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Isn't this exactly how Pluto was discovered? Due to an innacurate estimate of the mass of Neptune (not corrected until Voyager I think), people were hunting for
by rozab 1y ago
Isn't this exactly how Pluto was discovered? Due to an innacurate estimate of the mass of Neptune (not corrected until Voyager I think), people were hunting for a large planet to explain the discrepancy. After a bunch of searching they happened to find Pluto, but it was not the Planet X they were looking for. The mass estimates for Pluto were gradually downgraded from many Earth masses to 1/500, which is the true reason it was initially classified as a planet.
- Qem 1y agoFor a time pluto had good estimates for his small size, but poor constraints on his mass beyond this Neptune mass estimate. So I remember reading a short story were they interpreted the possible high density as signs of a stargate.
- philistine 1y agoYeah. If Pluto had been slightly heavier, we’d probably have ended up with a definition of a planet that included its mass instead of clearing its orbit to keep Pluto a planet. But Pluto was cooked when we figured out it’s not really heavier than Ceres.
- jcranmer 1y ago> But Pluto was cooked when we figured out it’s not really heavier than Ceres. You mean Eris? Pluto is ~10 times the mass of Ceres.
- philistine 1y agoYeah that one!