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| Science & Technology |
| Our solar system has an unseen child, new study suggests |
| 2016-01-21 |
| [Iran Press TV] Scientists say they have almost discovered the ninth planet of the Solar System, a Neptune-sized world orbiting in an extremely elongated elliptical trajectory in far reaches of our Sun. Ahah. Yes. I've almost lost sixty pounds, too. In an article published in the Astronomical Journal on Wednesday, planetary scientists Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown from the Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, Institute of Technology (Caltech) announced that though the Planet Nine still has not been observed directly, strong evidence based on mathematical modeling and computer simulations clearly suggest that it really exists far beyond the dwarf planet Pluto. That was how they discovered Pluto, wasn't it? Was the math off that much? According to the findings, the new family member has a mass of about ten times that of the Earth, orbits about 20 times farther from the Sun than Neptune (which revolves round the Sun at an average distance of about 4.5 billion kilometers (2.8 billion miles)), and takes between 10,000 and 20,000 Earthly years to circle our star. So just wait a while. It'll come around. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #11 "That's no moon!" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2016-01-21 20:37 |
| #10 Or Marvin........... |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2016-01-21 16:41 |
| #9 Gorb, why am I reminded of "The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" and telephone sanitizers? |
| Posted by: Sven the pelter 2016-01-21 15:29 |
| #8 It's a Utopian planet called Liberalia. In case anyone wants to go there, Earth will be building three large ships to colonize the planet. The first one will be leaving in 2020, and will be taking all the liberals. The next two will be built and will take off in the following 20 years or so . . . . |
| Posted by: gorb 2016-01-21 15:21 |
| #7 TOS or the reboot? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-01-21 15:14 |
| #6 So with a chemical rocket you could send something that might get in the general area of Planet X (if it exists) by mid 2400's. Would James Tiberius Kirk meet them there then? |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2016-01-21 13:32 |
| #5 Closest approach would be 700 AU. Farthest spaceship has just reached 130 AU after 37 years of flight. So with a chemical rocket you could send something that might get in the general area of Planet X (if it exists) by mid 2400's. So don't hold lunch. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2016-01-21 12:59 |
| #4 A brown dwarf is a failed star, not a planet. It would be warm to the touch so it should appear in an infrared search. The new object is suspected to be a planet 10 times or so bigger than the earth and at least 200 times further from the sun. It just wouldn't reflect much light. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The jury is still out. |
| Posted by: Sven the pelter 2016-01-21 11:34 |
| #3 "(T)he Sun is not part of a binary star system. There has never been any evidence to suggest a companion. The idea has been disproved by several infrared sky surveys, most recently the WISE mission. If there were a brown dwarf companion, these sensitive infrared telescopes would have detected it." — David Morrison, Astrobiology Senior Scientist, October 17, 2012 As soon as some thought leader says something IS NOT, I begin to believe. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2016-01-21 11:24 |
| #2 The hypothetical Nemesis supposedly orbits on a 27-million year cycle. There's also lots of stuff in the Oort Cloud that we're probably not seeing and don't know about, either. Maybe we're due....... |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2016-01-21 08:23 |
| #1 Nemesis! |
| Posted by: Shipman 2016-01-21 06:44 |