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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPlanet 9 again? Cosmic objects with strange orbits discovered beyond Neptune
Are they being tugged by Planet Nine?
A six-year search of space beyond the orbit of Neptune has netted 461 newly discovered objects.
These objects include four that are more than 230 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. (An astronomical unit is the distance from the Earth to the sun, about 93 million miles or 149.6 million kilometers). These extraordinarily distant objects might shed light on Planet Nine, a theoretical, never-observed body that might be hiding in deep space, its gravity affecting the orbits of some of the rocky objects at the solar system's edge.
Of the 461 objects described for the first time in the new paper, a few stand out. Nine are known as extreme trans-Neptunian objects, which have orbits that swing out at least 150 AUs from the sun. Four of those are extremely extreme, with orbital distances of 230 AUs.
At these distances, the objects are hardly affected by Neptune's gravity, but their strange orbits suggest an influence from outside the solar system. Some researchers think that influence might be a yet-undiscovered planet, dubbed Planet Nine.
(Others think that the combined gravity of lots of little objects, or, alternatively, nothing more than a statistical anomaly, explain the weird orbits.) The newly discovered objects could thus help researchers hone in on the possible Planet Nine or disprove its existence.
https://www.livescience.com/461-trans-neptunian-objects-discovered.html
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As someone once said, fascinating
Response to Shanti Shanti Shanti (Original post)
Chin music This message was self-deleted by its author.
Shanti Shanti Shanti
(12,047 posts)brush
(53,474 posts)some influence on the objects as it rotates the Sun.
It's not even mentioned on the article. That seems strange.
Shanti Shanti Shanti
(12,047 posts)brush
(53,474 posts)these object beyond Neptune, and has gravity of it's own that could affect other objects.
And speaking of our moon, it's gravity affects our tides.
Shanti Shanti Shanti
(12,047 posts)Response to Shanti Shanti Shanti (Reply #9)
brush This message was self-deleted by its author.
First Speaker
(4,858 posts)...maybe there's a film in there, somewhere...is Elvira still--ahem--walking amongst us?
hatrack
(59,442 posts)madinmaryland
(64,920 posts)roamer65
(36,739 posts)They will find it.
Shanti Shanti Shanti
(12,047 posts)Xolodno
(6,334 posts)...its a really small black hole.
Wounded Bear
(58,440 posts)Pluto is nearly 250 years. Not sure I'd trust the calculations of orbits that far out with only a few months data.
Cool story, though.
myccrider
(484 posts)I saw a special about it 2 or 3 years ago, I think. There was a hypothesis that a planet sized object was disturbing the orbit of a couple of bodies in one odd orbit in the Kuiper Belt based on limited data (it may even have been early results of the survey mentioned in the article).
Brown didnt believe it and set out to prove it wrong. He collaborated with another scientist (cant remember his name, a high level math guy) and the other guy did the calculations/computer modeling for what should happen if there was such a planet. He brought his model back to Brown and said you should find a number of objects with these particular half dozen or so different whacky orbits if this is true, so it must be false. Brown was flabbergasted because he was aware of several already mapped objects that fit almost perfectly into a few of those predicted orbits.
From what I understand, theyve been searching for the proposed planet and for other objects which match the specific predictions of the model ever since that time.
Even the article linked in the OP says the Dark Energy Survey that unexpectedly found these objects started in 2013. Not sure where you got only a few months data
Edited to add: Theres a link to a video of Brown talking about these discoveries in 2016 at post #9.
Amishman
(5,541 posts)I'd be curious if something like a brown dwarf passing through could have disturbed them into those erratic orbits as it passed through
Shanti Shanti Shanti
(12,047 posts)Brown dwarfs would still have a heat signature, so this might be a super-earth or maybe even a captured world from another solar system.
We were in a packed star nursery as our sun slowly moved away from its cradle, could have dragged along a stray.
Amishman
(5,541 posts)What I was wondering is could something massive like that have passed through out solar system without being captured, and disturbed the orbits of these objects on the way through.
Shanti Shanti Shanti
(12,047 posts)We need more probes! Launch the robots!
muriel_volestrangler
(101,154 posts)and left, all some time ago. The planetoids would remain in their unusual orbits.
Whether a passing brown dwarf could affect orbits like that, I don't know, though.
Response to Shanti Shanti Shanti (Original post)
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