2015 BP519, nicknamed "Caju", is another extreme trans-Neptunian object that points to the existence of Planet Nine. Discovered with data from the Dark Energy Survey, Caju has a relatively large diameter, estimated at around 400-700 km, meaning the object could be a gravitationally rounded dwarf planet. It also has a highly inclined orbit of 54°, which a team of scientists says can be explained by the presence of the hypothetical Planet Nine:
After discovering it, the team tried to investigate 2015 BP519's origins using computer simulations of the Solar System. However, these tests were not able to adequately explain how the object had ended with such an orbit.
But when the team added a ninth planet with properties exactly matching those predicted by the Caltech scientists in 2016, the orbit of 2015 BP519 suddenly made sense. "The second you put Planet Nine in the simulations, not only can you form objects like this object, but you absolutely do," Juliette Becker, a Michigan graduate student and lead author of the study told Quanta.
Some researchers, however, caution that Planet Nine may not be the only explanation for 2015 BP519's strange orbit. Michele Bannister, a planetary astronomer from Queen's University Belfast, in Ireland, who was not involved in the study, told Newsweek that while the latest findings were "a great discovery," other scenarios could account for its tilt. "This object is unusual because it's on a high inclination," she said. "This can be used to maybe tell us some things about its formation process. There are a number of models that suggest you can probably put objects like this into the shape of orbit and the tilt of orbit that we see today."
Also at Quanta Magazine.
Discovery and Dynamical Analysis of an Extreme Trans-Neptunian Object with a High Orbital Inclination (arXiv:1805.05355)
Related: Medieval Records Could Point the Way to Planet Nine
Related Stories
Collective gravity, not Planet Nine, may explain the orbits of 'detached objects'
Bumper car-like interactions at the edges of our solar system—and not a mysterious ninth planet—may explain the the dynamics of strange bodies called "detached objects," according to a new study. CU Boulder Assistant Professor Ann-Marie Madigan and a team of researchers have offered up a new theory for the existence of planetary oddities like Sedna—an icy minor planet that circles the sun at a distance of nearly 8 billion miles. Scientists have struggled to explain why Sedna and a handful of other bodies at that distance look separated from the rest of the solar system. [...] The researchers presented their findings today at a press briefing at the 232nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which runs from June 3-7 in Denver, Colorado.
[...] [Jacob] Fleisig had calculated that the orbits of icy objects beyond Neptune circle the sun like the hands of a clock. Some of those orbits, such as those belonging to asteroids, move like the minute hand, or relatively fast and in tandem. Others, the orbits of bigger objects like Sedna, move more slowly. They're the hour hand. Eventually, those hands meet. "You see a pileup of the orbits of smaller objects to one side of the sun," said Fleisig, who is the lead author of the new research. "These orbits crash into the bigger body, and what happens is those interactions will change its orbit from an oval shape to a more circular shape." In other words, Sedna's orbit goes from normal to detached, entirely because of those small-scale interactions.
Also at Popular Mechanics, where Planet Nine proposer Konstantin Batygin disputes the findings:
Batygin, of Caltech, tells Popular Mechanics that any sufficiently strong gravitational encounter could detach an object from Neptune's embrace, but for the distant small bodies of the Kuiper belt to have done so through "self-gravity"—as the CU model proposes—there would need to be about five to ten times the mass of Earth in the outer parts of the Kuiper belt. There isn't.
"Unfortunately, the self-gravity story suffers from the following complications," Batygin says. "Both observational and theoretical estimates place the total mass of the Kuiper belt at a value significantly smaller than that of the Earth [only 1 to 10 percent Earth's mass]. As a consequence, Kuiper belt objects generally behave like test-particles enslaved by Neptune's gravitational pull, rather than a self-interacting group of planetoids."
Related: Planet Nine's Existence Disfavoured by New Data
Medieval Records Could Point the Way to Planet Nine
Another Trans-Neptunian Object With a High Orbital Inclination Points to Planet Nine
Outer Solar System Origins Survey Discovers Over 800 Trans-Neptunian Objects
LSST Could be the Key to Finding New Planets in Our Solar System
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
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) may be able to find new planets in our solar system, including the hypothesized planets Nine and Ten:
Overall, these estimates indicated that Planet 9/X was a super-Earth with anywhere between 5 to 20 Earth masses, and orbited the Sun at a distance of between 150 – 600 AU. Concurrently, these studies have also attempted to narrow down where this Super-Earth's orbit will take it throughout the outer Solar System, as evidenced by the perturbations it has on KBOs.
Unfortunately, the predicted locations and brightness of the object are not yet sufficiently constrained for astronomers to simply look in the right place at the right time and pick it out. In this respect, a large area sky survey must be carried out using moderately large telescopes with a very wide field of view. As Dr. Trilling told Universe Today via email:
"The predicted Planet X candidates are not particularly faint, but the possible locations on the sky are not very well constrained at all. Therefore, what you really need to find Planet X is a medium-depth telescope that covers a huge amount of sky. This is exactly LSST. LSST's sensitivity will be sufficient to find Planet X in almost all its (their) predicted configurations, and LSST will cover around half of the known sky to this depth. Furthermore, the cadence is well-matched to finding moving objects, and the data processing systems are very advanced. If you were going to design a tool to find Planet X, LSST is what you would design."
Astronomers have found a new crop of moons around Jupiter, and one of them is a weirdo
Ten more moons have been confirmed to orbit around Jupiter, bringing the planet's total known satellite count to 79. That's the highest number of moons of any planet in the Solar System. And these newly discovered space rocks are giving astronomers insight as to why the Jupiter system looks like it does today.
Astronomers at Carnegie Institution for Science first found these moons in March 2017, along with two others that were already confirmed in June of last year. The team initially found all 12 moons using the Blanco 4-meter telescope in Chile, though finding these objects wasn't their main goal. Instead, they were searching for incredibly distant small objects — or even planets — that might be lurking in our Solar System beyond Pluto. But as they searched for these fringe space rocks, they decided to take a peek at what might be lurking around Jupiter at the same time. Now, the moons they found have been observed multiple times, and their exact orbits have been submitted for approval from the International Astronomical Union, which officially recognizes celestial bodies.
These moons are all pretty tiny, ranging between less than a mile and nearly two miles wide. And they break down into three different types. Two orbit closer to Jupiter, moving in the same direction that the planet spins. Farther out from those, about 15.5 million miles from the planet, there are nine that rotate in the opposite direction, moving against Jupiter's rotation. But in this same distant region, one strange moon that astronomers are calling Valetudo is moving with Jupiter's spin, like the two inner moons.
Previously: Two Tiny New Moons Found Around Jupiter
Related: Retrograde Jupiter Co-Orbital Asteroid May Have an Interstellar Origin
Another Trans-Neptunian Object With a High Orbital Inclination Points to Planet Nine
CU Boulder Researchers Say Collective Gravity, Not Planet Nine, Explains Orbits of Detached Objects
Where *Isn't* Planet 9? Search for Planet Nine still continues
Not long ago astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin (the two original people proposing the existence of the planet) used the alignments of the TNO orbits to back-calculate the potential location of the unseen planet in space. It's a kind of treasure map to find the planet.
In a new paper they've put that map to use, looking through survey data in a hunt for Planet 9.
[...] Brown and Batygin wrote software that simulates where Planet 9 would be and how bright it would appears for various values of its size, reflectivity, and orbital shape. They created a database of positions and brightnesses for it, and then combed through the [Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)] database to look for it, going through the past three or so years of observations since the facility started its survey campaign.
[...] They ran 100,000 simulations of various parameters for the planet, and looked to see if the ZTF would've seen it if it were indeed smaller and closer to us. They determined that it would've been seen in the survey about 56,000 times out of the 100,000, so just looking at that their non-detection indicates the chance it's smaller and closer is now less than 50%, making it more likely it's farther out, bigger, and fainter.
The larger Vera C. Rubin Observatory is expected to find many previously hidden objects in the solar system, and is scheduled to begin full operations in October 2023. It will accumulate all-sky survey data around 10 times faster than the Zwicky Transient Facility.
Also at ExtremeTech.
Planet Nine: 'Insensitive' Term Riles Scientists
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) famously reclassified Pluto as a "dwarf planet" in 2006. That decision remains highly controversial today, as made clear by the new note, which appeared in the July 29 issue of the Planetary Exploration Newsletter.
The note:
ON THE INSENSITIVE USE OF THE TERM "PLANET 9" FOR OBJECTS BEYOND PLUTO
We the undersigned wish to remind our colleagues that the IAU planet definition adopted in 2006 has been controversial and is far from universally accepted. Given this, and given the incredible accomplishment of the discovery of Pluto, the harbinger of the solar system's third zone — the Kuiper Belt — by planetary astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh in 1930, we the undersigned believe the use of the term 'Planet 9' for objects beyond Pluto is insensitive to Professor Tombaugh's legacy.
We further believe the use of this term should be discontinued in favor of culturally and taxonomically neutral terms for such planets, such as Planet X, Planet Next, or Giant Planet Five.
35 researchers signed the note, including Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission.
Of more interest may be this proposal concerning future exploration of Uranus and Neptune:
Related: Uranus and Neptune Are Potential Targets for 2030s Missions
Another Trans-Neptunian Object With a High Orbital Inclination Points to Planet Nine
CU Boulder Researchers Say Collective Gravity, Not Planet Nine, Explains Orbits of Detached Objects
Planet Nine Search Turns Up 10 More Moons of Jupiter
The search for Planet X gets a boost with the discovery of a super distant object
A new discovery is strengthening the idea that a large, mysterious planet — known as Planet 9 or Planet X — may be lurking unseen at the Solar System's edge. Astronomers say they have found a tiny object orbiting far out from the Sun that fits with the Planet X theory. In fact, the object may have even been pushed onto the path it takes now by this hidden planet's gravity.
The tiny rock — eloquently named TG387 and nicknamed "The Goblin" — was spotted by astronomers at the Carnegie Institution of Science using a giant Japanese observatory in Hawaii called Subaru. The Carnegie team first spotted the object in 2015 and then followed it on its journey around the Sun for the last four years. Those observations revealed an incredibly distant target. TG387 takes a whopping 40,000 years to complete just one orbit around the Sun. And it's on a very elliptical path far from the inner Solar System; the closest it ever gets to the Sun is 65 Astronomical Units (AU), or 65 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth. For reference, Pluto only gets as far as 49 AUs from the Sun.
This orbit is particularly enticing since it puts TG387 in a select group of distant Solar System objects that all point to the possible existence of Planet X. Right now, there are 14 far-out space rocks that all share similar orbit patterns, suggesting that this planet is out there. Their paths are all super elongated, and they all cluster together in the same area when they approach the Sun. Plus, their orbits are all tilted alike, and they point in the same general direction, as if something big has pushed them into similar places. These objects are the strongest lines of evidence astronomers have for Planet X, and finding a new one that matches this pattern reinforces that idea that this planet is more than just a theory.
Planet Nine and 2015 TG387.
Also at ScienceAlert, The Atlantic, USA Today, and NPR.
A New High Perihelion Inner Oort Cloud Object
Previously: Another Trans-Neptunian Object With a High Orbital Inclination Points to Planet Nine
CU Boulder Researchers Say Collective Gravity, Not Planet Nine, Explains Orbits of Detached Objects
Planet Nine Search Turns Up 10 More Moons of Jupiter
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 17 2018, @02:54PM (20 children)
I am not an astrophysicist, but it seems odd that there's supposedly this huge (10 earth masses) planet out past the Kuiper Belt, but we haven't been able to detect it yet.
Is it possible this Caju dwarf planet's orbit, and other effects explained by "Planet Nine", are actually caused by merely the aggregate gravitational effects of many other smaller objects in that region of the system, rather than one very large one?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:10PM (10 children)
Planet Nine is estimated to be very cold, smaller than Neptune, between 200 and 1,200 AU away, with very low brightness.
WISE [wikipedia.org] is an infrared survey telescope that has discovered lots of cold objects, including the third-closest "star" system in 2013, Luhman 16 [wikipedia.org], which is a binary brown dwarf pair. WISE was used to search for nearby gas giants, but it has some limits on its sensitivity:
An aggregation of objects doesn't necessarily stay aggregated. They could collide with each other or become scattered over time. Whereas a mini-Neptune would stay intact and have a consistent gravitational effect. There's no ruling an aggregation out just yet seeing as no Planet Nine has been discovered.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:41PM (4 children)
Planet Nine is estimated to be very cold, smaller than Neptune,
According to the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org], it would be about the size of Uranus or Neptune, and WISE "may have" the capabilities to detect it. Obviously not very definitive.
An aggregation of objects doesn't necessarily stay aggregated. They could collide with each other or become scattered over time.
Sorry, that's not what I meant, I wasn't very clear. What I meant was this: we're still discovering TNOs and other objects way out in that region of the system. The farthest object we've detected has a perihelion (closest distance to Sun) of about 100AU, but it's much smaller than Neptune. My question is this: what if there's a bunch more small objects like these TNOs and various dwarf planets like Sedna out there that we haven't detected, and these things, together (not necessarily close to each other) are causing these effects that are being attributed to a hypothetical super-Earth? I'm sure their simulations are accounting for all the objects they've discovered so far, but probably not a few dozen or so other similar objects even farther out. Would a bunch more smaller objects, in various orbits, that we haven't detected yet, be able to explain these effects, rather than just one big one?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday May 17 2018, @04:17PM (2 children)
It's an interesting question. Clearly opinion is divided still on whether it actually exists or not. (There's more than a fair amount of "show me the planet!" advocates among the educated.)
I'm no astrophysicist either, just an amateur astronomer with a primary focus on Lunar study. That is a harsh enough mistress for me. Trying to follow the arguments, though, seems to imply that the fourteen objects under study would have a common effector in a single object. If I get it correctly, the objects are not synchronized in periodicity. Multiple objects exerting influence would therefore have to be in such perfect alignment with each other that they uniformly act on all the objects under study with similarity as if there was a single body acting at the hypothesized Planet Nine orbit. (If they've been acted upon at all - the first alternate explanation is still "coincidence"). A single body seems more likely than a synchronized multiple to me, but that might just be a distortion of Occam's razor. (A one body solution seems neater and tidier, but there isn't a layperson explanation for why it would be truly "simpler").
I think that at least one of the alternative theories in the Wikipedia article, "inclination instability due to mass of undetected objects," proposes exactly what you're describing. Later "de la Fuente Marcos et al. (2014)" under the Kozai theories propose a two-body resonance which is still more than just one.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday May 17 2018, @05:39PM
Nice.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 17 2018, @08:38PM
Interesting.
Its computationally easier, so lets go with that.
Your other part: Multiple objects exerting influence would therefore have to be in such perfect alignment with each other... (By perfect alignment, I assume you mean a just-so story of planets, big and small, moons, asteroids etc, that over the fullness of time happened to cause an unusual orbit of a small body).
That is likely to be the case that will happen automatically in ANY and EVERY system. Almost by definition. The orbit(s) of all bodies in the system are what they are precisely because they have adjusted to the presence of each other over eons. It isn't the only configuration that COULD exist, but its the only one that DOES exist; at this very moment. Its probably evolving every day, at rates so slow we can not fathom it or simulate it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 17 2018, @04:33PM
WISE has already looked for it and come up with nothing so far: [findplanetnine.com]
Keep in mind that if Planet Nine is currently closer to the 1,200 AU aphelion than the 200 AU perihelion (these are estimates), then it becomes much harder to detect.
Also, it is expected to be smaller than Neptune. Although the estimates for Planet Nine say ≥10 Earth masses and 2-4 Earth radii, it's probably not as large as Neptune, which is 3.883 Earth radii and 17.147 Earth masses.
See also:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_LyEwG4UkPQ/Vp_6haMekPI/AAAAAAAANpw/6ocvJi6yqi8/s1600/Capture.PNG [blogspot.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 17 2018, @05:57PM (4 children)
Estimated? You mean "conveniently assumed to be"!
Its a huge game of "Lets see how we could hide a planet in here", with bonus points for every un-testable criteria you could throw in. (Fun with Dark Matter in your own back yard).
Define "Adequately Explain".
There have been many articles about rogue wandering planets [scientificamerican.com].
One could speculate micro-planets would be even more plentiful. That these get picked up in odd orbits by stars they approach purely by chance seems as adequate to me.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 17 2018, @06:21PM
There are at least 5 lines of evidence for the existence of Planet Nine:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2017-259 [nasa.gov]
A rogue wandering planet wouldn't explain what we see since it would exit the solar system relatively quickly. It wouldn't create the clustering of orbits seen in KBOs. There are also stars that do the same thing, coming as close as 0.1 light years to the Sun. The effects are different than what you would get with a massive planet orbiting the Sun for billions of years.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday May 17 2018, @07:47PM (2 children)
Estimated as in a combination of Hamiltonian analysis and 3 body solution simulations have an optimax of 700 AU distance with .6 eccentricity being the most likely solution to produce the anomalies of the 14 or so objects in a way that that fits this model, while still allowing other objects to be unaffected by the pertubations of the theorized body. Alleged to be fitting moreso than other theories including "just chance", which for the first six objects alone chance was estimated as a 0.007% probability (though readily conceded as "not completely impossible"). And "adequately explain" as in apparently sufficiently explaining its eccentricity and inclination similarly to 13 other objects and possibly explaining other systemwide anomalies... along with other potential theories to some degree.
"Rogue wandering planets" in the sense of TNO's do not align themselves without something to align them. Were it simply one object there would be nothing to cause any speculation. Correlating the objects together implies there is an acting body which is not conveniently explicable by any actually observed phenomena to date and not fitting other aspects of known models about how they should align. Though we all know correlation isn't causation. (Unless you meant Planet Nine, which could have been a wandering planet or could have been from within the system depending on who you listen to.)
But I have no real dog in this one way or the other. Other than thinking it would be indeed awesome if there is a Neptunian-sized object WAAAY out there but still within our system's influence.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 17 2018, @08:49PM (1 child)
Certainly they do.
As any body wonders into proximity of another, their mutual gravitational attraction will "align" them, and the original trajectory and speed of the wandering planet or micro planet will have a great deal of input to that alignment, especially if a highly inclined initial approach angle was involved that minimized the perils of "navigating" through the existing planets.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday May 18 2018, @03:41PM
And that's very much the argument Planet Nine's proponents are making. Without the presence of a Planet Nine or something similar these TNOs do not have gravitational stuff to make the observed perihelial alignment. They should be expected to have the same random scatteredness of the scattered disk region. Adding Planet Nine in as a third-body mediator could explain why their arguments of perihelion seem to align. Unless you're referring to a possible rogue wandering planet which passed through our system and caused the alignment similar to what a Planet Nine would have done.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:47PM (7 children)
It's very far away and faint. One estimate was "at least 600 times fainter than Pluto". It will take awhile to find it visibly if we find it at all.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 17 2018, @04:29PM (6 children)
> One estimate was "at least 600 times fainter than Pluto".
Any astrophysicist to explain to us how you can guess the albedo of an object for which you barely have an estimate of mass and maybe orbit ?
I'm assuming that it's not too hard to guess: "It probably won't be breaking Enceladus's record, or we'd have seen it", but beyond that, given the diversity of objects and materials out there, why say 600 and not 1000 or 100 ? Three-digit law ?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday May 17 2018, @05:05PM (1 child)
Because it is estimated to be at least Magnitude 22? (I think that was because the WISE survey didn't find it and at the estimated distance for Planet Nine of 700 AU's it would have been discovered if it was at least Mag. 22.... I could be all wrong about that.) Pluto is known to be Magnitude 14. Each difference in magnitude corresponds to a 2.512 change of brightness. 22-14 = 7. 2.512^7 = 631.157061373. Hence, "at least 600 times fainter than Pluto." If it were at least magnitude 23 it would be more than 1,500 (1,585.46653817) times fainter than Pluto.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday May 17 2018, @05:09PM
And yeah, 22-14 is actually 8.... Pluto's apparent magnitude ranges between 13.65 and 15.1 according to Wikipedia, so I'm guessing they took 15 as the definitive number - sorry for the math goof.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 17 2018, @06:03PM (3 children)
Why say "at least 600 times fainter than Pluto".
Why not 1/600th as bright as Pluto.
Fuzzy speaking doesn't may you look smarter.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 17 2018, @06:52PM (1 child)
> Fuzzy speaking doesn't may you look smarter.
It dunn not, may it ?
Would "dimmer" please you more?
I'm a big fan of keeping precise words in circulation, rather than dumbing down the language. There's enough dumbing going on already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @07:48AM
There is no "dimness" scale.
If there was, to find out how dim 600 time dimmer than Pluto is, we would take the difference between the dimness of Pluto and zero dimness, and multiply that by 600.
To do so would require a reference point for zero dimness.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday May 17 2018, @08:02PM
Because it could be far dimmer in either actual or observed magnitude without much difficulty?
Albedo depends on many factors, but if it were much brighter than 1/600th Pluto the odds favor it would have already been discovered by other surveys. So you have an "at least as faint as" without knowing how faint it actually could be. (It would be an interesting problem to work out - what's the maximum faintness it could be if it were a chunk asphalt or other dull nonreflecting carbon...)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday May 18 2018, @06:09AM
It has everything to do with our current capabilities. Now we are in an age of computation which has in some ways gotten ahead of improvements in our power to directly observe. We can try all the models we care to dream up and easily run many simulations on them all. The computers of just 25 years ago could do it, albeit at far greater cost. 60 years ago, when we still had human calculators, forget it. Takes way more computation than a group of human calculators can handle. That's somewhat academic, as we didn't know about any of the dwarf planets beyond Pluto, so there wouldn't have been any orbital data for the computers to chew on.
It is intense simulation of many different models that has lead to the conclusion that the simplest explanation for the observations we have is one more big planet way out there. It makes sense that we would first see a small fraction of the dwarf planets it affects. Their population is large enough that some were bound to be favorably positioned for detection. But Planet 9 is one body way out there, and it is far more likely to be near apihelion, the worst possible place for finding it.
You might think, hang on, we found Neptune through calculation, way before there were any electronic computers at all. Neptune is far easier to infer, takes far less calculation than Planet 9.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @05:42PM (3 children)
Does everything have to be about some weird sex-thing nowadays?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 17 2018, @05:55PM (2 children)
Urectum
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Thursday May 17 2018, @06:24PM (1 child)
iRectum?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @09:24PM
WeAllRectum, while eating ice-cream.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @06:11PM (1 child)
It is a sad day when astronomers can't count to 10 and had to demote 1 planet so they could continue their work.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @06:44PM
Yes, that is why we sometimes call call the small numbers "astronomical numbers".