Evidence of ninth planet

[pallidin]

Looking forward to more inspection of this issue.

[Rawbone]

Very interesting....if this turns out to be correct it will be more egg on the face of the scientific establishment that poo poo'd the idea of a large planet orbiting outside of Pluto for years and years.

[badeskov]

Very interesting....if this turns out to be correct it will be more egg on the face of the scientific establishment that poo poo'd the idea of a large planet orbiting outside of Pluto for years and years.

Who actually "poo poo'd" this idea? I am asking out of honest curiosity as this is not my field of expertise.

Cheers,

Badeskov

[Davros of Skaro]

The sooner we find it, the sooner we can send a probe.

I hope it's made of Pork. Yum!

[Rawbone]

Multiple articles mention scientist scoffing at the idea prior to this discovery. Most just didn't think it possible. Click

" "What an era we're in, where we’re discovering new things about our solar system that we never thought possible even a handful of years ago."

Brown and Batygin initially set out to prove that Planet Nine didn't exist. Their paper builds on earlier research by two other astronomers that revealed a peculiar clustering of the small, icy objects discovered in the past decade or so in the remote regions of the solar system."

"Until then, we didn't really believe our results ourselves. It just didn't make sense to us," Brown said.

[seax]

It is odd that this was never noticed before, assuming it is legit. For a body that far from the sun and rotating a 20000 year...year it tells you something of the mass of our sun and the effect it has on the fabric of space, but then we don't know the mass of the alleged planet. At 10 times the size of the Earth it makes sense it could stir up some fuss with nearby objects unlucky enough to get too close....but then this is speculation.

seax

[badeskov]

Multiple articles mention scientist scoffing at the idea prior to this discovery. Most just didn't think it possible. Click

" "What an era we're in, where we’re discovering new things about our solar system that we never thought possible even a handful of years ago."

Brown and Batygin initially set out to prove that Planet Nine didn't exist. Their paper builds on earlier research by two other astronomers that revealed a peculiar clustering of the small, icy objects discovered in the past decade or so in the remote regions of the solar system."

"Until then, we didn't really believe our results ourselves. It just didn't make sense to us," Brown said.

Frankly, I did not see scientists scoffing in the article you linked. Can you please point out where you see scientists scoffing? I saw this:

Sheppard, who co-wrote the paper that Brown and Batygin set out to disprove, says the existence of a hidden planet is still a big unknown. "Until we actually see it for real, it will always be questionable as to whether it exists," he said, cautioning that the latest calculations are based on a relatively small number of known objects and that further observations and detections of perturbed bodies would bolster the hypothesis.

Still, Sheppard significantly upped the odds of discovery – from 40 percent before to 60 percent now. “Some people took it seriously, but a lot of people didn’t," he said of his own study's findings. "With this new work, it’s much more rigorous, and people will take it more seriously now.”

I wouldn't call that scoffing.

Cheers,

Badeskov

[Rawbone]

Frankly, I did not see scientists scoffing in the article you linked. Can you please point out where you see scientists scoffing? I saw this:

I wouldn't call that scoffing.

Cheers,

Badeskov

Perhaps we can find some middle ground. My contention is that the consensus of scientific thought prior to this discovery is that there were no planets, especially planets twice the size of Earth, orbiting the sun in our solar system that had yet to be discovered. In fact from reading at least 10 different articles on the subject most scientists thought the idea to be far fetched, and without merit. Did you think otherwise? Did you read the quotes I posted?

Edited January 21, 2016 by Rawbone

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

So now we know how the aliens can get to Earth so quickly and easily.

We do ?

How does a possible planet have anything to do with how aliens can get here faster ?

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Perhaps we can find some middle ground. My contention is that the consensus of scientific thought prior to this discovery is that there were no planets, especially planets twice the size of Earth, orbiting the sun in our solar system that had yet to be discovered.

That was certainly not the consensus. The consensus was that all searches for planets beyond Pluto had failed to find evidence of further planets, that is not the same thing at all.

To show that, far from poo-pooing the idea, scientists have been actively proposing and searching for planets beyond Pluto I did a quick search for "planet X" just in this section of this site. I found the following topic from just the last 4 years. I would no doubt have found more had I done a more comprehensive search:

• Planet maybe hiding beyond Neptune
  
• Could there really be a 'Planet X' ?
  
• Solar System May Have Hidden Giant Planet
  
• NASA WISE survey finds no planet X
  
• New dwarf planet hints at giant distant world
  
• Two More Outer Planets in our Solar System?
  
• Two large planets may lurk beyond Pluto
  
• Debate rages on over recent 'Planet X' claim
  

Again and again proposals of planets beyond Pluto, which is rather odd if scientists are simply poo-pooing the idea. The NASA/WISE story is particularly damaging to your claim is it shows that, not only were scientists not poo-pooing the idea, they were actively looking for trans-Plutonian planets.

In fact from reading at least 10 different articles on the subject most scientists thought the idea to be far fetched, and without merit.

It would have helped if you had linked to some of these articles.

As I hace pointed out above there have been many different proposals for a trans-Plutonian planet, all of which, until now, have fallen by the wayside BECAUSE they were far fetched and fanciful (in as much as the evidence to support them failed to materialise). This hypothesis may yet go the same way. Each proposal falls or succeeds on the weight of evidence. This is not poo-pooing, this is good science.

Did you think otherwise? Did you read the quotes I posted?

I did. They do not back up your case. What they DO demonstrate is scientists doing GOOD science. Good scientists simply do not accept or reject a hypothesis on whether they like it or not, they test it. The best way to test a hypothesis is to true and prove it wrong. If it is proven wrong it is rejected. If it is not proven wrong then it is further tested. This is why and how science progresses, it tests everything.

[Rawbone]

That was certainly not the consensus. The consensus was that all searches for planets beyond Pluto had failed to find evidence of further planets, that is not the same thing at all.

To show that, far from poo-pooing the idea, scientists have been actively proposing and searching for planets beyond Pluto I did a quick search for "planet X" just in this section of this site. I found the following topic from just the last 4 years. I would no doubt have found more had I done a more comprehensive search:

• Planet maybe hiding beyond Neptune
  
• Could there really be a 'Planet X' ?
  
• Solar System May Have Hidden Giant Planet
  
• NASA WISE survey finds no planet X
  
• New dwarf planet hints at giant distant world
  
• Two More Outer Planets in our Solar System?
  
• Two large planets may lurk beyond Pluto
  
• Debate rages on over recent 'Planet X' claim
  

Again and again proposals of planets beyond Pluto, which is rather odd if scientists are simply poo-pooing the idea. The NASA/WISE story is particularly damaging to your claim is it shows that, not only were scientists not poo-pooing the idea, they were actively looking for trans-Plutonian planets.

It would have helped if you had linked to some of these articles.

As I hace pointed out above there have been many different proposals for a trans-Plutonian planet, all of which, until now, have fallen by the wayside BECAUSE they were far fetched and fanciful (in as much as the evidence to support them failed to materialise). This hypothesis may yet go the same way. Each proposal falls or succeeds on the weight of evidence. This is not poo-pooing, this is good science.

I did. They do not back up your case. What they DO demonstrate is scientists doing GOOD science. Good scientists simply do not accept or reject a hypothesis on whether they like it or not, they test it. The best way to test a hypothesis is to true and prove it wrong. If it is proven wrong it is rejected. If it is not proven wrong then it is further tested. This is why and how science progresses, it tests everything.

I still think the overall Scientific consensus doubted and scoffed at the proposition, and it was only the efforts of a handful of scientists that resulted in this 'possible discovery.' They practiced good Science, but the majority scoffed at the idea. Even these guys that discovered the gravitational abnormalities said they didn't believe it themselves until the math held up.

[GlitterRose]

I still think the overall Scientific consensus doubted and scoffed at the proposition, and it was only the efforts of a handful of scientists that resulted in this 'possible discovery.' They practiced good Science, but the majority scoffed at the idea. Even these guys that discovered the gravitational abnormalities said they didn't believe it themselves until the math held up.

So what's your beef...that they held out and checked the math? You think they should have just gone with Sitchin? They wouldn't actually be scientists if they did that.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

but the majority scoffed at the idea.

And yet you have failed to produce a single example of scientists scoffing at the idea.

Even these guys that discovered the gravitational abnormalities said they didn't believe it themselves until the math held up.

You really don't understand how good science works do you? It is not a belief based system, it is a sceptical. evidence based system. ALL new ideas are rejected unless the evidence or maths backs them up. That is not scoffing, it's good science.

[woopypooky]

it is planet X

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

it is planet X

Shouldn't that be planet IX ?

[JesseCuster]

I fail to see how scientists hypothesizing this planet, discovering this planet and then studying this planet would be "egg on their faces".

How is it "egg on their face" for astronomers to find a new planet in our solar system? It's astronomers who are proposing the idea and searching for evidence that might prove it correct. Isn't that how science works?

It's not like it's been screamingly obvious to everyone else that this planet exists and astronomers were actively laughing at the concept and will be proven wrong by some non-scientists, thus ending up with astronomers having "egg on their face".

It seems that lot of this anti-science stuff is oddly ironic as it generally takes the form of having a go at science in general for discovering awesome new stuff that wasn't known or thought to have existed before, as if the fact that science is self-correcting, tweaking itself and discovering new things all the time is a bad thing.

It's doubly ironic because the same kind of person who has a go at scientists and science in general for discovering something new that wasn't known or thought to have existed before are the same kind of people who like to have a go at scientists for being arrogant and thinking they know everything already.

Edited January 23, 2016 by JesseCuster

[Parsec]

So, this would be Tyche or yet another planet, given the different characteristics of the two?

And how does this finding match with WISE's survey?

I also find interesting Stereologist's post in that thread

The article makes a common mistake which is thinking that the names planet X, Tyche, and Nemesis refer to the same object. They do not. Each refers to a different search for an object with different properties. These are different theories and each has been shown to be incorrect for different reasons. Planet X was shown not ot exist after it was learned that Neptune's mass was 0.5% off when Voyager 2 flew by the planet. Nemesis was shown to be wrong when it was learned that the periodic extinction rate was not correct. Tyche was proven to not exist by examining the WISE data.

What is interesting is that the WISE data pushes back the possible position of a new planet many order of magnitude more than what the Project PAN-Starrs could resolve.

A light year is about 63,000 AU. These are substantial fractions of a light year.

So this would be a fourth hypothesized planet?

[Rawbone]

After reviewing my post and researching this further, I'm wiping the egg off my own face. Thanks to my fellow posters and Waspie for bringing this to my attention. I think using the term ''scoffing' was over the top. It does, in retrospect, look like good Science was practiced here.

[Likely Guy]

Yes you might be able to spot it with Hubble... if you know where to look. Before this no one knew where to look.

'

Someone may have already said this by now, but from what I understand Hubble wasn't designed to focus that closely.

Maybe Voyager II will smack into it and confirm it's existence. Too late? A shot in the dark?

Edited January 24, 2016 by Likely Guy

[Reepa]

I truly believe the next 50 years will see unprecedented discoveries and exploration of our solar system and beyond. Exciting times ahead.

[kapow53]

Scientifically speaking this how many planets stuff is hard to keep up with.

[Indiogene]

Why...we have another planet in our solar system neighborhood, despite in the farthest reaches away from the sun (95-100 IAU from Sol III?). OTOH, astronomers said they didn't confirm the actual existence of such a planet (4-10 times the size of earth?) and its orbit is somewhere between 10k-20k years long...they have to find out the exact orbital year. The media made this story a big deal of "a discovery" when in fact astronomers could use telescopes to look for a planet that might not even be there at all!

[Merc14]

A new theory out of Harvard is that this new planet may actually be another Kuiper Belt http://earthsky.org/space/is-planet-9-a-second-kuiper-belt?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=280970e899-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-280970e899-394012957

[Nnicolette]

Here is a diagram from mercs link about where the object is expected. I do not see that from this picture though, what i see is evidence that the sun is flying through space at a massive speed which hasn't been calculated into the motion. but of course thats why they dont pay me.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Nnicolette

[Imaginarynumber1]

Scientifically speaking this how many planets stuff is hard to keep up with.

Counting to 8 is hard, huh?