do this? Good question by charliemerritt03 · · Score: 2

    I hope someone answers this as I've wondered exactly the same. Like just how far "out of expected location" would Neptune be after an orbit. It is the scales that confuse.

  13. Black Hole? by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 2

    That we cannot see it... maybe it's a small black hole? Or some other lesser stellar remnant that's burnt out, but not massive enough to be a full scale black hole. The suggestion it's quite massive, yet we haven't found it... I dunno! Maybe some time in the distant past, this system had two stars. Singular star systems are supposedly less common than binaries.

    TLDR; Just speculative rambling.

    1. Re:Black Hole? by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Informative

      That we cannot see it... maybe it's a small black hole?

      It's really far away, and brightness drops with 4th power of distance, so even a regular planet-sized object would be very hard to see. It's not that massive either, only estimated to have the mass of Mars, so that's a relatively small planet.

  14. Re:How do they do this? Good question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The scale is exactly what lets you detect the issue. The orbital time in days for Neptune is 60,200 days. Sixty Thousand days. Its orbital velocity is 5.43 km/sec. even a very TINY change to that speed over that many days will put it far out of the expected location and that is what we detect.

  15. Astromers by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 2

    I wish astronomers would stop pulling these shitty theories out of Uranus all of the time.

  16. Eddies by laughingskeptic · · Score: 2

    I'm betting on eddies in the Kuiper belt. Both observed effects don't have to be from a single mass and can be from distributed masses that have an effective center of mass. You always wind up with eddies in a hydrodynamic simulations and it is a bad assumption that the origins of the solar system was non-chaotic.