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Astronomers are inferring the existence of a "Planet Ten" (or actually the true "Planet Nine"?), a Mars-sized body in the Kuiper Belt, several times closer to the Sun than where the hypothetical Neptune-like Planet Nine is expected to be:
An unknown, unseen "planetary mass object" may lurk in the outer reaches of our solar system, according to new research on the orbits of minor planets to be published in the Astronomical Journal. This object would be different from — and much closer than — the so-called Planet Nine, a planet whose existence yet awaits confirmation.
In the paper, Kat Volk and Renu Malhotra of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, or LPL, present compelling evidence of a yet-to-be-discovered planetary body with a mass somewhere between that of Mars and Earth. The mysterious mass, the authors show, has given away its presence — for now — only by controlling the orbital planes of a population of space rocks known as Kuiper Belt objects, or KBOs, in the icy outskirts of the solar system.
[...] According to the calculations, an object with the mass of Mars orbiting roughly 60 AU from the sun on an orbit tilted by about eight degrees (to the average plane of the known planets) has sufficient gravitational influence to warp the orbital plane of the distant KBOs within about 10 AU to either side.
Also at New Scientist.
The curiously warped mean plane of the Kuiper belt
We estimate this deviation from the expected mean plane to be statistically significant at the ∼97−99% confidence level. We discuss several possible explanations for this deviation, including the possibility that a relatively close-in (a≲100~au), unseen small planetary-mass object in the outer solar system is responsible for the warping.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 26 2017, @12:21AM (24 children)
We have scientists routinely announcing the existence of planets circling suns light years away - but they can't quite decide how many planets circle our own sun.
I think to many people are publishing guesses based on inadequate information. Which is perfectly fine, really. But, maybe those news releases should begin with disclaimers, like "I've observed this star system for a long time now, and my best guess is, there are four planetary bodies circling the sun, and one of them might be earth like."
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Monday June 26 2017, @12:30AM
We can detect exoplanets when they get between us and their star...for Planet Ten, that won't work.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 26 2017, @12:33AM (2 children)
I was just thinking the same thing.
How hard is it to orbit a radar for pete sake. Or even a ground based emitter, an a bunch of receivers. SpaceX launched 10 satellites today on one rocket.
How is it we do not have this already?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Monday June 26 2017, @04:36AM
Because it is really fucking hard.
I am actually so very impressed with how much we have learned. I was just a wee lad when we put a man on the moon. I stayed up late to watch it. I wore pajamas with feet and they had astronauts on them. I was like 11, or something.
It has been fantastic to witness. I'd eventually go to a prep school that had an observatory. I spent so much time gazing at the heavens. We know very little, still. We can observe only so much. Much of what we do know is from inference. Astronomy, in some regards, doesn't actually allow for much in the way of reproducibility. So, we really have come so very far, but we are nowhere near complete.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday June 26 2017, @03:07PM
A couple of reasons (IANAastronomer BTW):
1) Effectiveness at this distance.
2) Light.
3) Cost.
Launching some satellites in Earth orbit is only going to do so much. We already have a couple of space-based telescopes: the Hubble which has been operating for some time now, and the James Webb which is launching next year hopefully. But even with things like this, we can only see small bodies in the outer Solar system so well. Here's an article [planetary.org] that discusses this very issue: why can Hubble get such great pics of distant galaxies but Pluto and its moons just look like some faint blobs of light? Simple: galaxies are unfathomably enormous, Pluto and its moons are tiny (even compared to Earth and our moon). Remember, it took 10 years for New Horizons to get to Pluto from here, and it was the fastest object ever launched from the Earth. And Pluto isn't even that close to the edge of the Solar system; the Kuiper Belt and all the objects there are beyond it, which is why we've only recently found all the other dwarf planets out there (Eris, Makemake, Huamea, etc.).
The other big problem is light. We can see exoplanets because they're generally large, and they pass in front of their host star, so we see the difference in light when they do this. We can see other planets in our own system because they're reflecting light from the Sun back to us. But anything past Pluto is so far away from the Sun that it's not receiving much light in the first place to reflect back.
So to see any more planets way out past Pluto, we'll need either a more powerful telescope, or more likely, we'll need to put telescopes in orbit way out where Pluto is.
And of course, that brings us to cost. These space telescopes cost a fortune due to the enormous mirrors and precision optics needed, and the large size of the telescope. They generally also have problems, and need servicing: Hubble barely even worked when it first launched! It took multiple Space Shuttle missions to fix the problems it had (and later to upgrade it with newer technology for better images). We can service stuff in Earth orbit; we can't service anything out where Pluto is. The probes we launch, like New Horizons, don't have such large and sophisticated imaging equipment, more like the equivalent of a DSLR, since the idea there is to fly the probe relatively close to the planet/moon it's observing. So bottom line: it costs a lot of money to build and launch space telescopes, and it's just not very feasible to send them out to where Pluto is just to get a better view of some small planets/dwarf planets out there. We have more interest in other things anyway, like exoplanets within the habitable zone of their host star, galaxies, nebulas, etc., not some little cold, dead rock/ice balls way out in the boonies of our own system. They're mildly interesting, but not so much compared to other planets in other systems which might bear life.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Weasley on Monday June 26 2017, @12:38AM (14 children)
The extrasolar planets are discovered by detecting the wobble of the star caused by the planet and/or the fall in the amount of starlight received when the planet passes in front of the star. There is really nothing else that could be creating this data except for planets. However, neither of these methods can be used to detect planet X. Except in rare instances, we're not seeing light reflected off of the extrasolar planets, which is exactly what we'd need in order to detect planet X. Nobody is publishing based on guesses.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 26 2017, @04:21AM (13 children)
Yep - wobble and occultation. Now, some folk think that there is an invisible planet in our own backyard. So, how hard is it to calculate the most likely places for that planet to be, then watch for it to occlude the stars behind it? I mean, that planet can't just be anywhere, can it? If it's creating wobbles in the orbits of the known planets, then those wobbles have to indicate (to some degree of accuracy, anywah) where that planet would be in it's orbit. I think we can presume that the planet is pretty close to the ecliptic plane. Pluto is 17 degrees off of the ecliptic, Mercury only 7 degrees off - all the rest are pretty much right on it.
You might argue that there are more important things to which me should devote out telescope time. I would argue right back that confirming the planetary population of our own system is far more pertinent than anything that might be light years away. Assuming that we ever do colonize and settle our own solar system, that mysterious planet may prove pretty damned important. There might be life on it, or there may be resources that we need. For instance, consider our preoccupation with stealth. That planet is pretty damned stealthy, isn't it? It's probably covered in stealthite, and all we need do is go there, mine it, melt it, and make our next generation stealth fighters and ships with it.
Alright, so that last is sarcasm. Sue me.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Monday June 26 2017, @04:42AM (11 children)
How hard is it? Pretty hard. Also, space is fucking huge.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 26 2017, @04:48AM (10 children)
Yes, of course space is huge. But, we are only concerned with the ecliptic plane, and only a relatively small part of that. And, did I mention that there's a pretty good chance that there are seas of unobtanium hidden under the stealthite crust? ;^)
(Score: 2) by Weasley on Monday June 26 2017, @05:26AM (4 children)
Are you trolling here? No, it's not a small portion of the sky. It's a very large portion of the sky. There are other factors too. Objects that far out move much more slowly around the sun. You have to get two or three pictures of the object in different positions to determine if you're looking at a moving object. For asteroids you can gather these images in a single night to determine something is there. For TNOs you may be looking at multiple nights. Furthermore, objects that far out are extremely dim. You can take longer exposures to pick up dimmer and dimmer objects, but the longer you expose an image, the more likely the object in question is going to move far enough in the sky so that the object begins exposing a different pixel on your camera, and thus not standout against the noise. That means you need an extremely large aperture scope to collect enough light to expose your pixels in a reasonable amount of time. You need extremely specialized telescopes to efficiently perform this work; there are only so many out there suited for it. All this is assuming the object is even bright enough to be detected by them.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 26 2017, @07:55AM (3 children)
Trolling? Please, look at the title I chose for my post. "Amusing perspective". Come on man, isn't it obvious that I'm not really serious here? I'm amused.
For a comparison, let's imagine the person who can't find his own possessions in his own bedroom - but he pretends to know how to find his way around every city on the globe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @08:46AM (1 child)
Or, to repeat, for extra redundancy: "Not serious, amused, ignorant, and trolling."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @09:57AM
WE are not amused.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday June 26 2017, @03:20PM
Your analogy is silly. Here's a better analogy:
Personally, I live pretty close to a creek and a river (each less than a half-mile away as the crow flies), and about an hour's drive from a very large metro area. I also live close to some various little towns, rural roads, etc. Which do I know more about: places much close to me, such as someone's random trailer home in the woods, or some sunken fishing boat at the bottom of the river? Or how to get around that metro area that's over an hour away, and various points of interest there? The latter. There's nothing important to me about some old junk lying at the bottom of the river, or geographic features of the river bed, or some crappy little town 15 minutes away that has one shitty little grocery store and a gas station and maybe a cigarette shop, or various peoples' homes in the area scattered all over different rural roads. But going to the city, visiting cultural attractions there, getting around there, etc. is far more important to me, so that's where I concentrate my attention.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday June 26 2017, @05:37AM (2 children)
High school exercises:
---
Exercise A.
1. compute the area of a sphere with a radius of 60AU
2. compute the area of a disc with the radius equal with the Earth one placed at a distance of 59 AU from the observer
3. divide the result at point one with the value at point 2 and see what are the chances of that disc be in the direction of sight of a random observer. Communicate the result.
---
Exercise B. Note that exercise A discarded (at point 1) the information about the area swiped by +/-8degrees range around the ecliptic plane, in which we guessed the planet may be. Correct it [wikipedia.org] and recompute steps 2 and 3.
If you get the answer to Exercise B, you'll understand why is so freaking hard to spot it without any extra information.
---
Exercise C. Compute the period of a planet orbiting the Sun at 60 AU. How long will you need to observe the same region of space to witness a direct occultation of a star behind it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @06:09AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 26 2017, @09:21AM
Planet Nine is believed to be somewhere from 200 to 1200 AU away, and smaller than Neptune (I would assume this would be exasperated by a lower temperature which shrinks gas planets). So the conditions for imaging it are probably worse than what you listed. But there is some good news [wikipedia.org]:
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(Score: 2) by KGIII on Monday June 26 2017, @08:20AM
LOL Space is huge. Like, bigger than you can actually picture in your head. The number of units has no meaning to you - or me. It's that big, and that just that far away. It keeps getting bigger, too.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @10:22AM
And how are you going to know what wobble is caused by an exoplanet and what is going to be caused by "Planet Ten"?
More importantly, a single wobble in a star isn't enough for them to verify "YES! THAT WAS A PLANET!" They see a wobble and they go "Oh hey, let's keep watching that to see if it happens again, and how often it does."
With Planet Ten, odds are after it wobbles a single star, it's not going to wobble that star ever again as it continues it's revolution around the sun. Unless you want to sit around and wait a few hundred to a few thousand years of course.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday June 26 2017, @03:12PM
If there is a "Planet X" out there in the Kuiper Belt, it'd be utterly useless for human habitation: it's too cold and too far away. That's why we don't bother expending that many resources looking for stuff out there.
If you want to do mining in the Solar System, there's plenty of other places far closer to start with, namely the Moon and earth-crossing asteroids. After that, we have Mars, the whole Asteroid Belt, and Mercury, and after that the gazillion moons (and moonlets and "Trojans" and other various little rocks) orbiting Saturn and Jupiter and the ice giants after them. It'll be a LONG time before we use up that stuff and need to start looking at the Kuiper Belt for resources; we haven't gotten started exploiting the resources we have right here in our own neighborhood.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Monday June 26 2017, @12:47AM (2 children)
Come on, Runaway. Would it kill you to do some research on space topics [soylentnews.org]?
http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/exoplanets/transit-photometry.html? [planetary.org]
Basically, you can monitor a distant star's brightness. If you see it dim numerous times over months or years, you can determine the orbit of exoplanets around it that are periodically blocking some of the star's light that would otherwise reach our telescopes.
For distant objects in our solar system, that obviously does not work because the Earth and our telescopes are between the Sun and the Kuiper belt and are looking away from the Sun. We are looking for invisible pieces of dust in a hay stack with blindfolds on. You build the right telescopes, maybe you get to take off the blindfold.
And that's why we have trouble finding icy objects 100 AU away but can find exoplanets hundreds or thousands of light years away.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @01:41AM
My best guess, from watching Runaway for a long time, is that there is something orbiting him, either a gas giant, or a rather large abdomen. Of course, these could be one and the same, because all I know is what I know, and it seems like these "scientists" with all their "data" and "inferonometry" are saying stuff I don't know, so it must just be, like, their opinions, man.
(another option, equally often overlooked, is just too not comment on subjects where you have nothing to contribute.)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 26 2017, @04:24AM
Please scroll up just a bit, see my reply to Weasley.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Monday June 26 2017, @01:04AM (1 child)
All science is provisional. [hermiene.net] The lack of disclaimers is something of a convention. If you're sure enough about something to several sigmas then you might as well say it with certainty. The exoplanet data is certain enough to that degree. A substantial planet though, even one on the scale of Uranus or Neptune somewhere in the Kuiper belt however is a lot harder to see. You'd think that something 10 times as far as Uranus and about the same size would be only be 100 times as faint, because brightness is inverse square. However, the hypothetical planet is not giving off its own light but reflecting sunlight, so the falloff is more like an inverse fourth power, which at that distance would make it incredibly dim. The only way you're going to be able to figure out that such a planet might exist is by having a look at the objects in its vicinity that you can see for anomalies in their orbits. It was how Neptune was first discovered, by anomalies in the orbit of Uranus. From there astronomers were able to guess at the likely orbit of the hypothetical planet and point their telescopes in the region of the sky thus indicated. In that way Urbain le Verrier was able to discover Neptune. The hypothesis of Planet Nine rests upon anomalous clusterings of orbits of certain known Kuiper belt objects. However, the most recent available data disfavours the existence of such a large planet [ossos-survey.org] of Uranus/Neptune scale in the Kuiper belt, though the existence of a smaller, Mars-sized body as hypothesised in TFA is not ruled out.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 26 2017, @01:08AM
That is disputed [sciencemag.org]:
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