7 ms·

Discovering Planet Nine

54 points by jwmerrill 10y ago

Cozumel 10y ago
Pluto is planet nine. This is 'planet ten', it's called 'Nibiru', and the Babylonians, Sumerians and Akkadian among others have astronomical records of it over 3,600 years ago. tin foil hat time I do wonder if that's why Pluto was demoted, so when the 'tenth' planet was found it'd actually be called the 'ninth' so nobody would be as concerned about all the doomsday myths surrounding it.
- dalke 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_cataclysm#Scientific_rejection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_cataclysm#Scientific_re... If Pluto is #9, what numbers are Ceres, Sedna, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake? Ceres was considered a planet until the 1850s. Astronomers think there are a few hundred more such dwarf planets, with 2007 OR10, Quaoar, Sedna, Orcus, (307261) 2002 MS4 and Salacia as likely candidates. Which numbers are those? The hypothetical planet the New Yorker mentions has an orbital period between twelve and twenty thousand years. Sitchin says the Babylonian religious texts say the period is 3,600 years. These are not the same planet.
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    >> If Pluto is #9, what numbers are Ceres, Sedna, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake? I don't care about them. This is a cultural issue. There is no fundamental principal governing how humans are to name space rocks. This is map making. Exceptions and one-off special rules are made all the time. We accept europe and asia as separate continents. If that can be a thing, then Pluto can remain a planet.
    - dalke 10y ago
      Then it's a good thing I was asking Cozumel, who does care and believes it to be significant, instead of someone who doesn't care.
      - sandworm101 10y ago
        You put them up to illustrate the consequences of a change to the planet-naming rule. I dismiss those consequences as irrelevant to the issue given how our culture is already so accepting of similar situation ... just in simpler words.
        dalke 10y ago
        I was certainly not trying to do as you proposed. I put them up there to illustrate that the views stated by Cozumel were contradictory, and to give Cozumel a chance to re-think the validity of the proposed tin foil scenario. If Cozumel believes Pluto is really #9, then why does Cozumel not think that Ceres is a planet, making Pluto #10, which is the foretold doomsday planet X = Nibiru? Or if Cozumel prefers the fringe views of Sitchin's twelfth planet, then why don't Makemake and the other dwarf planets count while Pluto, according to Cozumel, does?
    - nkrisc 10y ago
      Or not remain a planet because it's all arbitrary anyway. The classification is not meant to align to some sort of cosmic ordering, but to classify things in ways that are currently useful to science.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    I don't like the classification of dwarf planet. The classification should be based on its size, shape, and make up. Instead they classified it based on the number of objects in its orbit, which is so arbitrary and weird. If hypothetically we cleared up the objects and dumped them in Earths orbit, Pluto would suddenly become a planet and Earth would lose its classification. Just bite the bullet and accept there are a lot of small planets in our solar system, or classify them based on size.
    - dalke 10y ago
      The odd phrase "clearing the neighborhood around its orbit" exists because people want to think of Ganymede (which is bigger than Mercury) as a moon, not a planet, which your proposal would do. If hypothetically we moved the Earth so it orbits Jupiter, then it would be a moon, yes? See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_the_neighbourhood#Disagreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_the_neighbourhood#Dis... .
      - Houshalter 10y ago
        Yes I accept orbiting the sun and not another object, as a reasonable criteria of a planet. That's included in the old definition. The new definition goes well beyond that though. If there are asteroids and debris in it's orbit around the sun, it no longer counts as a planet. It's really weird, and it's only purpose is to exclude the newly discovered planets from that classification.
        dalke 10y ago
        Yes, it is weird, but I disagree with your interpretation. You wrote: "If there are asteroids and debris in it's orbit around the sun, it no longer counts as a planet." That Wikipedia link I pointed to says: "As to the extent of orbit clearing required, Jean-Luc Margot emphasises "a planet can never completely clear its orbital zone, because gravitational and radiative forces continually perturb the orbits of asteroids and comets into planet-crossing orbits" and states that the IAU did not intend the impossible standard of impeccable orbit clearing.[2] It further lists a few attempts to define things more rigorously. You write: "it's only purpose is to exclude the newly discovered planets from that classification". The same page also points out "In 2015, a proposal was made to use the criterion in extending the definition to exoplanets". This is from the same Margot, whose proposed criteria can "categorise a body based only on its own mass, its semi-major axis, and its star's mass."
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  Reminds me of the humorous article where Australia gets demoted to a dwarf continent, leaving only 6.
- eivarv 10y ago
  Do you have any sources to back up any of these assertions, e.g. that this is what Sumerians called 'Nibiru', or that they had astronomical records of this/an object? If I remember correctly, the "Planet X" / "Nibiru" stuff is largely tinfoil-hat territory (see the link dalke posted, as well as other articles [1-4]) - a hodgepodge of speculation, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and -history, and literal interpretation of myths - as made evident by a cursory search on Wikipedia. Planet Nine, though, seems to be something other [5] than this mess entirely. As for the doomsday myths, I find them equally ridiculous whether the planet in question would be number 9 or 10 on our somewhat arbitrary planet-system. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planets_beyond_Neptune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planets_beyond_Neptune [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calend... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zecharia_Sitchin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zecharia_Sitchin [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine
  - whybroke 10y ago
    Clearly all the evidence for the Sumerians, Lumerians and Brobdingnagians knowledge of Nibiru was covered up by the knights Templar in order to hide the fact the world is going to end next Wednesday afternoon just after the Sleestaks take over.
- sevenless 10y ago
  I adore outlandish conspiracy theories and this is an excellent one. Now, are the astronomers and government secretly working with the Nibiru aliens themselves to cover up the impending cataclysm? Could the sinister New World Order really be a Nibiru beach head? And were Erich von Daniken and David Icke right about everything?
chrispeel 10y ago
I would love an update on efforts to find planet 9, unfortunately this article is from January 2016. See [1] for a Hacker News thread from Jan on Planet 9, and [2] for a blog from Batygin and Brown. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10939306https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10939306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10939306https://news.yc... [2] http://www.findplanetnine.com/ http://www.findplanetnine.com/
- Isinlor 10y ago
  If you are interested in latest research about planet 9 you can subscribe to https://www.reddit.com/r/planet9 https://www.reddit.com/r/planet9 - I'm trying to keep this subreddit up to date as much as possible.
zipwitch 10y ago
To quote Mike Brown (who has the best Twitter handle ever), "Weekly PSA: no, in fact the earth is NOT going to be destroyed by [fill in crazy thing seen on internet here] next week. Thanks for asking." https://twitter.com/plutokiller https://twitter.com/plutokiller
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mrfusion 10y ago
This could be awesome for a slingshot manuever on the way to alpha cent, right. Does anyone know how to calculate that?
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  It wouldn't, actually, because gravity assists only add as much as the body's orbital velocity, which would be tiny for an object in such a distant orbit.
  - mrfusion 10y ago
    That doesn't sound right because it got the voyagers to leave the solar system.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
      He's correct. Remember how much further out planet 9 would be from the sun than Jupiter is. The speed at which an object orbits is related to how far away it is - note that the article said it has a really long year, too. Consider how far away geostationary satelites are compared to the ISS. The ISS goes around the planet several times a day, but geostationary orbits by definition complete one orbit in one day.
    - InclinedPlane 10y ago
      It is, that's how it works. Relative to the planet the incoming and leaving speeds are the same, but during the flyby the trajectory relative to the planet's orbital motion changes. So if you come in from the "side" of the orbit and leave headed in the same direction as the orbit, you'll increase your velocity relative to the Solar System by the speed of the planet. But that's the most you can gain from that. Jupiter is the best planet for orbital slingshots not because it's going the fastest, it isn't, but because it's high gravity makes it easy to "bend" the trajectories of spacecraft a lot, so you can gain a bigger percentage of the orbital speed easier, which makes for a higher total speed. Here's a table of orbital speeds: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/orbital.htm http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/orbital.htm Here's a graph of Voyager 2's speed throughout it's journey through the Solar System: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/bsf16-22.gif https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/bsf16-22.gif And here's Voyager 2's trajectory: http://i.imgur.com/ctbjmMW.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ctbjmMW.jpg Notice how extreme the changes in direction are for the passes by Jupiter and Saturn, versus Uranus and Neptune. They are very sharp curves, that go from nearly approaching the planets from the side to leaving nearly in the same direction as the planets are moving. You can pick up at most 43% of Earth's orbital speed from a single gravity assist at Jupiter, but that's still a significant amount. Additionally, as you can see from the second link, the farther out you are from Earth (at least in the more inner parts of the Solar System) the more bang for the buck you get from speed increases, because you're higher up out of the depths of the gravity well.
tunnuz 10y ago
I'm no expert (and have not read the full article, just about half of it), but could an object like this affect Earth when it's orbit gets closer to the sun? I mean anything, from causing movements in Earth's crust or below, influencing tides, carrying massive pieces of rock in its trail etc.?
- jschwartzi 10y ago
  If I remember correctly from the article, if this object were capable of perturbing Earth in any significant way, then we would be under much greater threat from Jupiter and Saturn, which are at least order of magnitude closer to us at any given time. Gravitation is a very weak force, and it scales as the inverse square of the distance between two objects. An order of magnitude reduction in distance would multiply the force by roughly 100 times. Thus, we would see these effects all the time as a result of our proximity to Jupiter and Saturn. So no, what you're suggesting is impossible.
  - cmurf 10y ago
    What was this nonsense I remember from gradeschool about planets aligning having a gravitation effect on the sun such that it'd start spewing fireballs at earth? Of course nothing happened. The amount of gravitational force from a mountain as you drive by it has more of an effect than the planets. It's kinda like, how does astrology affect us again? Can you be precise? I mean, other than for entertainment as by its own standard it's a real thing.
taliesinb 10y ago
The most interesting alternative to the Planet Nine hypothesis (and to my mind a more attractive one) is that there is a self-organizing dynamical process that applies to large ensembles of bodies in highly eccentric orbits that causes their argument of perihelion to become correlated. There is a great SETI talk by the astronomer Ann-Marie Madigan that explains the idea, it should be easy to follow if you've ever taken a mechanics course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW0Zb5gY0HA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW0Zb5gY0HA

54 points by jwmerrill 10y ago

Pluto is planet nine. This is 'planet ten', it's called 'Nibiru', and the Babylonians, Sumerians and Akkadian among others have astronomical records of it over 3,600 years ago. tin foil hat time I do wonder if that's why Pluto was demoted, so when the 'tenth' planet was found it'd actually be called the 'ninth' so nobody would be as concerned about all the doomsday myths surrounding it.

dalke 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_cataclysm#Scientific_rejection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_cataclysm#Scientific_re... If Pluto is #9, what numbers are Ceres, Sedna, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake? Ceres was considered a planet until the 1850s. Astronomers think there are a few hundred more such dwarf planets, with 2007 OR10, Quaoar, Sedna, Orcus, (307261) 2002 MS4 and Salacia as likely candidates. Which numbers are those? The hypothetical planet the New Yorker mentions has an orbital period between twelve and twenty thousand years. Sitchin says the Babylonian religious texts say the period is 3,600 years. These are not the same planet.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  >> If Pluto is #9, what numbers are Ceres, Sedna, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake? I don't care about them. This is a cultural issue. There is no fundamental principal governing how humans are to name space rocks. This is map making. Exceptions and one-off special rules are made all the time. We accept europe and asia as separate continents. If that can be a thing, then Pluto can remain a planet.
  - dalke 10y ago
    Then it's a good thing I was asking Cozumel, who does care and believes it to be significant, instead of someone who doesn't care.
    - sandworm101 10y ago
      You put them up to illustrate the consequences of a change to the planet-naming rule. I dismiss those consequences as irrelevant to the issue given how our culture is already so accepting of similar situation ... just in simpler words.
      - dalke 10y ago
        I was certainly not trying to do as you proposed. I put them up there to illustrate that the views stated by Cozumel were contradictory, and to give Cozumel a chance to re-think the validity of the proposed tin foil scenario. If Cozumel believes Pluto is really #9, then why does Cozumel not think that Ceres is a planet, making Pluto #10, which is the foretold doomsday planet X = Nibiru? Or if Cozumel prefers the fringe views of Sitchin's twelfth planet, then why don't Makemake and the other dwarf planets count while Pluto, according to Cozumel, does?
  - nkrisc 10y ago
    Or not remain a planet because it's all arbitrary anyway. The classification is not meant to align to some sort of cosmic ordering, but to classify things in ways that are currently useful to science.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  I don't like the classification of dwarf planet. The classification should be based on its size, shape, and make up. Instead they classified it based on the number of objects in its orbit, which is so arbitrary and weird. If hypothetically we cleared up the objects and dumped them in Earths orbit, Pluto would suddenly become a planet and Earth would lose its classification. Just bite the bullet and accept there are a lot of small planets in our solar system, or classify them based on size.
  - dalke 10y ago
    The odd phrase "clearing the neighborhood around its orbit" exists because people want to think of Ganymede (which is bigger than Mercury) as a moon, not a planet, which your proposal would do. If hypothetically we moved the Earth so it orbits Jupiter, then it would be a moon, yes? See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_the_neighbourhood#Disagreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_the_neighbourhood#Dis... .
    - Houshalter 10y ago
      Yes I accept orbiting the sun and not another object, as a reasonable criteria of a planet. That's included in the old definition. The new definition goes well beyond that though. If there are asteroids and debris in it's orbit around the sun, it no longer counts as a planet. It's really weird, and it's only purpose is to exclude the newly discovered planets from that classification.
      - dalke 10y ago
        Yes, it is weird, but I disagree with your interpretation. You wrote: "If there are asteroids and debris in it's orbit around the sun, it no longer counts as a planet." That Wikipedia link I pointed to says: "As to the extent of orbit clearing required, Jean-Luc Margot emphasises "a planet can never completely clear its orbital zone, because gravitational and radiative forces continually perturb the orbits of asteroids and comets into planet-crossing orbits" and states that the IAU did not intend the impossible standard of impeccable orbit clearing.[2] It further lists a few attempts to define things more rigorously. You write: "it's only purpose is to exclude the newly discovered planets from that classification". The same page also points out "In 2015, a proposal was made to use the criterion in extending the definition to exoplanets". This is from the same Margot, whose proposed criteria can "categorise a body based only on its own mass, its semi-major axis, and its star's mass."
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Reminds me of the humorous article where Australia gets demoted to a dwarf continent, leaving only 6.
eivarv 10y ago
Do you have any sources to back up any of these assertions, e.g. that this is what Sumerians called 'Nibiru', or that they had astronomical records of this/an object? If I remember correctly, the "Planet X" / "Nibiru" stuff is largely tinfoil-hat territory (see the link dalke posted, as well as other articles [1-4]) - a hodgepodge of speculation, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and -history, and literal interpretation of myths - as made evident by a cursory search on Wikipedia. Planet Nine, though, seems to be something other [5] than this mess entirely. As for the doomsday myths, I find them equally ridiculous whether the planet in question would be number 9 or 10 on our somewhat arbitrary planet-system. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planets_beyond_Neptune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planets_beyond_Neptune [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calend... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zecharia_Sitchin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zecharia_Sitchin [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine
- whybroke 10y ago
  Clearly all the evidence for the Sumerians, Lumerians and Brobdingnagians knowledge of Nibiru was covered up by the knights Templar in order to hide the fact the world is going to end next Wednesday afternoon just after the Sleestaks take over.
sevenless 10y ago
I adore outlandish conspiracy theories and this is an excellent one. Now, are the astronomers and government secretly working with the Nibiru aliens themselves to cover up the impending cataclysm? Could the sinister New World Order really be a Nibiru beach head? And were Erich von Daniken and David Icke right about everything?

chrispeel 10y ago

I would love an update on efforts to find planet 9, unfortunately this article is from January 2016. See [1] for a Hacker News thread from Jan on Planet 9, and [2] for a blog from Batygin and Brown. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10939306https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10939306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10939306https://news.yc... [2] http://www.findplanetnine.com/ http://www.findplanetnine.com/

Isinlor 10y ago
If you are interested in latest research about planet 9 you can subscribe to https://www.reddit.com/r/planet9 https://www.reddit.com/r/planet9 - I'm trying to keep this subreddit up to date as much as possible.

zipwitch 10y ago

To quote Mike Brown (who has the best Twitter handle ever), "Weekly PSA: no, in fact the earth is NOT going to be destroyed by [fill in crazy thing seen on internet here] next week. Thanks for asking." https://twitter.com/plutokiller https://twitter.com/plutokiller

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mrfusion 10y ago

This could be awesome for a slingshot manuever on the way to alpha cent, right. Does anyone know how to calculate that?

InclinedPlane 10y ago
It wouldn't, actually, because gravity assists only add as much as the body's orbital velocity, which would be tiny for an object in such a distant orbit.
- mrfusion 10y ago
  That doesn't sound right because it got the voyagers to leave the solar system.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    He's correct. Remember how much further out planet 9 would be from the sun than Jupiter is. The speed at which an object orbits is related to how far away it is - note that the article said it has a really long year, too. Consider how far away geostationary satelites are compared to the ISS. The ISS goes around the planet several times a day, but geostationary orbits by definition complete one orbit in one day.
  - InclinedPlane 10y ago
    It is, that's how it works. Relative to the planet the incoming and leaving speeds are the same, but during the flyby the trajectory relative to the planet's orbital motion changes. So if you come in from the "side" of the orbit and leave headed in the same direction as the orbit, you'll increase your velocity relative to the Solar System by the speed of the planet. But that's the most you can gain from that. Jupiter is the best planet for orbital slingshots not because it's going the fastest, it isn't, but because it's high gravity makes it easy to "bend" the trajectories of spacecraft a lot, so you can gain a bigger percentage of the orbital speed easier, which makes for a higher total speed. Here's a table of orbital speeds: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/orbital.htm http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/orbital.htm Here's a graph of Voyager 2's speed throughout it's journey through the Solar System: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/bsf16-22.gif https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/bsf16-22.gif And here's Voyager 2's trajectory: http://i.imgur.com/ctbjmMW.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ctbjmMW.jpg Notice how extreme the changes in direction are for the passes by Jupiter and Saturn, versus Uranus and Neptune. They are very sharp curves, that go from nearly approaching the planets from the side to leaving nearly in the same direction as the planets are moving. You can pick up at most 43% of Earth's orbital speed from a single gravity assist at Jupiter, but that's still a significant amount. Additionally, as you can see from the second link, the farther out you are from Earth (at least in the more inner parts of the Solar System) the more bang for the buck you get from speed increases, because you're higher up out of the depths of the gravity well.

tunnuz 10y ago

I'm no expert (and have not read the full article, just about half of it), but could an object like this affect Earth when it's orbit gets closer to the sun? I mean anything, from causing movements in Earth's crust or below, influencing tides, carrying massive pieces of rock in its trail etc.?

jschwartzi 10y ago
If I remember correctly from the article, if this object were capable of perturbing Earth in any significant way, then we would be under much greater threat from Jupiter and Saturn, which are at least order of magnitude closer to us at any given time. Gravitation is a very weak force, and it scales as the inverse square of the distance between two objects. An order of magnitude reduction in distance would multiply the force by roughly 100 times. Thus, we would see these effects all the time as a result of our proximity to Jupiter and Saturn. So no, what you're suggesting is impossible.
- cmurf 10y ago
  What was this nonsense I remember from gradeschool about planets aligning having a gravitation effect on the sun such that it'd start spewing fireballs at earth? Of course nothing happened. The amount of gravitational force from a mountain as you drive by it has more of an effect than the planets. It's kinda like, how does astrology affect us again? Can you be precise? I mean, other than for entertainment as by its own standard it's a real thing.

taliesinb 10y ago

The most interesting alternative to the Planet Nine hypothesis (and to my mind a more attractive one) is that there is a self-organizing dynamical process that applies to large ensembles of bodies in highly eccentric orbits that causes their argument of perihelion to become correlated. There is a great SETI talk by the astronomer Ann-Marie Madigan that explains the idea, it should be easy to follow if you've ever taken a mechanics course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW0Zb5gY0HA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW0Zb5gY0HA