This how Qigong found the Clone Planet in Star Wars 2. Although the planet had be erased from the galactic database, it left a gravitational signature on nearby systems.
Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
131–140 of 159 posts
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#132The NY Times covers the story well: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/science/space/ninth-planet... EDIT: After reading the comments in this discussion, many of which are addressed in the NYT article, I'd say the NYT article is almost certainly worth reading.
I just wished they hadn't indicated this new planet is the "ninth planet". Dwarf planets are no less planets than little people are people.
> Dwarf planets are no less planets than little people are people.
They certainly are, since they haven't cleared their orbit.
If you're not going to accept the term, then where's the cutoff? Should we count every asteroid in the belt just because they are orbiting the sun?
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#133> Batygin and Brown inferred its presence from the peculiar clustering of six previously known objects that orbit beyond Neptune. This raised a big red flag in my mind. This must produce a literally astronomical multiple comparisons problem. Yes they reported sigma = 3.8, but if they didn't do their multiple comparisons correction right (which I am in no position to determine), they're basically reading tea leaves. I…
I knew Chaz personally in undergrad and a bit since then. Though I have not read the article yet (I'm in a state of shock really) I can attest to the man. He is so kind, funny, personable, and one a heck of a guitar player. Based on his stellar work in undergrad in modeling the orbital path futures of our solar system on the Gyr timescale, I am sure he is sure of the work. (Only non humanities major to ever win the D…
"Stellar work"?
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#134The stars who sizzled the Golden Globes 2015
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#135Provocative title for this Caltech press release. Mike Brown, the co-author of the paper reported here, discovered Eris, a KBO like Pluto, in 2005. This discovery prompted the IAU in 2006 to demote Pluto out of the realm of "planet" into a "dwarf planet". At the time, Alan Stern's New Horizons mission to Pluto had just been launched, it finally arrived last year. Stern was incensed that NH started out as a visitor to…
The article quoted Brown as saying "All those people who are mad that Pluto is no longer a planet can be thrilled to know that there is a real planet out there still to be found,"
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#136No one's mentioned Tyche yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyche_%28hypothetical_planet%2... In searching for Tyche, the WISE missions ruled out the possibility of anything larger than Saturn (95x the mass of Earth) out to about 10000 AU and anything larger than Jupiter (317x the mass of Earth) out to about 26000 AU. WISE was able to detect objects the size of Neptune (17x the mass of Earth) out to about 700 AU, so…
Their site at http://www.findplanetnine.com/p/blog-page.html addresses the areas the Tyche survey and other surveys cover. My TLDR: * The WISE survey might only find Planet X at it's nearest approach. Kevin Luhman has redone the survey using the most sensitive WISE bands that only cover a narrow area of the sky and hasn't found Planet X. * They reviewed the Catalina Sky Survey and eliminated most of the areas they'd…
> Planet X is at aphelion, difficult to find with the Milky Way as a (stunning) backdrop.
I would have assumed that planets are easier to detect when they have a backdrop? That the light can be blocked, partially blocked, bent, .. Isn't that the case?
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#137Did anyone else notice that the rendering of the orbits in the article looks strikingly similar to Kerbal Space Program's orbit UI?
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Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their site at http://www.findplanetnine.com/p/blog-page.html addresses the areas the Tyche survey and other surveys cover. My TLDR: * The WISE survey might only find Planet X at it's nearest approach. Kevin Luhman has redone the survey using the most sensitive WISE bands that only cover a narrow area of the sky and hasn't found Planet X. * They reviewed the Catalina Sky Survey and eliminated most of the areas they'd…
> Planet X is at aphelion, difficult to find with the Milky Way as a (stunning) backdrop. I would have assumed that planets are easier to detect when they have a backdrop? That the light can be blocked, partially blocked, bent, .. Isn't that the case?
I'm not sure if you're referring to the tansit technique where a planet passes in front of a star multiple times which allows to determine the size and distance from the detectable dips in brightness.
This technique wouldn't work well with a backdrop since it never passes in front of the same star twice.
I'm also not sure if we can resolve the planet optically i.e. 1) it will always be smaller than a pixel of the telescope sensor 2) the pixels of the telescope sensor always collect light from the backdrop even if the planet is dead center on the group of pixels.
When you detect the light of a planet without backdrop both problems would be much smaller because then you can actually see some tiny dark blurry object moving relative to the stars around it in the image.
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#139May it receive a name starting with P so that
My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets
works again
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just wished they hadn't indicated this new planet is the "ninth planet". Dwarf planets are no less planets than little people are people.
> Dwarf planets are no less planets than little people are people. They certainly are, since they haven't cleared their orbit. If you're not going to accept the term, then where's the cutoff? Should we count every asteroid in the belt just because they are orbiting the sun?
The answer is that Pluto isn't some sort of classification issue.
The proper answer is that Pluto is a planet because of historical reasons (by fiat). By definition, it is a planet, and the asteroids in the asteroid belt are simply asteroids.
From then on, you can apply the rules of a "planet" later on to other bodies, like this one.