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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

#81

Post by rainsford »

AIPedant wrote: post #11

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.

It's sort of amazing to me that the Sun can capture objects that far away. Like obviously even at that distance the Sun would be by far the closest massive thing, but it's hard to comprehend the effects of gravity being strong enough at that distance. From "Planet 9" the Sun probably wouldn't significantly stand out from all the other stars in the sky, yet you'd be orbiting it.

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

#82

Post by ednite »

ednite wrote: post #20
api wrote: 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…

Honestly, if there is a golf ball–sized black hole out there chilling in the outer solar system, I'm all in. Let’s fire up a replica of TARS, load up ChatGPT inside (TARS-GPT, patent pending), and yeet it straight toward the Schwarzschild golf ball. It’ll narrate live. Imagine the livestream: “Approaching event horizon. Spaghettification at 3%. Mood: stretchy.” “Entering gravitational lensing zone… wow, even my token…

Not sure why the downvotes—if I came off wrong, my apologies. I genuinely meant it in a humoristic way. I'd honestly love to see a probe launched into a black hole.

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

#83

Post by doubletwoyou »

NikkiA wrote: post #70
AIPedant wrote: post #11

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.

I dunno, '700 AU' gelled for me instantly, '15 times the distance to pluto' doesn't even make sense given pluto's orbit isn't anywhere near circular.

I don’t think the vast majority of people will have a good sense of how far away the standard gas giants and pluto are from the sun in terms of AU.

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

#84

Post by Qem »

Projectiboga wrote: post #63
randomtoast wrote: post #6

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…

If it were earth mass it would be ~grapefruit size. This estimate puts object nine at 9 earth mass so maybe vollyball size or melon size? https://www.astronomy.com/science/is-planet-nine-a-black-hol...

If it were a blackhole it wouldn't show up in IRAS and AKARI infrared maps.

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

#85

Post by Qem »

perihelions wrote: post #15

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.

Perhaps searching for Planet 9 we went straight to Planet 10. There was another one and we happened to find it first. Or also it could be a nomadic planet undergoing a close encounter with the solar system.

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

#86

Post by Qem »

rozab wrote: post #78
perihelions wrote: post #15

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.

Isn't this exactly how Pluto was discovered? Due to an innacurate estimate of the mass of Neptune (not corrected until Voyager I think), people were hunting for a large planet to explain the discrepancy. After a bunch of searching they happened to find Pluto, but it was not the Planet X they were looking for. The mass estimates for Pluto were gradually downgraded from many Earth masses to 1/500, which is the true rea…

For a time pluto had good estimates for his small size, but poor constraints on his mass beyond this Neptune mass estimate. So I remember reading a short story were they interpreted the possible high density as signs of a stargate.

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

#88

Post by db48x »

sph wrote: post #26
perihelions wrote: post #15

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?

Nobody killed Pluto.

Back in the early 1800s children used to memorize the names of the 12 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. But then in 1845 astronomers discovered Astraea, and now there were 13. In 1847 three more were discovered: Hebe, Iris, and Flora. Then Metis, Hygiea, Parthenope, and Victoria by 1850. The 100th asteroid was discovered in 1868, and the pace only got quicker from there. Somewhere along that line people started using the words “asteroid” and “asteroid belt” and schoolchildren were mercifully spared the pointless task of memorizing hundreds, and later many thousands, of names of asteroids.

The same thing happened to Pluto. Just as Ceres was the first discovered asteroid, Pluto was the first discovered TNO. There are now hundreds of named TNO and thousands more that are just numbered. Nobody should force schoolchildren to memorize them all. Just tell them that there are an unknown number of objects in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud and they’ll know as much as they need to know. Give them bonus points if they know the names Ceres and Pluto, and more if they know why these two were discovered first of all the objects in their class: they’re the biggest. Otherwise there’s nothing special about them.

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

#89

Post by Qem »

metalman wrote: post #8
rini17 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ya, I know but Ceres is going to get pushed into an intersection with Mars to generate an atmosphere and a hydrological cycle .......testing on fusion rocket drives is ongoing https://newatlas.com/space/pulsar-fusion-rocket-design-slash...

Hopefully the energy released would also remelt it and restart it's magnetic field, to avoid volatile loss again.

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

#90

Post by db48x »

ryao wrote: post #31
gus_massa wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you add Pluto, you must add also Eris and a few more, like 5 or more, and perhaps also Ceres. Here is a nice graphic that excludes Ceres https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_planet#Population_of_d...

We should add those planets to the official list too. Gauss considered Ceres to be a planet and I believe him over living astronomers. The motivation for this dwarf planet nonsense was to try to keep the official planet list small so children could memorize them with ease, but that is absurd. We do not remove countries from the map to make it easier for children to learn geography and there are over 100 of them.

For a generation, schoolchildren everywhere memorized the names of the 12 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, Juno, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

The list was stable at 12 for about 40 years, but started growing again in the middle of the century. By 1868 there were 100 named asteroids. Not a single one has people living on it, so making children memorize their names was seen as a waste of time. Teach them about the asteroid belt and then move on to more important things. Likewise with the TNO: teach them about the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud and then move on to more important things. No need to make them memorize Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaoar, Sedna, and Orcus, nor any of the hundreds of other named TNO.

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