The worst part of Pluto's demotion from "planet" to "dwarf planet" is the sheer disrespect toward what's arguably the most interesting planet that's not Earth.
The second-worst part is that we can't call this hypothetical trans-Plutonian planet "Planet X" anymore.
gs17 · 53m ago
I can settle for Planet 9 From Outer Space.
invalidlogin · 33m ago
The film
The operating system
The planet
The legend
adrian_b · 6h ago
The fact that many trans-Neptunian bodies have weird orbits is not a correct argument for the existence of an extra big planet beyond them in the present time.
It is only evidence that at some moment in the past there was something big out there, which has perturbed their orbits.
In 2024 there have been published a few papers which propose that a star has passed close to the Solar System in the past and its passage has caused all the unusual orbits that we see in the outer Solar System.
This seems more plausible than an undiscovered big planet.
> This seems more plausible than an undiscovered big planet.
Both are plausible, both are intriguing. To determine what in fact happened there's no way around looking up and searching until we exhaust the possibilities. Kudos for Terry Phan and his team for putting in the work, regardless of what hypothesis it ends strenghtening.
adrian_b · 6h ago
Evidence for a currently existing outer planet would be provided only when we would see changes in the orbits of the known bodies.
Unusual values of the orbital parameters are only evidence for something that has happened in the past.
devb · 3h ago
> This seems more plausible than an undiscovered big planet.
Why?
charlieyu1 · 5h ago
From the first link:
> The Solar System planets accumulated from a disk of dust and gas that once orbited the Sun. Therefore, the planets move close to their common plane on near-circular orbits. About 3,000 small objects have been observed to orbit the Sun beyond Neptune (rp > 35 au); surprisingly, most move on eccentric and inclined orbits. Therefore, some force must have lifted these trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) from the disk where they formed and altered their orbits markedly.
I feel there is a strong bias towards objects that are only discoverable because of their highly eccentric orbit
metalman · 2h ago
just thinking the same thing "something big out there", and that has ,ha!, huge implications, like is there any model for failed giant planets orbiting as diffuse blobs of stuff, way ,way out there, or several less big blobs that like up and give a good tug once in a while, rings with lumps in the oort cloud?
we know there are chunks out there big enough to ruin your whole planet, but that are essentialy invisible from here, so the mass could be there, and could be more organised than we realise, but still realy tricky to see.
Qem · 8h ago
> Brown argues that this object is not likely to be Planet Nine because its orbit would be far more tilted than what is predicted for the undiscovered world. In other words, a planet in this position would not have the observed effects on the Solar System. In fact, a planet in this orbit would make the calculated Planet Nine orbit itself unstable, which would eliminate Planet Nine altogether. Is there an entirely different planet out there? Future observations will have to sort this out.
There's also an alternative lesser known proposal for an undetected massive object in the outer solar system, by Lykawka and Mukai[1], ofter confounded with the planet nine hypothesis, but it is actually an independent proposal from the object predicted by Batygin and Brown. I wonder if despite not being compatible with the more known planet nine proposal, the recent finding may be compatible with the one from Lykawka et al, or it may even be the case that the former acts in tandem with the later, and we actually have two real objects making the work of the virtual single planet proposed by B&B.
Why do sites hijack scrolling? Reading this on my laptop is painful.
xhrpost · 6h ago
> The authors say that the 570 megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) may be useful for follow-up observations.
I was curious what kind of resolution you'd have at this distance but not sure I did the math right. The camera has a resolution of 0.27"/pixel[1] which is 0.000075 degrees.
Then to get size at 500AU -> tan((pi/180) * 0.000075)(500 149597870700)
~98megameters, which is like 8 earth diameters. Is this right?
Sub pixel resolution is possible by observing the space over time
cratermoon · 2h ago
I thought we decided that Pluto was the largest of many trans-Neptunian objects.
andrewflnr · 1h ago
I'm not sure it's even the largest. Eris and Sedna are pretty close. But that's not really relevant here.
eth0up · 7h ago
I'm going with little black hole
karim79 · 2h ago
I agree. I'm also not sure why this isn't the leading theory of what's causing the gravitational weirdness, yet still manages to evade our detection.
(Disclaimer: I know nothing)
andrewflnr · 1h ago
Because it's wildly sensational, in particular being the first observation of an object of that type, and a regular boring planet fits the evidence just as well (it would be crazy hard to see at that distance, so it would be no surprise we haven't yet). I'm a fan of the idea too, but it needs a lot more evidence to take it seriously.
xeonmc · 3h ago
If you jump into it you restart the universe.
No comments yet
schrectacular · 6h ago
I mean how else would the aliens have gotten here?
andrewflnr · 1h ago
Only mostly joking: I think the most likely way aliens could be in the solar system is a relict machine civilization from a life-bearing phase of Mars or Venus. Crazy? Yes. More likely than successful interstellar travel? Still yes.
jaggederest · 1h ago
I mean, interstellar travel isn't outside the realm of possibility. We see all kinds of weird junk in the deep background, quasars 13 billion years old. Even for a type 1+ civilization, let alone a dyson sphere, the energy requirements are not insane. Couple hundred thousand tons of antimatter and matter, specific impulse in the millions, get there. Time dilation solves all your "being alive to see the sights" issues, and as long as you don't leave anyone behind that you care about and bring enough antimatter all the other problems are solvable.
dataflow · 35m ago
How does the mechanics of antimatter propulsion work? Is the idea that the momentum of the released photons is enough to push you in the opposite direction at relativistic speeds? And that you presumably somehow shield yourself from that radiation through a perfect paraboloidic reflector of some sort?
The second-worst part is that we can't call this hypothetical trans-Plutonian planet "Planet X" anymore.
The operating system
The planet
The legend
It is only evidence that at some moment in the past there was something big out there, which has perturbed their orbits.
In 2024 there have been published a few papers which propose that a star has passed close to the Solar System in the past and its passage has caused all the unusual orbits that we see in the outer Solar System.
This seems more plausible than an undiscovered big planet.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02349-x
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ad63a6
Both are plausible, both are intriguing. To determine what in fact happened there's no way around looking up and searching until we exhaust the possibilities. Kudos for Terry Phan and his team for putting in the work, regardless of what hypothesis it ends strenghtening.
Unusual values of the orbital parameters are only evidence for something that has happened in the past.
Why?
> The Solar System planets accumulated from a disk of dust and gas that once orbited the Sun. Therefore, the planets move close to their common plane on near-circular orbits. About 3,000 small objects have been observed to orbit the Sun beyond Neptune (rp > 35 au); surprisingly, most move on eccentric and inclined orbits. Therefore, some force must have lifted these trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) from the disk where they formed and altered their orbits markedly.
I feel there is a strong bias towards objects that are only discoverable because of their highly eccentric orbit
There's also an alternative lesser known proposal for an undetected massive object in the outer solar system, by Lykawka and Mukai[1], ofter confounded with the planet nine hypothesis, but it is actually an independent proposal from the object predicted by Batygin and Brown. I wonder if despite not being compatible with the more known planet nine proposal, the recent finding may be compatible with the one from Lykawka et al, or it may even be the case that the former acts in tandem with the later, and we actually have two real objects making the work of the virtual single planet proposed by B&B.
[1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-6256/135/4/1...
Link to the paper:https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.17288
I was curious what kind of resolution you'd have at this distance but not sure I did the math right. The camera has a resolution of 0.27"/pixel[1] which is 0.000075 degrees. Then to get size at 500AU -> tan((pi/180) * 0.000075)(500 149597870700) ~98megameters, which is like 8 earth diameters. Is this right?
[1]: https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/the-des-project/instrument/...
(Disclaimer: I know nothing)
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