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Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart

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Re: Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart

#21
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope this is true, because it would mean there is a black hole close enough it could be examined and studied. This might allow us to test physics ideas that can’t be tested any other way, and maybe even to “finish” physics. It could also allow gravity and Oberth effect acceleration of small probes to meaningful fractions of the speed of light for interstellar flyby missions. Imagine the Oberth effect boost f…

I really hope it isn't true because if there's one out there, there will be others, and I'd rather not meet one in person. We don't have enough data to see whether there are unexpected instabilities in detected planetary systems. But it would be an interesting project to look for those.

They're not dangerous unless you get too close. A black hole is not a cosmic vacuum cleaner.

If the Moon were suddenly transformed into a tiny black hole with the same mass, it would continue to orbit the Earth at the same distance. Ocean tides due to its gravity would continue normally. There would not be much effect except that it would no longer be visible with the naked eye and would no longer reflect the sun's light back to Earth. If you found it in a telescope, you might see gravitational lensing as it passed in front of the star field. Objects like probes or old spacecraft stages orbiting the Moon would continue to do so.

The only danger would be that if things fell into it I suppose you might get dangerous X-ray and gamma ray emissions from its accretion disc that would be a problem at such a close range. That would not be an issue with a primordial black hole much further away.

If there were such an object we could send probes to orbit it and study it, and some experiments may involve firing objects or shooting lasers or beams of particles into it to attempt to learn about the quantum effects at the event horizon. This could be massive for physics, allowing us to access and observe conditions and energies not replicable here on Earth with any current technology.

BTW we don't have any hard evidence that primordial black holes exist, but many theories predict them. So far such predictions around black holes have a pretty good track record. If you made me bet, I would bet on them existing. They are a candidate for some or perhaps even all of dark matter, though even if that's not the case they might still exist. It's possible that the dark matter haloes we can spot with gravitational lensing are clouds of these things. ("Clouds" of course is a misnomer-- the distance between them would be many light years.)

If planet nine is a PBH it means that at some point one was captured by our solar system into a Kuiper Belt orbit. Even if planet nine isn't one, there still may be small asteroid mass PBHs in our solar system, so we still might find one. They would require extremely sensitive X-ray or gamma ray telescopes or highly accurate gravitational models of the solar system to detect.

Re: Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart

#23
post #13
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same happened to Ceres first. To be fair, Make Ceres A Planet Again!

If planets are required to clear their orbits, what was Jupiter called while the solar system was forming? A dwarf planet? A proto planet? The entire time? Was earth not a planet shortly before and after collision with Theia? The naming pedantry seems ridiculous given that we have such a small sample size.

I find that to be the most weird one too. I don't know much about orbital mechanics but in the unlikely chance 2 bodies shared an orbit does that mean they aren't planets then? How close can two planets be before losing that designation? I share your ire.

Re: Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart

#25

I think “15 times further from the Sun than Pluto” is more meaningful for most readers than “700 times further from the Sun than Earth.” If it exists, it’s way way way out there.

There's an episode on "Space & Beyond" where they show all the planets in scale to the realworld on an actual football field.

Then to show Planet 9 distance they have to get in a car and drive a few miles.

That worked for me.

Re: Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart

#26

This cannot be evidence of Planet 9 (the Batygin and Brown hypothesis)—it's outright incompatible with it. https://bsky.app/profile/plutokiller.com/post/3lnqm2ymbd22r If those two spots are the same object, that object is on a high-inclination orbit; but the pattern the Planet 9 hypothesis explains is only compatible with a low-inclination object.

The guy killed Pluto and still he isn't done :(

Seriously though, is he one of the people responsible for Pluto's demotion to dwarf planet?

Re: Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart

#27
post #25

I think “15 times further from the Sun than Pluto” is more meaningful for most readers than “700 times further from the Sun than Earth.” If it exists, it’s way way way out there.

There's an episode on "Space & Beyond" where they show all the planets in scale to the realworld on an actual football field. Then to show Planet 9 distance they have to get in a car and drive a few miles. That worked for me.

My favorite: Cody'sLab's "How far away are the nearest stars": https://youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk Also gives an intuition for how incredibly bright stars shine

Re: Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart

#28
post #13
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same happened to Ceres first. To be fair, Make Ceres A Planet Again!

If planets are required to clear their orbits, what was Jupiter called while the solar system was forming? A dwarf planet? A proto planet? The entire time? Was earth not a planet shortly before and after collision with Theia? The naming pedantry seems ridiculous given that we have such a small sample size.

Every single definition that segments a real world set of continuous objects into discrete buckets has surprising edge cases. This is basically inescapable.

To steal a quote: All definitions are wrong. Some are useful.

Re: Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart

#29

I find one theory regarding Planet 9 especially interesting, and that is that it could be a primordial black hole with a Schwarzschild radius on the order of just a few centimeters. So basically, just a golf ball-sized black hole. This would explain why we can see the gravitational effects on the other objects as described in many papers, and it would also explain at the same time why we have no direct observation of…

At the distances described, available passive light flux is so low, it could be 100% painted with white titanium dioxide paint and we’d be lucky to ever see it. It doesn’t need to be a black hole to be effectively invisible.

Re: Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart

#30

I think “15 times further from the Sun than Pluto” is more meaningful for most readers than “700 times further from the Sun than Earth.” If it exists, it’s way way way out there.

Yes, also being 10x the mass of Earth that far out hints that it may be an interstellar object captured by the Sun.
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