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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday October 22 2016, @04:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the weebles-wobble-but-they-don't-fall-down dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The massive hypothetical object, which supposedly looms at the edge of our solar system, has been invoked to explain the strange clustering of objects in the Kuiper belt and the unusual way they orbit the Sun.

Now Planet Nine predictors Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of Caltech, along with graduate student Elizabeth Bailey, offer another piece of evidence for the elusive sphere's existence: It adds "wobble" to the solar system, they say, tilting it in relation to the sun.

"Because Planet Nine is so massive and has an orbit tilted compared to the other planets, the solar system has no choice but to slowly twist out of alignment," lead author Bailey said in a statement.

Before we go any further, a caveat about Planet Nine: It's purely theoretical at this point. Batygin and Brown predict its existence based on unusual perturbations of the solar system that aren't otherwise easily explained. (This is the same technique scientists used to find Neptune.) But the history of astronomy is rife with speculation that is never borne out: The same guy who correctly predicted the existence of Neptune also believed that a planet he called Vulcan was responsible for the wobble of Mercury. That "discovery" caused the astronomy world to waste years looking for something that wasn't there. (Mercury's wobble was eventually explained by the theory of general relativity.)

But the evidence offered by Batygin and Brown is compelling. When the pair announced their find in January, planetary scientist Alessandro Morbidelli of the Côte d'Azur Observatory in Nice, France, told The Washington Post: "I don't see any alternative explanation to that offered by Batygin and Brown."

"We will find it one day," he added. "The question is when."

Planet Nine's angular momentum is having an outsized impact on the solar system based on its location and size. A planet's angular momentum equals the mass of an object multiplied by its distance from the sun, and corresponds with the force that the planet exerts on the overall system's spin. Because the other planets in the solar system all exist along a flat plane, their angular momentum works to keep the whole disk spinning smoothly.

Planet Nine's unusual orbit, however, adds a multi-billion-year wobble to that system. Mathematically, given the hypothesized size and distance of Planet Nine, a six-degree tilt fits perfectly, Brown says.


Original Submission #1; Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday October 23 2016, @04:04AM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday October 23 2016, @04:04AM (#417742)

    Someone will be content to live indoors on a colony indefinitely, with meager means. We already have those types of humans, they are called NEETs.

    NEETs are unemployed and have no education. What makes you think they never go outside? You don't need a job to go walk around outside. There's tons of homeless people who literally live outside, or in tents.

    Advancements in propulsion will allow much faster travel to Pluto et al. than is currently possible.

    They'll need advances in shielding too, so they don't die of radiation poisoning on the way.

    You still haven't answered my question: why would anyone go to these places, when you can build habitats much closer to the Earth, where there's a lot more sunlight? Where do you think these settlers are going to get power from? More importantly, who's going to pay for all these people to live on Pluto, sitting inside all the time and jerking off?

    Also, there are long-term prospects for terraforming in some of the cases.

    No, there aren't'. Venus and Mars are pretty much the only two places where that's even remotely possible.

    As long as your eyes are not popping out of your skull, it is not insufficient. 0.05g could be a lot better than microgravity.

    Bullshit. The health effects of low gravity are currently unknown for sure because no one's lived on another world for more than a few hours (the Apollo missions). We do know, however, that there's seriously negative health effects to zero-g, as seen in those who have spent considerable time in the ISS. It's quite likely that living in low-g habitats will also have negative health effects.

    They have orders of magnitude more mass than space-based habitats, and usable resources including water ice.

    We can get those things from asteroids much closer to the Earth, and we can do mining operations with remotely-operated vehicles, or possibly small contingents of humans. But that doesn't really give people much of a reason to live in these places; it doesn't take that many people to do mining with advanced technology, and there's no other valid reason to live in these places.

    And you could also put one in orbit around these moons + planets. Call it an Earth gravity gym. They can orbit very close if there is little or no atmosphere to worry about, and if the escape velocity is low, it won't be hard to travel to and from the station.

    You still haven't answered the question of why anyone would want to live in these places. If I can live in an orbital habitat around Pluto or around Earth, why would I pick Pluto? It's just stupid.

    If you can't bear to leave Earth behind, then you are free to die there. But don't presume that others have that same need.

    If you're so anxious to build a base on Pluto, go ahead, just don't ask me to fund it for you. There's no valid economic reason for such a venture.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @05:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @05:06AM (#418046)

    Trump's great-great-etc grandson inherited the Presidency of Earth and you want to live as far way as possible.