211–220 of 261 posts
700 times further => isn't it farther rather than further? Non native english speaker here, but last I checked further was a metaphorical distance, when farther was a literal distance. You can push a concept further, but you walk farther right? Or did I miss something?
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…
It would be extremely difficult to observe something that far away from the sun, no matter how voluminous it is. I'm not going to scorn at the idea of a blackhole, but I wonder what process can crush that much mass into such a volume. I don't think it's massive enough to suffer a gravitational collapse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 186…
I think he’s referring to Mike Brown’s book “How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming”. It’s a great read.
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…
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.11090
As I recall, it did not get printed this way because the ink would be too expensive, or mess with the paper.
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As long it is orbiting the sun, i.e bound by the solar gravitational field then it is in the solar system? Also depending how elliptical the orbit, is the perigee might be much closer than 700AU, while still being further than Pluto's orbit. For all we know 700 AU is the apogee and say the perigee is 70 AU (1.4x Pluto's apogee ).
> As long it is orbiting the sun The body must also be large enough to clear other bodies in the same orbit, except at the Trojan positions (L4 and L5), to be considered as a planet. Otherwise it would just be a Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) or a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) at these distances. It obviously does in this case. But this pedantic detail is rather important. It was used to demote Pluto a few years back.
Does it? Would we actually know if there was another slightly more sparse belt at 700AU? If we can't track a large planet in that area, why would we be certain about the belt?
Alternatively, if it's an external object captured by the Sun, how would we even classify it as clearing or not if there's nothing to clear?
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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.
Running into a rogue black hole must be far less likely than an extinction level impact with a relstively boring big rock.
A micro black hole traveling at tremendous velocity would go right through the Earth and keep going, but as it encountered the atmosphere it might emit a bunch of ultra high energy gamma rays (due to accretion) that set off fusion reactions and create an airburst. From there it would shoot right through the Earth and cause another kaboom when it exited, but that would have been in the middle of the Pacific. Nobody would have noticed in 1908.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
No way of knowing unless we find evidence in the form of a "track" through layers of rock or some other signature. A comet or other similar body remains a more likely explanation for that event.
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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.
The length of 2.1 trillion Olympic swimming pools. Or 698 trillion bananas.
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If the Earth is 8 lightminutes from the Sun, Planet X is 3.8 lightdays. Or, it's the difference between going for a 15 minutes walk and walking from Boston to Orlando (or San Diego to Seattle, for the West Coasters).
Isn't that slightly overstating it? Those pairs of cities are over 1000 miles apart, so unless you walk at 6mph, that's more than 700x as far.
It's off by a factor of 8ish, which I applied to turn 2mph from a rate into a smaller unit of time but failed to balance.
It should have been an hour's walk (~2 miles) versus 700 hours' (~1400 miles).
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But then why Pluto rather than Eris which is considerably further than Pluto or Sedna which is even further? Pluto is a fairly unremarkable dwarf planet. I don’t think it really helps to compare things to it.
Because more people know about Pluto than Eris or Sedna. And we know that Pluto is the furthest away planet (sue me). So 15x Pluto is much easier to visualize in context of the entire solar system than 700x Earth. My cosmological knowledge is above average, but I don't know off the top of my head if 700 AU is super-duper far away or still in the range of the gas giants.
I don't need to sue you. It's just entirely incorrect by any sane definitions of a planet. It's not the further if you include similar bodies or not a planet. As I have no interest in saving American misplaced pride (because let's not kid ourself it's about anything else), I don't see the point of spreading misinformation.
> Because more people know about Pluto than Eris or Sedna
Only if you were born before it was retrograded which will be less and less likely as time goes on.
> My cosmological knowledge is above average, but I don't know off the top of my head if 700 AU is super-duper far away or still in the range of the gas giants.
I'm not convinced that giving it in multiple of the distance between Pluto and the sun is in any way more useful than distance between the Earth and the sun or that it helps conceptualise the distance relative to the gas giants.
Anyway, Pluto orbit is highly excentric so you have 20AU of wiggle room here when considering distance.