SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Medieval astronomical records, such as the Bayeux Tapestry, could help narrow down the location (or at least infer the existence) of the hypothetical Planet Nine:
Scientists suspect the existence of Planet Nine because it would explain some of the gravitational forces at play in the Kuiper Belt, a stretch of icy bodies beyond Neptune. But no one has been able to detect the planet yet, though astronomers are scanning the skies for it with tools such as the Subaru Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano.
Medieval records could provide another tool, said Pedro Lacerda, a Queen's University astronomer and the other leader of the project.
"We can take the orbits of comets currently known and use a computer to calculate the times when those comets would be visible in the skies during the Middle Ages," Lacerda told Live Science. "The precise times depend on whether our computer simulations include Planet Nine. So, in simple terms, we can use the medieval comet sightings to check which computer simulations work best: the ones that include Planet Nine or the ones that do not."
Also at Queen's University Belfast.
Related: "Planet Nine" Might Explain the Solar System's Tilt
Planet Nine's Existence Disfavoured by New Data
Study of ETNOs Supports Planet Nine's Existence
Passing Star Influenced Comet Orbits in Our Solar System 70,000 Years Ago
(Score: 5, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Sunday May 06 2018, @05:06PM (8 children)
It's an interesting theory. Immediate problems I see would be:
a) Trying to use pre-Copernican data has always struck me as a crapshoot. It's always speculation that the item observed *might be* the item you're looking for, with certain degrees of confidence. I think I've usually seen Ptolemaic data used to help confirm Copernican observations as opposed to the reverse. (There's no modern observation here being confirmed, only speculation.) Which isn't to say Ptolemaic observations weren't precise or detailed, within limits.
b) The data creating the speculation about Planet Nine all came from trans-or-post-Neptunian objects. (Though I'll admit being away from the data for awhile - maybe something has changed.) Given the speculated distance to Planet Nine I'd be rather amazed if it affected a periodic cometary orbit in any measurable way at all. Though I'd love to be proven wrong and will defer to peer review of the idea by other professional astronomers.
c) "Precise times depend on whether our computer simulations include Planet Nine." Hmmm. I would think you'd have to know not only the radial distance to Planet Nine (which is still a HUGE toroid of space incredibly far out last time I checked), but you'd also have to have a clue of the angular vector to speculate if it was affecting a particular orbit or not. That's what made the initial discovery so interesting - someone took the time to backtrack six objects to a potential gravitational well. Doing that for RANDOM_COMET_X seems a lot more dicey - how do you test for if the comet orbit was "affected" without knowing Planet Nine's location in space? Another way to put it would be that if we had a clue about the exact angular vector that toroid being searched would narrow down the search to a particular torus segment but that wasn't known.
But that's why the professional astronomers get paid the big bucks I suppose.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @05:50PM (6 children)
I'm pretty sure that the big-bucks professional astronomers are aware of those problems :)
I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't use that data as direct proof. They would run simulations without Planet Nine (let's call it ⑨, read as Cirno [touhouwiki.net]), and see if the results fit the observations. If they do, exit(0). If they don't, the simulations would be rerun with numerous parameters (orbital radius, inclination, orbital velocity, position) for ⑨, to see if there's a configuration that would explain the discrepancy. Now, here's the kick: if you find where a planet was 500 years ago, and it's orbit, you can calculate where it would be now. Even if each particular record is unreliable, with enough records, they could whittle down the possible orbits quite a bit. So if the astronomers find a configuration that fits the records, they can turn the telescopes to that area and check.
They wouldn't use the simulations and records to "prove" that there is ⑨. They would use them to narrow the mindbogglingly big search space.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 06 2018, @06:35PM
Haha, nice use of unicode [wikipedia.org].
Cirno's Perfect Math Class (NSFW) [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aristarchus on Sunday May 06 2018, @09:39PM
Not the alleged planet itself, but the results of it perturbation of the Ort Cloud objects: Comets, to you non-astronomers. Problem is, Bayeux Tapestry depicts Halley's Comment, which is kind of the "Old Faithful" of Comets, being usually very visible, and coming around every 76 years, or so. Not sure how it being observed in the Middle ages as anything to do with Planet Nine, we will probably find out more about Wormwood, and the end of times, if the unruly Brits do not accept Norman (North-men) rule. Billy the Conqueror had a book, a list of names, if you will, called the "Doomsday Book", and he took Halley's for a sign.
(And, Medieval Europe was hardly a hot-bed of observational astronomy. For example, slightly prior to this, in 1054 (1066 is William the Conqueror's invasion of England), there was a supernova in Taurus, that has left us Messier object #1, the Crab Nebula. The Nova was recorded by Chinese astronomers, a "guest star" that was even visible during the day, since it was so bright. Lasted for weeks. Absolutely no mention of it in Medieval European records. Could they just not have seen it? Unlikely. More to the point, Aristotle's (and the Church's) position was that the heavens are unchanging, perfect, eternal. So you should not have any stellae novae, nor should there be anything like Comets, even periodic ones, so they were considered harbingers of disaster. Not until Tycho Brahe (1572) [wikipedia.org] and Johannes Kepler (1604) [wikipedia.org] discovered novae stellae did this presumption about the heavens begin to be challenged.)
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday May 07 2018, @02:29AM (1 child)
They are. ;)
Rethinking and re-reading, I get the picture now. It actually is taking our current data and back-checking it to Pre-Copernican observations, a different kettle of fish. Much as you said, though they can simplify it further and walk it backwards. Since we know those parameters for existing comets to a very high degree of precision, the data can be walked back and we can predict where it would have been 500 years ago instead sans anomaly. If that data matches to the tapestry (or other observation) then there was no anomaly along the orbital path. If an anomaly is discovered, though, it is data for checking to see if it is a refinement. It still takes that "leap of faith" that the discovered anomaly is in fact the same object and the data would have to be scrutinized to see if the anomalous information is consistent with Planet Nine's toroid. It doesn't take knowing where Planet Nine was 500 years ago, it takes discovering a comet was not in location or timing where the math says it must have been consistent with all the major gravitational objects in the system we know about now.
It still seems like a time intensive thing to backcheck, even with computers. But then again, maybe the data of the tapestries have already been fed to database by enterprising grad students.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday May 07 2018, @03:03PM
The approach is still subject to issues with the medieval/ancient astronomical observations. If there are not many data points and they are off, they could suggest an anomaly that doesn't exist, or hide an anomaly that does. We'll see if these astronomers come up with anything useful in time, since Brown and Batygin say that Planet Nine could be discovered any day now (if they get lucky at Subaru [wikipedia.org]).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 07 2018, @06:53AM (1 child)
Not quite. It would be so if you include some assumptions - like the ecliptic plane somehow aligned with the rest in a smallish angle (which will imply some eccentricity limits, otherwise its orbit would not be stable).
While the knowledge of a single point is more than nothing, it doesn't make your job easier in the general sense.
I have a hunch it will require enough records about different positions at different times.
You can whittle down an infinity of possible orbits and still have an infinity of them still possible (as in: a straight unbound line has as many points as any segment. Even if you divide a segment, the resulting two segments will still have the same number of points)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @07:28AM
Well, yeah, when I said "and it's orbit", I thought it was obvious that you'd need several points to define it. Sorry about that.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 06 2018, @06:07PM
I'll admit there isn't a lot of substance to this story. For example, no paper published. But they say this much:
In some cases, there may be sightings of the same comet in different countries, making it easier to get an accurate date/time. Hopefully, somebody will find some truly overlooked sightings and be able to plug them into a formula. But it would be truly amazing if they can get enough accurate data to actually come up with new, tighter constraints on where to look for Planet Nine (as well as confirming that Mike Brown and co.'s current search area is correct).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]