Is that Nibiru?
Too small, maybe a generation ship on approach?
A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years
81–90 of 330 posts
Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years
#82The post says "Incl. 95.46628 +/- 0.000052". Am I right to interpret this as meaning that the body has an extreme inclination, almost in polar orbit of the Sun? That would be pretty interesting; it would mean an orbit completely out of line with the rest of the Solar System.
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Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years
#83Will this disturb longterm orbiting bodies (with exotic orbits) and drive them into the inner system, without the guardians able to catch?
I don’t think so, to a meaningful extent. There’s already lots of stuff out in the Oort Cloud with orbits out of the regular planar disk.
Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think Saturn comes that close, should be 8 AU at best, given that perihelion is at 9 AU.
https://www.universetoday.com/15311/how-far-is-saturn-from-e... > For the sake of simplicity, Saturn is 1.2 billion km, roughly 7 AU, from the Earth when the two are at their closest approach to one another. They are 1.67 billion km, around 11 AU, from each other when they are at their most distant. Saturn and Earth are the closest to each other when they are on the same side of the Sun and at similar points in their…
> Saturn is 1.2 billion km, roughly 7 AU
That's a unit conversion error. 1.2 billion / 150 million is 8, not 7.
Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years
#85For reference 1 AU (Astronomical Unit) is about 150 million km. Saturn ranges from being about 7 to 11 AU away from Earth. Voyager 1 is 152 AU away. This object is excitingly close and will be fun to study.
How come our culture didn’t base astronomical units around base 10 of our current units?
Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years
#86The post says "Incl. 95.46628 +/- 0.000052". Am I right to interpret this as meaning that the body has an extreme inclination, almost in polar orbit of the Sun? That would be pretty interesting; it would mean an orbit completely out of line with the rest of the Solar System.
Certainly interesting, but not necessarily surprising. The Oort Cloud is roughly spherical so inclination would be expected to be isotropic overall. On average there will be less high inclination bodies (isotropic inclination has a pdf of sin(i)) but they will still exist.
Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is often jocularly called lithobraking and is typically not advisable.
> not advisable Unless you're NASA landing a probe on Mars in 1997.
Seriously, the tandem failures of the Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Observer missions were probably something NASA as an organization needed at the time. A reminder that Space Is Hard, and you can only pick two of "faster", "better", and "cheaper". Since then, NASA's Mars program has grown in both scope and ambition, yet remarkably has had zero loss-of-mission failures during that whole time!
Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.universetoday.com/15311/how-far-is-saturn-from-e... > For the sake of simplicity, Saturn is 1.2 billion km, roughly 7 AU, from the Earth when the two are at their closest approach to one another. They are 1.67 billion km, around 11 AU, from each other when they are at their most distant. Saturn and Earth are the closest to each other when they are on the same side of the Sun and at similar points in their…
> Saturn is 1.2 billion km, roughly 7 AU That's a unit conversion error. 1.2 billion / 150 million is 8, not 7.
I believe the 1.2B km was referencing mean orbital distance from the sun, which would be 8 AU, and therefore 7 AU from earth on closest approach.
Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years
#89This is actually terrifying.
That body is on a cometary orbit, and need not be stable long term. If it's chaotically pushed around by the major outer planets it might get sent into an orbit that gets into the inner solar system. And if something that size hit Earth, it would be game over for life here -- the impact would vaporize much or all of the oceans.
Even an impact by something the size of comet Hale-Bopp would destroy all higher life on the planet.
The chance of impacts like this may have been underestimated because of anthropic selection -- if any had occurred in the past (say) 1 billion years then we would not be here.
Re: A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years
#90For reference 1 AU (Astronomical Unit) is about 150 million km. Saturn ranges from being about 7 to 11 AU away from Earth. Voyager 1 is 152 AU away. This object is excitingly close and will be fun to study.
So pretty much between Saturn and Uranus....
Even as an adult that still always makes me chuckle. I can't help it.