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A New World's Extraordinary Orbit Points to Planet Nine (wired.com)
In early 2016, two planetary scientists declared that a ghost planet is hiding in the depths of the solar system, well beyond the orbit of Pluto. Their claim, which they made based on the curious orbits of distant icy worlds, quickly sparked a race to find this so-called Planet Nine -- a planet that is estimated to be about 10 times the mass of Earth. From a report: Now, astronomers are reporting that they have spotted another distant world -- perhaps as large as a dwarf planet -- whose orbit is so odd that it is likely to have been shepherded by Planet Nine. The object confirms a specific prediction made by Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown, the astronomers at the California Institute of Technology who first argued for Planet Nine's existence. "It's not proof that Planet Nine exists," said David Gerdes, an astronomer at the University of Michigan and a co-author on the new paper. "But I would say the presence of an object like this in our solar system bolsters the case for Planet Nine."
Gerdes and his colleagues spotted the new object in data from the Dark Energy Survey, a project that probes the acceleration in the expansion of the universe by surveying a region well above the plane of the solar system. This makes it an unlikely tool for finding objects inside the solar system, since they mostly orbit within the plane. But that is exactly what makes the new object unique: Its orbit is tilted 54 degrees with respect to the plane of the solar system. It's something Gerdes did not expect to see. Batygin and Brown, however, predicted it. The rocky body is being described as 2015 BP519. Quanta magazine has more details.
Gerdes and his colleagues spotted the new object in data from the Dark Energy Survey, a project that probes the acceleration in the expansion of the universe by surveying a region well above the plane of the solar system. This makes it an unlikely tool for finding objects inside the solar system, since they mostly orbit within the plane. But that is exactly what makes the new object unique: Its orbit is tilted 54 degrees with respect to the plane of the solar system. It's something Gerdes did not expect to see. Batygin and Brown, however, predicted it. The rocky body is being described as 2015 BP519. Quanta magazine has more details.
Yes, Pluto is still a planet.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Shut the fuck up.
I saw an episode of "The Universe" on the History Channel where Mike Brown was talking about his belief that such a planet existed. He was lumped in with a bunch of 2012 Doomsdayers who suggested that such a planet would spell doom for us. Given his track-record of planet* discovery, I thought his interview may have been taken out of context, but it sounds like he actually believes this is the case (the planet part, not the doomsday part).
*dwarf-planet, extra-solar body, or whatever name we use nowadays
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
By any objective measure, Pluto is a plutino.
Ezekiel 23:20
If you persist in claiming Pluto is not a planet, that does not mean Pluto is not. planet - instead, it means you are an asshole.
Steady on there!
Let's not get too carried away, it's not something to get upset about, unlike say Vi vs Emacs.
... even if it's premature speculation.
An object as remotely located as "planet nine," would be part of the Kuiper belt.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
This has been well known for years to listeners of Art Bell and Coast-To-Coast with George Noory.
Planet X
"Where are we going?"
"Planet 10!"
If you persist in claiming Pluto is not a planet, that does not mean Pluto is not. planet - instead, it means you are an asshole.
Steady on there!
Let's not get too carried away, it's not something to get upset about, unlike say Vi vs Emacs.
nano FTW!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
"Plan 9".
Damn. I was really looking forward to meeting Vampira.
Have gnu, will travel.
In the world of astronomy even the planets of our own solar system come and go.
In the 1800s it was thought that our solar system contained 11 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Vesta, Juno, Ceres, Pallas, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. (No Pluto.)
In a few years Vesta, Juno, Ceres, Pallas and Pluto might be considered planets again. Then, in conjunction with this new discovery, we'll be up to 13 planets.
each of us could be given our own planet & there'd still be plenty to go round?
One planet should be enough for everybody.
No, if you're talking assholes, you're talking about Uranus.
Pluto aka Hades was the god of death and the underworld. Should we name the new planet if it exists "Satan"? Plutonium is so dangerous it was consciously named after Pluto. A dark god for a dark element.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Not possible. If we start considering dwarf planets as full planets, we'll have dozens to hundreds or maybe thousands in time -- never 13.
This space intentionally left blank
Let's not get too carried away, it's not something to get upset about, unlike say Vi vs Emacs.
Let's get to the really tough, divisive issue: spaces or tabs?
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
If we start considering dwarf planets as full planets, we'll have dozens to hundreds or maybe thousands in time -- never 13.
Not necessarily. Size matters. We don't call every island a continent.
But really, now that we know of 4500 planets and planet candidates, using ancient five plus three (Earth, Uranus and Neptune) as the guide for defining planets is ridiculous. We need a system of categorization that covers all planets everywhere.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
This is just begging for a low budget Corman script.
spaces or tabs?
Depends if I'm using a fountain pen, or a proper goose quill.
Have you not seen all the Nibiru videos for the past IDK how many years. Nibiru is here. Along with the annunaki.
Uranus you say?
So Pluto is his own supersymmetric particle.
For the Ancient, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn were special in several ways. They are the brightest objects in the Sky, they are not fixed in the star background, but move around, and differently than all the other stars, they don't flicker. Thus they were named the Travellers, or in Greek: Planetes.
One of the most shocking effects of the Copernican Model was, that suddenly, the number of Planets shrunk to five. Sun and Moon were no longer planets, but formed two new categories: Center of the Earth's movement and Moon became its own category: A moon.
If we consider the emotional debate how Pluto still should be a planet and demoting him was a mistake even a dozen years after the fact, and after Pluto being a planet for not even 80 years, imagine the debate in the 15th to 17th century about the demoting of the Moon and the new role of the Sun after three millenia of them being planets!
spaces or tabs?
Tab key mapped to four spaces obviously.
Because the Solar system is the planetary system best known to Mankind, we primarily want our definitions to work there. If it is ambiguous even in our close proximity, it won't be of much help somewhere else. On the other hand, we don't want "Planet" to be defined solely by "being in the list of known planets". We want a definition, that a) works in our Solar system, b) provides a clear cutoff between "a planet" and "not a planet", and c) has a good chance to work somewhere else too without too much hassle.
And here comes the primary problem with Pluto named a planet. It differs from both the gassy planets and the rocky planets, but is not so much different from Titan, Triton, Ganymede, Europa, Io and other large moons, except that Pluto is smaller and doesn't circle a bigger planetary body. In certain ways, it circles an even smaller body, Charon, by being completely outside the common gravitational center of Charon and Pluto (does that makes Charon a planet too, because it has a moon named Pluto?). It seems to be quite similar to Eris too, which is about the same size, has about the same inner structure, but has a much larger orbit. But there are many other bodies out there, which are similar to Eris and Pluto too, except being smaller. So were do we put the cutoff between Pluto (and maybe Eris) on one hand and the millions and billions of dirty snowballs circling the Sun out there? What makes Pluto (and Eris) so different, that it should be a planet and not just "a lump of dirt and frozen water out there", which it defininitely is?
The IAU said, that it would be nice when the orbit of a planet and accompanying bodies around the Sun (or another star) would actually go through the planet (it doesn't for Pluto). The IAU said that it would be nice when the orbit and the size of the planet is warranted to be stable for the foreseable future, thus it asked for a planet to have mainly cleaned its orbit and doesn't run risk anymore to suffer a large collision with objects in the same or close orbits which might strongly change its celestial parameters (Pluto hasn't).
Tuesday is germanic Tyr's day, the former boss of the pantheon before Odin/Wotan took over and Tyr was demoted to the position of Thor's brother and son of Odin.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
cleaned its orbit and doesn't run risk anymore to suffer a large collision with objects in the same or close orbits which might strongly change its celestial parameters (Pluto hasn't).
A pretty pointless requirement. By this requirement Jupiter is then definitely not a planet as his orbit is polluted with the most objects (hint: thousands of Trojans in both trojan points)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We must have access to the only remaining source of the Shaving Cream atom!
Tuesday is Tiu's Day, or Tiw's Day. Also known as Tyr. God of War and Justice among the Germanic people.
Ironically, while the Interpretatio graeca considered Tyr to be a Germanic version of Mars, he probably evolved from the proto-Indoeuropean "Dyeus", which would make him the equivalent of Jupiter or Zeus.
Also, Friday is technically Frigg, not Freya. Although both have evolved from the same proto-IndoEuropean deity.