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posted by girlwhowaspluggedout on Monday March 10 2014, @12:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the who-keeps-atlantis-off-the-maps dept.

Papas Fritas writes:

"Ian O'Neill writes in Discovery Magazine that despite NASA's best efforts to track it down, there is no evidence for the existence of Planet X. This hypothetical world that may or may not be orbiting the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto has inspired many a doomsday theory. In the run-up to the much anticipated "Mayan Doomsday" of December 21, 2012, the marauding Planet X was scheduled to make a inner-solar system dash, sparking gravitational mayhem and triggering civilization-ending solar flares.

But in spite of the doomsday nonsense, the hunt for "Planet X" actually has roots in real science. In the mid- to late-19th Century, astronomers were tracking the gravitational perturbations of the gas giant planets in an effort to track down an undiscovered world in the outermost reaches of the solar system. This hypothetical massive planet was dubbed "Planet X." However, this fascinating trail ended with the discovery of tiny Pluto in 1930. The idea that the sun may have a stellar partner has also been investigated, perhaps there's a brown dwarf going unnoticed out there. Nicknamed "Nemesis," this binary partner could be evading detection. One strong piece of evidence laid in the discovery of the "Kuiper Cliff," a sudden drop-off of Kuiper Belt objects in the region just beyond Pluto. Could the Cliff be caused by a previously overlooked world? Also, geological record has suggested there's a regularity to mass extinctions on Earth linked to comet impacts. Could a distant orbiting body be perturbing comets, sending them our way on a cyclical basis?

However, the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State University has analyzed data from NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a space telescope that carried out a detailed infrared survey of the entire sky from 2010 to 2011. If something big is lurking out there, WISE would easily have spotted it. According to a NASA news release, "no object the size of Saturn or larger exists out to a distance of 10,000 astronomical units (AU), and no object larger than Jupiter exists out to 26,000 AU. One astronomical unit equals 93 million miles. Earth is 1 AU, and Pluto about 40 AU, from the sun." Observations by WISE have also ruled out the Planet X Comet Perturbation theory.

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Monday March 10 2014, @12:07AM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday March 10 2014, @12:07AM (#13688)

    What are they talking about? Of course "Planet X" exists. We've known about it since 2005; it's called Eris [wikipedia.org].

    It's not much of a planet, but it's a little bigger than Pluto.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by umafuckitt on Monday March 10 2014, @12:19AM

    by umafuckitt (20) on Monday March 10 2014, @12:19AM (#13690)

    Lowell's Planet X [wikipedia.org] hypothesis was proposed to explain supposed irregularities in the orbit of Uranus. Hence, Planet X had to be very large. Neither Pluto or Eris are it. Neither any of the other TNOs. In the end the irregularities were found not to be real (IIRC).

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @12:46AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @12:46AM (#13700)

      Planet X hypothesis was proposed to explain supposed irregularities in the orbit of Uranus

      Maybe Uranus has Klingons stuck to it.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Monday March 10 2014, @12:35AM

    by frojack (1554) on Monday March 10 2014, @12:35AM (#13696) Journal

    Its still not clear the Eris is bigger than Pluto.

    http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/2010/11/how-big-i s-pluto-anyway.html [mikebrownsplanets.com]

    But both of them together do not amount to an object the size of Saturn (or even Mercury), and neither of them are planets.

    So as NASA said, there is no planet X.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday March 10 2014, @03:07PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 10 2014, @03:07PM (#14008)

      Honey, does this stellar occultation make my diameter look fat?

      Bigger is flung around pretty randomly. Its about the same diameter but much more massive than Pluto. Its denser.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday March 10 2014, @03:10PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday March 10 2014, @03:10PM (#14009)

      They ARE planets; they're "dwarf planets". The word "planet" is right there in the name; "dwarf" is simply an adjective which modifies the word "planet".