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A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

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Re: A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

#61

Post by jagger27 »

ufo wrote: post #56
tectonic wrote: post #3

Mike Brown recently wrote a summary of his and Konstantin Batygin's paper 'The orbit of Planet Nine'. By looking at Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) whose orbits appear skewed by the invisible gravity of a possible Planet Nine, accounting for observation bias, and running a ton of simulations and MCMC, they concluded: if it exists, Planet Nine has a mass of 6.2 (+2.2/-1.3) Earth masses and a perihelion (closest approach to…

According to Mike Brown, the infrared sighting from Rowan-Robinson is in a different location in the sky than was predicted by the aforementioned Planet Nine hypothesis. In other words, if this infrared sighting is real it would be a different Planet Nine! https://twitter.com/plutokiller/status/1458038427090178052

So if it turns out that both this object and the hypothesized Planet 9 exist, which one is further out and gets to be Planet X?

Re: A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

#62

Post by spenczar5 »

staticautomatic wrote: post #50
tectonic wrote: post #3

Mike Brown recently wrote a summary of his and Konstantin Batygin's paper 'The orbit of Planet Nine'. By looking at Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) whose orbits appear skewed by the invisible gravity of a possible Planet Nine, accounting for observation bias, and running a ton of simulations and MCMC, they concluded: if it exists, Planet Nine has a mass of 6.2 (+2.2/-1.3) Earth masses and a perihelion (closest approach to…

Perhaps a dumb question, but if we have some idea of where it was and its probable orbit back then, then why don’t we have some idea of where it is now?

Not at all a dumb question! The argument goes that we haven't had powerful-enough telescopes (or enough dedicated observing time) to image it.

Not everyone buys this; some people think it does not exist, and the perturbed orbits of Kuiper Belt objects are just a random fluke.

Re: A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

#63

Post by odyssey7 »

SkittyDog wrote: post #59
odyssey7 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sufficient-but-not-necessary conditions for identifying a planet are called into question as a workable definition once more. We’ve duck-typed the solar system, I guess.

I hate to be the one to break the bad news to you, but... That's pretty much how all science works. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_concept Categorization is a leaky abstraction. Use them when they're useful, and ignore them when they become more trouble than they're worth.

At risk of maybe going too far on a tangent, I understand this idea and the species example is a good one.

The planets are different because they were first defined as mystical and cultural concepts, before they could be understood as scientific ones. There are plenty of people who still think about the planets as cultural concepts rather than scientific ones. (What is a Jupiter? It’s a thing in space that our culture has named “Jupiter.”) I think we should define the planets the way co-star does. By listing them:

DATA PLANET = MERCURY | MARS | ETC

Scientists can have their own definitions of things, but they will face resistance if they try to dictate culture through their definitions.

https://www.costarastrology.com/why-haskell/

Re: A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

#64

Post by zionic »

tectonic wrote: post #3

Mike Brown recently wrote a summary of his and Konstantin Batygin's paper 'The orbit of Planet Nine'. By looking at Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) whose orbits appear skewed by the invisible gravity of a possible Planet Nine, accounting for observation bias, and running a ton of simulations and MCMC, they concluded: if it exists, Planet Nine has a mass of 6.2 (+2.2/-1.3) Earth masses and a perihelion (closest approach to…

I’m just mad we’re losing out on “Planet X”. When I was a kid Pluto was a planet so the new one was X (10) and it was cool. Now this new planet is just going to be planet 9 again… totally lame.

Re: A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

#65

Post by post-it »

zionic wrote: post #64
tectonic wrote: post #3

Mike Brown recently wrote a summary of his and Konstantin Batygin's paper 'The orbit of Planet Nine'. By looking at Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) whose orbits appear skewed by the invisible gravity of a possible Planet Nine, accounting for observation bias, and running a ton of simulations and MCMC, they concluded: if it exists, Planet Nine has a mass of 6.2 (+2.2/-1.3) Earth masses and a perihelion (closest approach to…

I’m just mad we’re losing out on “Planet X”. When I was a kid Pluto was a planet so the new one was X (10) and it was cool. Now this new planet is just going to be planet 9 again… totally lame.

Maybe there's a second one!

Re: A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

#66

Post by kristopolous »

I've got a silly question, could there be some long term effects of an object that had been there?

For instance, could there be some kind of elasticity or residue, something like radiation that could cause a dissipated gravitational like effect long after the thing has moved on or otherwise "disappeared" in some way?

In this very likely wrong model maybe the thing causing the effect visited hundreds of years ago and was just passing through and so it's no longer directly observable...

Re: A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

#67

Post by bink »

zionic wrote: post #64
tectonic wrote: post #3

Mike Brown recently wrote a summary of his and Konstantin Batygin's paper 'The orbit of Planet Nine'. By looking at Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) whose orbits appear skewed by the invisible gravity of a possible Planet Nine, accounting for observation bias, and running a ton of simulations and MCMC, they concluded: if it exists, Planet Nine has a mass of 6.2 (+2.2/-1.3) Earth masses and a perihelion (closest approach to…

I’m just mad we’re losing out on “Planet X”. When I was a kid Pluto was a planet so the new one was X (10) and it was cool. Now this new planet is just going to be planet 9 again… totally lame.

But it's from outer space.

Re: A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

#68

Post by SkittyDog »

odyssey7 wrote: post #63
SkittyDog wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be the one to break the bad news to you, but... That's pretty much how all science works. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_concept Categorization is a leaky abstraction. Use them when they're useful, and ignore them when they become more trouble than they're worth.

At risk of maybe going too far on a tangent, I understand this idea and the species example is a good one. The planets are different because they were first defined as mystical and cultural concepts, before they could be understood as scientific ones. There are plenty of people who still think about the planets as cultural concepts rather than scientific ones. (What is a Jupiter? It’s a thing in space that our cultur…

I'm pretty sure animal and plant species also existed as cultural and mystical concepts, long before science was a thing. All of your analysis can be applied equally well to species, as well as planets... Or the four seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn) or the five Oceans, or the seven Continents.

They're all simply human attempts to impose neat category boundaries across a continuum of natural phenomena that are definitely not neat.

Categories can be useful, but they often lead to pointless arguments by lay people (a la Pluto's relegation) when we start to fetishize a human-created category structure as an essential expression of underlying reality. It's just plain old human narcissism.

Re: A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

#69

Post by [deleted] »

Hemospectrum wrote: post #6
api wrote: post #5

If they don't name it Yuggoth I will be disappointed. https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Yuggoth

There’s all kinds of silly names they could borrow from stories hypothesizing its existence. Nemesis, Nibiru, Vulcan, and Planet X, just for starters. But in all likelihood it will end up as something much more anodyne.

[deleted]

Re: A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

#70

Post by pndy »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #43
Hemospectrum wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s all kinds of silly names they could borrow from stories hypothesizing its existence. Nemesis, Nibiru, Vulcan, and Planet X, just for starters. But in all likelihood it will end up as something much more anodyne.

I think the IAU will only accept names from Mythology.

Here you go: https://www.iau.org/public/themes/naming/ - in short, it can't just be named by snapping fingers obviously as there's a review and approval process.

They extended naming conventions to other cultures already - IIRC Roman and Greek sources were "drying off"

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