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A 1980s space telescope may have seen planet nine

gizmodo.com

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

#81

Post by depressedpanda »

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.

I think Planet IX has a better ring to it.

But I also enjoyed reading the Dune series by Frank Herbert.

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

#83

Post by yongjik »

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.

Sure, I'm OK with naming it Le Creuset.

Oh, you meant anodyne ....

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

#84

Post by twirlock »

marcodiego wrote: post #82

Planet nine... why not simply consider it as something in the same level of conspiracy theories until better evidence arrives?

There is evidence, but what you mean is "evidence," i.e. "headlines," i.e. "I am being assured by multiple sources that my worldview is still socially acceptable." So to answer your question, you shouldn't.

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

#85

Post by pfdietz »

jhgb wrote: post #80
pfdietz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rare earths are neither particularly rare, nor particularly likely to be unusually abundant on a Planet 9. However! A Mars or Earth-sized planet sufficiently far out in the solar system might be sufficiently cool to be able to retain helium in its atmosphere, without being a gas giant planet. If so, it might conceivably be the best place in the solar system to obtain 3He, an isotope that has considerable attractivene…

I don't see how the "attractiveness" of helium-3 is anything non-zero. If you can't even fuse deuterium with tritium, which is the easiest thing there is, helium-3 fusion goes out of the window.

DT is certainly easier to fuse, but it presents very difficult, IMO likely intractable engineering problems. D3He would finesse those problems (neutrons, material damage, tritium breeding), and potentially enable direct conversion of fusion energy to electrical energy (or, perhaps, more volumetrically efficient transfer of thermal energy to coolant). So IF the physics can be made to work, D3He could end up being more practical.

The company to watch on this is Helion, and perhaps Princeton Satellite Systems.

https://www.helionenergy.com/

https://vimeo.com/553784697

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

#86

Post by gammarator »

kordlessagain wrote: post #75

If whomever was responsible for demoting Pluto from being planet nine is reading this, you’re a dweeb.

That’s Mike Brown! His book “How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming” is a great scientific memoir, and very funny too.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/19851/how-i-killed-...

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

#87

Post by petschge »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #71
SllX wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by “whole world” you mean the wilderness, then sure! Otherwise we’ve had no issues laying cables to any place people live, so long as it makes sense to do so.

If by "makes sense" you mean to ISP shareholders - for ISPs to take federal USF funds and never, ever deliver on the required upgrades or expansions (eg:Frontier@WV,Verizon@PA), due to regulatory capture.

And as usual the US is dragging down the entire planet instead of fixing the corruption at home.

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

#88

Post by coldacid »

depressedpanda wrote: post #81
zionic wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think Planet IX has a better ring to it. But I also enjoyed reading the Dune series by Frank Herbert.

Many machines on IX.

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

#90

Post by rand0mx1 »

ziddoap wrote: post #11
gre wrote: post #7

Here's a youtube video by Anton Petrov describing the paper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSyAO4fGZOE

He's always quick on these, and always with quality videos. Anyone with an interest in space who has not watched any of Anton's videos are seriously missing out.

His videos are unnecessarily long
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