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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: 1, Redundant) by edIII on Monday October 24 2016, @12:55AM

    by edIII (791) on Monday October 24 2016, @12:55AM (#417998)

    Instead of being trollish about it, why is Pluto not a planet? I mean that seriously. The depth of my knowledge on the subject is that they changed the meaning of planet, or Pluto somehow no longer qualifies.

    It might be more helpful to explain why, and I was hoping some of the people around with greater knowledge might share.....

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by dry on Monday October 24 2016, @04:40AM

    by dry (223) on Monday October 24 2016, @04:40AM (#418041) Journal

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pluto,_Earth_&_Moon_size_comparison.jpg [wikipedia.org] shows the size difference, mass wise Pluto has about 1/5th the mass of the Moon.
    When originally found, it was considered to have the same mass as the Earth (based on assumed affect on Neptune), then Mars, then smaller and smaller, though right off there were arguments that it was really small and not deserving of Planet status.
    The main arguments for it being a Planet are tradition, "I was taught it is a planet so it's a planet" and nationalism, the planet that was discovered by an American and now those horrible foreigners are trying to take it away from us.
    Not very good arguments for it being a planet. There is also precedent, the first few asteroids discovered were at first considered planets, now no-one argues in their favour.
    What arguments are there for it being a planet? Perhaps we should call every rock orbiting the Sun a planet? Or even all the satellites as well?

    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Monday October 24 2016, @08:14PM

      by edIII (791) on Monday October 24 2016, @08:14PM (#418271)

      Thank you.

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