Now only if they name the ninth planet starting with a 'P', my childhood mnemonic "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" would finally be complete again! :D My suggestion is 'Prometheus' - sounds tragic and bad ass at the same time!
Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
141–150 of 159 posts
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#142Thanks for the link. There's a course taught on Coursera by one of the CalTech researchers, Mike Brown, if anyone is interested. It's archived but they have kept it open.
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#143> 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…
> 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. Please don't spread FUD about other people's research and then try to soften it with a disclaimer about how you're "in no position to determine" anything about the research. If you want to offer criticism of the research, you should do the legwork to find out what the res…
Well said. There are people reviewing the papers, who are in a position to determine if the work is correct, who are enthusiastic about this.
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#144> 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…
As for the "full" planet/dwarf planet debate, a more precise explanation that has been seen recently in many talks is "gravitational dominance of the orbit". This arises from the case of Jupiter and its trojans. The criteria is "it dominates the gravitational interactions in its neighbourhood", which such an object (affecting practically everything in the Kuiper Belt) does.
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#145Now only if they name the ninth planet starting with a 'P', my childhood mnemonic "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" would finally be complete again! :D My suggestion is 'Prometheus' - sounds tragic and bad ass at the same time!
Well that would be consistent with the roman/greek names for planets and large moons. Now we have to find a stronger tie between the theory and the myth. In some article regarding this news I've read that Planet 9 might have ended in its orbit due to encounters with Jupiter/Saturn. Not exactly an eagle eating its liver, but it can be paralled to "the punishment from Zeus(Jupiter)".
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#146Provocative 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…
Yet another case of ego clashes dominating science.
Ego and personality have definitely become a factor in this case.
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#147> 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…
> 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. Please don't spread FUD about other people's research and then try to soften it with a disclaimer about how you're "in no position to determine" anything about the research. If you want to offer criticism of the research, you should do the legwork to find out what the res…
I've though a lot about your comment.
I don't think that they're dummies. This is one of the big unsolved problems in statistics and empiricism.[1] There is no general solution to this problem, and the practical solutions to this problem are all very particular to their field. The geneticists have certain ways for controlling for certain known problems; the neuro imagers have certain ways for controlling for certain known problems; same goes for ML, particle physics, economics, ect. I'm personally familiar with a few of these, and I know that they are very particular to their field and that they each have their own history (which is why I'm hesitant to present myself as an expert on statistic empiricism in the context of trans-neptunian planet hunting). And those histories (the ones I'm familiar with) are a parade of over confidence followed by the community establishing new things that need to be controlled for. The red flag in my mind isn't that they are following the established rigor for trans-neptunian planet hunting (I'm sure that they are, because peer-review), or that they aren't following a theoretically valid methodology (I'm sure that they are not, because it doesn't exist). The red flag in my head is that trans-neptunian planet hunting, as a field, looks like the kind of place that there would be a lot of false positives (few historical true-positives, relatively small field, relatively novel methods). I don't doubt this experiment the way a expert in trans-neptunian planet hunting would: "They should control for X, Y, and Z, but didn't!" I don't have the expertise to do that. I'm criticizing it the way a philosopher of science might: "This sort of question in this sort of field is likely to have such-and-such problems and not yet have good ways to dealing with it yet." And I do think that know enough to log that criticism.
Love to know what you think of that explanation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_s...
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> The proper answer is that Pluto is a planet because of historical reasons (by fiat)
I disagree that Pluto should somehow have this distinction. Along with all of the reasons it shouldn't be considered a planet under the current definition, it was only discovered in 1930 so it's not like we've been seeing this dot in the sky since humanity was in caves.
Even if I were to agree, then Ceres should also be considered a planet since it was discovered earlier.
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
The video I saw from Caltech suggested a mass of 1-10 times Earth's.
You misunderstood. I was saying that this new planet is not the 9th planet if you include dwarf planets as "planets".
Well, then I say it's fair to assume they are not considering the dwarf planets as planets. If they did, they would not have called it the ninth planet as you have pointed out.
Re: Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"?
har har