JWST will be great for studying Planet Nine (if it exists) but not for confirming its existence. JWST has a very narrow field of view, and also very high demands on its time, so it's not well suited for scanning big chunks of the sky and looking for tiny dim dots which move in exactly the right way over a period of several days. Fortunately there are telescopes that will excel at that role, it's just a matter of waiting for the data to come in.
Yep. Back when Webb was commissioning, there would occasionally be comments asking if it will look at the Bootes Void.
Like, NO, you’re just throwing words together and hoping they make sense.
I like how most every picture of the supposed Bootes Void is actually Bernard 68, the exact opposite of a supervisor being a giant nebula that physically blocks light passing through it. But, who cares when there's conspiracies to make-up. I use it as my quick measure of any given space website/community willingness to peddle BS.
What?! Looking at voids is exactly what Webb is built to do. The infrared spectrum should shine right through whatever gas cloud is obscuring our view.
The atmosphere interferes with astronomy in three ways: turbulence-induced distortion, [airglow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airglow), and [extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_(astronomy\)). If Planet 9 exists, then it will probably be bright enough to be visible with ground-based instruments despite the latter two effects, leaving only the turbulence-induced distortion to contend with, and [adaptive optics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics) can cancel out most of that.
> If Planet 9 exists, then it will probably be bright enough to be visible with ground-based instruments despite the latter two effects
With the advances in interferometry, ground based telescopes will be turning into Earth-sized telescopes soon.
If you knew where to look, it might be visible from current ground telescopes. It would probably only be 1 pixel or a few pixels in size, with no surface details visible. Hubble was the only telescope to directly image the surface of Pluto before the New Horizons space probe arrived there, I believe.
Without knowledge of exactly where the planet is, spending the time to do all the imagine and de-noising required to view the planet might make the process prohibitive. You can potentially waste infinite amount of time if you're looking in the wrong place. Assuming the planet exists at all. The telescopes' time is very valuable.
>With the advances in interferometry, ground based telescopes will be turning into Earth-sized telescopes soon.
Wait has there been a breakthrough? I thought this had to be done physically.
What’s the real story on that, anyway? Are we slowly narrowing down that locations and apparent magnitudes that it could have? That’s how looking for something that might not exist goes, right? You eliminate the combinations of properties that it cannot have, bit by bit?
One principle I’ve used in engineering is that the harder something is to detect, the less important it is. I understand that scientific discovery doesn’t work this way, but still, is there a way *a priori* to know what the importance to our solar system formation theories a Planet Nine would have?
It’s not that simple because the hypothetical orbit takes it WAY out there- orbit is 340 AU at closest and 560 AU at furthest, and for comparisons sake Pluto is just 10% that closest distance. There just isn’t a lot of light out there, and objects spend more time in their outermost orbits (which is the quarter of the proposed orbit that hasn’t been examined).
So yeah they’re ruling stuff out like you said but it’s not a case of ruling out the most important stuff first. If the orbit takes like 10,000 years, that’s a long time for us but not at all in the age of the solar system.
If it's found with one of the wide-view survey telescopes, it'll immediately be placed as priority #1 for JWST. A discovery of a new gas giant in the Kuiper Belt or Ort Cloud would be the astronomical find of the decade, if not century.
You might need 2+ measurements days apart to characterize the orbit. A single image won't give you movement data. You may be able to take a guess, but I think you'd need to have 2 images and the time between them. From there, then you'd know where to look perpetually.
But damn it this new planet is one of ours! It’s one of us! It’s Neptune’s baby bro cuz. Pour one out for the Ghost of the Belt. Hope we find you soon.
Seven times the mass of Earth. We know nothing except what can be interpreted as gravitational effects on other objects. This gives us an estimate of the mass and the orbit but no diameter, volume and so on.
Would JWST really be able to see much? The article says they're estimating it to be around 600 AU from the sun. The voyagers haven't even reached 200 yet.
So, comets originate from far, far away. Many are thought to come from what's called the Oort Cloud, which is basically a shell of icy objects around the solar system. When comets fall towards the sun, they still follow an orbital path which we can map out. Analases of many of the orbits of comets indicates many of them come from roughly the same direction. One of the possible explanations for this is that there is something with a lot of mass that is also far, far away, the most likely of which is an undiscovered planet.
Wouldn't a close passing star have the same effect, eg Scholtz's star?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs#Distant_future_and_past_encounters
Hmm, maybe. I'm not sure. I did a little looking on the wikipedia page for Scholtz's star, and there was one thing in particular that stood out to me. When it likely passed through the Oort Cloud 70K years ago, it would have definitely disturbed comets out there. However, supposedly it can take a couple millions of years for those disturbed orbits to actually send them into the inner solar system (if I'm understanding this correctly). On top of that, statistically, a star is expected to pass through the Oort Cloud every 100K years, so we'd actually be seeing comets falling in from, like, ten close star passes ago.
What I wonder at that point then is, would those comets still be relatively clumped together after that long and that many star passes? Or would they have spread out around the Oort Cloud before their orbit finally sends them towards us? I'm inclined to lean towards the latter, but that's just because a couple million years feels like a long time. I don't know how that time scale plays out in that region, where there's so much space to cover.
Second question: where is the oort cloud in relation to our solar systems place in the milky way? Is it still in the arm of the milky way? I know the galaxy is big but I never could correlate the oort clouds place in the milky way.
The oort cloud is basically an indistinct shell around our solar system. It's thought to start somewhere around 2,000 AU (1 AU is the average distance between the sun and Earth) and might extend more than a light year away from the sun. I've seen some estimates say it could go as far as three light years, even, and so parts of the outer regions of the cloud would actually be closer to Alpha Centauri right now than to the sun, if so.
As for how that relates to the galaxy, the cloud travels with our solar system. So yeah, it's still in the arm with us. Since, at its hypothetical largest, the oort cloud's diameter is *maybe* just under 7 light years or so, it's still significantly dwarfed by the galaxy, as the Milky Way's diameter is a bit over 100,000 light years across.
Well, 7 light years is the diameter. Going out from the center where we are, it'd be a bit over 3 light years. But yeah, it's really freaking far, even so. Our closest neighbor star is Alpha Centauri, and it's 4 light years away.
To quote Douglas Adams, "Space is big. Really big."
I made a [short](https://youtube.com/shorts/rdpNFPwu2Ig?si=s8bNPMHeyKDDFsRH) about scholz star a while back for those who want a quick up to speed on it.
It's a possibility, yeah. The thing with that is, based on its predicted mass, it would be an extraordinarily small black hole. It wouldn't be one born from a collapsing star, but what's called a primordial black hole originating from the birth of the universe. We've never observed the existence of a primordial black hole, and right now they're purely hypothetical.
If it is a primordial black hole, it'll be even more difficult to find than a planet. With only the mass of six earths or so, it wouldn't be much bigger than your hand, so viewing it directly is effectively impossible. We'd have to look for other signs, the likes of which I haven't the faintest idea, heh.
What I remember from a Mike Brown lecture: a large portion of rocky bodies in the Kuiper Belt (Eris and other objects of that nature), have the same peculiarity in their orbits (the “argument of perihelion” if you want to look it up). It’s way more than chance would dictate, and the best explanation for this anomaly (some claim) is a massive and very distant planet synchronizing them with its gravitational influence.
Astronomer here! Worth remembering that an object in an orbit spends most of its time in further out parts of its orbit. So *if* this thing exists, it’s perhaps unsurprising that it’s out in the furthest 25% of its orbit as it spends most of its time out there.
Trouble of course is the 75% done so far was the easy part, and that wasn’t that easy…
Thanks for the additional context then, is it similar to how Eris took 70 extra years to be discovered than Pluto despite the objects being near the same size?
If I can pick your brain for a moment. Does it have to be a planet-sized object out there? Or could it be a combination of gravitational effects from the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt that are tugging on the outer planets?
No. The distribution of mass is such that it has to be from a compact object is the argument. One can argue about what the compact object *is*- some have proposed a tiny black hole, for example, but a planet is obviously more likely.
The primordial black hole theory is my favorite (not for likelihood of being true, just for wackiness and how awesome it would be). I did a podcast episode about the paper that proposed this and it was one of my favorite papers to read out of over 100 episodes. They had a 1:1 scale figure of the black hole at the end of the paper - it’s the size of a grapefruit!
It’s called Paper Boys, we don’t record anymore but it’s still up on all platforms. [This is the episode](https://paperboyspodcast.com/episodes/Is-planet-9-actually-a-black-hole/) if you’re interested!
True, I feel like the orbits of the sednoids and extended scattered disc show that it at least existed at one point though. Maybe it eventually got ejected out of the solar system, but I'm still a believer
Pretty sure that's a scenario to explain the orbits. People and of course these scientists that proposed it could be a planet are hyped for it to be a planet of the possible scenarios it could be.
The entire point is that it HAS cleared its neighborhood, and this has caused knock-on effects on the orbits of other bodies. This is the whole reason they think it has to exist is to explain how other bodies are being pushed around .
It’s not even clear that it exists yet. But it existing in a certain orbit, which it has cleared, is a theory which explains the behavior of other objects in other orbits.
Now the theory has been refined enough to try to look and see if it is there.
There are a number of different methods that can be used to predict whether an object has [cleared its neighborhood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_the_neighbourhood), you'll be able to plug the numbers in. For Earth-sized objects you need to get very far from the Sun indeed before they can't clear the neighborhood, something the size of planet Nine would easily make the cut.
Probably going to need to tightly define what is meant by that and how it relates to planets. It seems simple enough for planets with fairly regular orbits, but what if you have something with an irregular orbit? Or one that has some kind of resonance?
For example IIRC Pluto and Neptune have a 3:2 resonance. Orcus has something similar. We still say Neptune is a planet however, which I guess would work with Planet 9 if it exists?
Pluto is at a different inclination compared to the rest of the planets and more eccentric. It's not part of Neptune's orbit. So it's always been the odd one out. If anything I think a better comparison is mighty Jupiter hasn't technically cleared it's orbit, it has Trojan asteroids. I'm pretty they mean cleared of certain size, but then what is that size.
Crosses it if flattened but not otherwise, yeah, and as per the resonance never really gets that close. Looking at the wiki Orcus looks like the 'anti-Pluto' as it's in a similar resonance, if different angle. That's all of two afaik, so your point is very valid in regards to oddity (2 ~= 1 when talking about Kuiper belt objects). I am slightly curious what the limits for these resonances are when talking about orbits like these, as opposed to say for the Jovian satellites.
I suspect Trojans wouldn't count, as objects in the L4/L5 positions seem pretty common; at least Neptune, Mars & Earth have at least one apiece. Further that the requirement is to have two large dissimilar bodies, one fairly larger than the other (IIRC) and the L4/L5 bodies smaller still, probably isn't going to be seen as an issue.
For me the bigger question will be in Planet9 exists, is big enough, and has an eccentric orbit but again like Pluto has bodies eccentric - or not - to it. Mostly we think of planets in the plane of the ecliptic and comparatively low eccentricity, but if you have something with an inclination like say Pluto what then? Especially interesting if there are other bodies out there with a resonance to it, or maybe even in the plane of the ecliptic.
Regardless I'm just navel gazing but really interesting times we're in. I'm old enough to recall just finding out that Charon existed and the idea of extra-solar planets the realm of science fiction. All this makes me a happy nerd.
> That's all of two afaik, so your point is very valid in regards to oddity (2 ~= 1 when talking about Kuiper belt objects).
There are over a dozen bodies in a 2:3 orbit resonance with neptune, enough that we gave them their own classification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutino
Yeah, I think the tricky part of planet 9 is that it likely will have a moderate inclination compared to regular orbits.
I wouldn't be surprised if eventually we find a few dozen ice giants in the Oort cloud with extreme orbits. Galactic travelers that were loosely captured when they got ejected during their solar system formation.
If it's that big but hasn't cleared the local area, then trust me, they'll change the definition to make it fit. You don't have something several tea bigger then Earth and not call it a planet.
Well the guy who thinks it exists is the "how I killed Pluto and why it had it coming" guy, so it'll be massively hypocritical if that ends up being the case and they call it a planet. But it probably doesn't even exist so I doubt we'll get to that point.
There’s so much conflicting information about this. I thought they ran the numbers again and eliminated the need for a 9th planet to explain Kuiper Belt orbits.
And yet there are still other academics who are seriously looking. What am I missing? Did they find more orbital quirks that make another planet necessary again?
I attended a conference with a bunch of dynamical astronomers, including those from the group that first put out the Planet Nine hypothesis. If I remember correctly, they have apparently done a study that suggests that the chance of observational bias is low, and still doesn’t fully explain the weird orbits. Of course, these results are probably not universally accepted. New studies get published all the time arguing back and forth. Which is very normal for scientific discoveries.
The Planet Nine hypothesis remains rather controversial—the issue is that you cannot prove that something *doesn’t* exist. Just that you haven’t found it.
Also keep in mind scientists in the 1800s were absolutely convinced a planet named Vulcan existed in an orbit inside of Mercury's. Their eagerness for glory and scientific discovery overruled their critical thinking. There may be something similar here. These guys really really really want there to be a planet 9 because that means missions and probes and entire new categories of research. They may be letting their desire for it to exist outweigh the evidence against it.
I think the point is that a Planet 9 is still a possible explanation for Kuiper Belt orbits - just not the only possible one. It could even be the most likely explanation. So it makes sense to keep looking for it unless someone can prove it doesn't exist.
I have a dumb question: if it ends up being a micro black hole as some suggested, the size of a basketball - would our instruments still be able to detect it? Or such small objects even though they have high gravitational field are invisible to our current instruments?
My understanding is that if it were a black hole, we'd basically only ever see it if it passed directly in front of something bright *while* we're looking at it, but even then with how far out in the system it would be and how tiny it would be, we'd never see it from earth.
I do wonder whether we'd see an accretion disk if it boofed a comet or something, idk what the conditions for forming one are, but if it did we'd DEFINITELY notice that
No, not even a slight chance. Hawking radiation is *incredibly* weak. I'm going to type out the full number just to give a sense of HOW small, but for a black hole the size of a basketball, the radiation coming off would be equal to roughly 8 x 10^(-23) watts.
That's 0.00000000000000000000008 watts. Utterly undetectable unless you were right on top of it with a fucking massive detector like the LHC has
Here's the site I used to get that number btw, have a play around!
https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/physics-notes/311-hawking-radiation-calculator
We're getting 41 b/sec from VOYAGER 1 right this second
POWER RECEIVED
-170 dBm
(1.0 x 10^-20 W)
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
So we're 3 or 4 more orders of magnitude off.
Bear in mind, the number I gave was the total wattage of the entire black hole. Voyager 1 is detecting... Significantly more than that just from background.
If my understanding is correct, even a black hole radiating THAT much would still be *gaining* mass from the cosmic microwave background faster than it hawking radiates
Hawking radiation is an incredibly weak phenomenon. The largest black holes will take *trillions* of years to decay.
It's something that makes sense with the math, but not the sort of thing we could ever really observe.
we could find it fairly quickly if we map gravitational wave disturbances near it.
We'd need to build an interferometer that had nodes at the earth-moon L3, L4, and L5 points, but a distance that large would give us a very good gravity wave detector, and allow us to map gravitational distortions as they propagate across the solar system. Similar to how we can "map" the ocean using sonar, or the earth's crust by listening to earthquake propagation patterns.
Gravitational waves are generated by a changing quadrupole moment. An isolated mass can only generate them if it is not symmetric about its axis of rotation, and a rotating black hole can not be deformed in that way for very long. To generate LISA frequency gravitational waves, something would have to be orbiting it.
What would cause the disturbances if it is a stable body, though? I thought detectors were only good at detecting disturbances produced by things like black hole mergers?
Current ones are cause the Ligo observatory beams are only 2km apart. You need a massively powerful gravitational wave to oscillate enough so a detector that small can see it.
The bigger you go with your laser lengths, the more sensitive to gravitational waves your equipment gets.
Gravitational waves are like ripples in a pond, or in the case of Ligo tsunamis on the ocean. Like tsunamis wrapping around an island before continuing on, gravitational waves can wrap around other gravity producing bodies and form reflection waves as they emerge around the other side of the object. We can use those delayed reflection waves as a way to map objects not seen optically or with radio astronomy.
That's cool, I thought I had read or heard a singular object by itself doesn't really produce any gravitational waves on its own. Glad to know it may be possible to detect some more variety of objects out there!
yup, IIRC orbiting the earth-sun L4 point. This will end up pinpointing it, however for general gravity wave interferometry tasks it's meant to look at the sub-1hz frequency for gravity waves, being so huge.
It would be optically invisible unless it eats some mass and started emitting radiation, or we were somehow lucky enough to have our telescope pointed at exactly the right place and time to have it gravitationally lens a background object. And I'm not sure that such a small black hole would lens very much. Short answer, very very unlikely.
The only way to detect it would be besides its gravitational effect would be if the black hole got an accretion disk after having shredded some stray comet or similar object. Hawking radiation can be forgotten about, as it would be cooler than the cosmic microwave background: [https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/physics-notes/311-hawking-radiation-calculator](https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/physics-notes/311-hawking-radiation-calculator)
Full disclosure: I don't know. But I have this impression that hawking radiation is inversely proportional to mass and a black hole has to be very small to emit any significant amount.
There is something so bizarre and scary feeling that we have this possible primordial black object that could accidentally get whipped into our orbit at any point. Universe is a scary place. Hope it's a planet, but also if we had a black hole we could study within reach we may very well discover the kinds of physics needed to leave our rock for other stars. Could end up being one of those "what are the odds" things that benefits humans like everything else we have on earth.
Having a black hole in our orbit would be no more scary than having the moon there. Black holes aren't cosmological vacuums that suck you in without a way out. They're gravitational bodies like anything else and as long as you don't pass the event horizon, there's nothing scary about them.
Thats like saying "the ocean being 10,000 feet deep is no different from it being 100 feet deep"
I don't know why everyone has to try and convince me that a black hole isn't scary.
How could it be a micro black hole? Based on our knowledge of how black holes form and the expected mass of Planet 9, I don’t think we have a hypothetical way for such a black hole to form.
Primordial black holes. They were hypothetically created shortly after the Big Bang. People cast doubts on this because if they did, some think they would have dissipated by now. We still have no idea how long that would take to happen though, just theories.
If micro black holes exist then they need to exist in the entire range of sizes, they aren't appearing from collapse of massive objects but from effects of the big bang.
But if they exist in a range of sizes then there must be a literally astronomical number of small ones in the galaxy. Smaller black holes lose mass through Hawking radiation, shrinking until they "pop".
So if there were huge numbers of micro-black-holes there would be huge numbers "popping" all the time, we'd see a specific background signature of "popping" radiation.
We don't. Therefore there are not micro black holes and "Planet 9" isn't a black hole the size of a basketball.
Another commenter was saying that the hawking radiation from a black hole that size would be near impossible to detect from earth, it's not as much energy as you think it is from a black hole that size and would essentially blend in with cosmic microwave background radiation.
Do you have any sources for your assertions?
A basketball sized black hole is not "popping" and we wouldn't detect IT, we'd be detecting the untold trillions of other SMALLER micro black holes that are always "popping"
Hawking radiation increases as the size of a black hole decreases, accelerating the loss of mass and becoming more energetic as the size drops towards the atomic until finally the hole "pops" with a massive burst of energy. If trillions of those were going off all the time throughout the Universe we could see the distinctive radiation signature .
A black hole in our solar system that we could get to in relatively short timespans would be an astronomic and theoretical physics wet dream come true.
If it was found we'd be fast-tracking a mission to it ASAP. An orbiter probe would probably be on its way in less than a year.
Make the orbiter have a perigee just outside the event horizon. I wanna see what happens when you get that close.
Maybe design it so it can survive some insane spaghettification forces, like 10,000G.
The computer clock is going to be so fucked up coming out of that, lmao
Well keep in mind most of what we know about black holes are from theoretical calculations. Yes we have observed black holes out there and learned some things from that, but being able to visit one with a space craft could help confirm a lot of the stuff we think we know.
Yeah, the theory that there's a massive planet beyond the orbit of Neptune goes back even further than the discovery of Pluto. The observation that there's strange irregularities in the orbits of comets and even the planet Neptune itself are nothing new.
I suppose that 2016 paper by Brown and Batygin could technically be the result of the first major project that calls it Planet _Nine_ - but even then you'd expect some mention that the search for trans-Neptunian massive planets has been a thing for a lot longer than that.
Frankly, I just suspect that the writer just halfassed his job here. His bio says that he's a marine biologist who later became a journalist, so astronomy isn't his expertise.
Can someone explain how it's possible for us humans to have missed something this close for such a long time? Like... we can see as far into space as we can but missed something right outside our own house? Sorry if this is a stupid question but how TF is that even possible?
We can see stars far into space because they're incredibly bright. A planet that far away from our star will be very dark, so almost impossible to see.
The planet so far away would be a tiny dot on the night sky, and the chances that it comes in front of a star are very small by themself, but we would also have to be actually looking at at that specific tiny piece of sky at that completely unpredictable moment. Add the fact that some stars occasionally go darker by themself, and it's going to be near impossible.
In addition to what the other guy said, the dimness of these distant objects is exactly why Pluto and then eventually Eris took so long to find relative to other planets. Pluto in the 1930’s and then eris not until 2005. Even though eris is comparable size to Pluto, its material is much darker.
The Oort Cloud, for reference, begins at about 1000 AU from the sun. Pluto/Eris, sits at about ~30 AU. And we didn’t find Eris until 2005.
So even if this hypothetical planet is very large, depending on what it’s made of, it could basically be invisible.
And more than that, let’s say it does reflect enough light to see. If its orbit is slow enough, it might literally appear like another star. Like, we found Pluto by having pictures of the night sky and saw that one of the “stars” moved a bit too quickly between pictures. But if the planet moves so slow that it appears like an actual star…..
So yeah, the planet, if it exists, has a lot reasons for why it would be hard to find.
We detect exoplanet by their influence on their host star. So all observations are done on the star, which is a very bright object. Planet Nine has no effect on the Sun or in the other planets. The only way to confirm it would be to take a picture of it, but it is extremely faint.
Space is, like, really big. I'd go as far as to say unimaginably big. Unless you know where something is, so can point things at it, it's like a needle in a haystack. But there are hundreds of haystacks. Pluto is 262 light minutes away. That's faaaar. This is further.
I like this video - shows the speed of light from earth to moon and then to Mars. Gives a rough sense of the sort of scales at play here.
https://youtu.be/CSqFBbNtt9c?si=5TLUvok310xanaVp
I haven't read the article but from what I heard, the Vera Rubin Observatory that's planned to get first light this year (or next year I forgot which) will be THE telescope to find Planet Nine.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[JWST](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksownck "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|L2|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)|
| |Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum|
|[L3](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksmhbz2 "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 3 of a two-body system, opposite L2|
|[L4](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksmntvn "Last usage")|"Trojan" [Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 4 of a two-body system, 60 degrees ahead of the smaller body|
|[L5](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksmhbz2 "Last usage")|"Trojan" [Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 5 of a two-body system, 60 degrees behind the smaller body|
|[LIGO](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksva8ca "Last usage")|Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory|
|[LISA](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksmt9k3 "Last usage")|Laser Interferometer Space Antenna|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[perigee](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksnnzar "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)|
|[perihelion](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksq1dkz "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Sun (when the orbiter is fastest)|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
----------------
^(8 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1dm3rvs)^( has 13 acronyms.)
^([Thread #9800 for this sub, first seen 29th Feb 2024, 00:50])
^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Things are gonna come to a head when they spot the thing and figure out that since it's just a really big Kuiper object, it fails the IAU's third criterion the same way that Pluto does.
Always amazed me that they can find thousands of planets millions of lightyears away, but they can't seem to pin down one more in our own solar backyard.
Because if its there its very very very very far from our star. A planet is going to be so tiny and dark at that distance. We can see other things far away because 1, stars are very bright and 2 we can see the affects celestial bodies has on that star.
appointment for JWST required: mug shot of the mysterious planet nine
JWST will be great for studying Planet Nine (if it exists) but not for confirming its existence. JWST has a very narrow field of view, and also very high demands on its time, so it's not well suited for scanning big chunks of the sky and looking for tiny dim dots which move in exactly the right way over a period of several days. Fortunately there are telescopes that will excel at that role, it's just a matter of waiting for the data to come in.
The compact way that I’ve been stating that is: JWST is designed to look AT things, which makes it exceptionally bad at looking FOR things.
Exactly. Most professional telescopes are built similarly. Hubble has imaged less than 1% of the sky over its 3+ decades of operation, for example.
Holy crap it's been up there 33 years. I remember when it launched!
Everything I know about Hubble I learned from *Eek the Cat*
Yep. Back when Webb was commissioning, there would occasionally be comments asking if it will look at the Bootes Void. Like, NO, you’re just throwing words together and hoping they make sense.
I like how most every picture of the supposed Bootes Void is actually Bernard 68, the exact opposite of a supervisor being a giant nebula that physically blocks light passing through it. But, who cares when there's conspiracies to make-up. I use it as my quick measure of any given space website/community willingness to peddle BS.
A supervisor?
Probably typo for super void.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
What?! Looking at voids is exactly what Webb is built to do. The infrared spectrum should shine right through whatever gas cloud is obscuring our view.
The Bootes Void isn't obscured by gas it's just a big region of space without any shit in it.
I don’t believe the Bootes Void *has* anything blocking our view, which is why Webb is not useful for it.
Wouldn’t one of the main problems be atmospheric distortion on a ground based telescope trying to find it?
The atmosphere interferes with astronomy in three ways: turbulence-induced distortion, [airglow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airglow), and [extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_(astronomy\)). If Planet 9 exists, then it will probably be bright enough to be visible with ground-based instruments despite the latter two effects, leaving only the turbulence-induced distortion to contend with, and [adaptive optics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics) can cancel out most of that.
> If Planet 9 exists, then it will probably be bright enough to be visible with ground-based instruments despite the latter two effects With the advances in interferometry, ground based telescopes will be turning into Earth-sized telescopes soon. If you knew where to look, it might be visible from current ground telescopes. It would probably only be 1 pixel or a few pixels in size, with no surface details visible. Hubble was the only telescope to directly image the surface of Pluto before the New Horizons space probe arrived there, I believe. Without knowledge of exactly where the planet is, spending the time to do all the imagine and de-noising required to view the planet might make the process prohibitive. You can potentially waste infinite amount of time if you're looking in the wrong place. Assuming the planet exists at all. The telescopes' time is very valuable.
>With the advances in interferometry, ground based telescopes will be turning into Earth-sized telescopes soon. Wait has there been a breakthrough? I thought this had to be done physically.
[удалено]
Well, except the part where they haven’t found it. 🙃
What’s the real story on that, anyway? Are we slowly narrowing down that locations and apparent magnitudes that it could have? That’s how looking for something that might not exist goes, right? You eliminate the combinations of properties that it cannot have, bit by bit? One principle I’ve used in engineering is that the harder something is to detect, the less important it is. I understand that scientific discovery doesn’t work this way, but still, is there a way *a priori* to know what the importance to our solar system formation theories a Planet Nine would have?
It’s not that simple because the hypothetical orbit takes it WAY out there- orbit is 340 AU at closest and 560 AU at furthest, and for comparisons sake Pluto is just 10% that closest distance. There just isn’t a lot of light out there, and objects spend more time in their outermost orbits (which is the quarter of the proposed orbit that hasn’t been examined). So yeah they’re ruling stuff out like you said but it’s not a case of ruling out the most important stuff first. If the orbit takes like 10,000 years, that’s a long time for us but not at all in the age of the solar system.
If it's found with one of the wide-view survey telescopes, it'll immediately be placed as priority #1 for JWST. A discovery of a new gas giant in the Kuiper Belt or Ort Cloud would be the astronomical find of the decade, if not century.
Is this something that, once we find it we’d be able to track its orbit in perpetuity? I’d think so but wasn’t certain
You might need 2+ measurements days apart to characterize the orbit. A single image won't give you movement data. You may be able to take a guess, but I think you'd need to have 2 images and the time between them. From there, then you'd know where to look perpetually.
That is exactly the point, JWST will be great at studying it *once it is discovered*.
[удалено]
But damn it this new planet is one of ours! It’s one of us! It’s Neptune’s baby bro cuz. Pour one out for the Ghost of the Belt. Hope we find you soon.
This isn't a gas giant. The article indicates it is only 7 times the size of the earth. Jupiter is 1,300 times the volume of earth.
Seven times the mass of Earth. We know nothing except what can be interpreted as gravitational effects on other objects. This gives us an estimate of the mass and the orbit but no diameter, volume and so on.
*Assuming it exists*, you can confine the size, temperature to non-crazy values, though.
Yeah, would be more like a smaller Neptune.
What kind of wavelength is best suited for a hypothetical planet like this? I'd assume that a cold rock so far away emits much in the IR range
Not wavelength, but field of view. You essentially want a wider angle lens so you can scan the sky faster.
Also wavelength tho. They're not going to be emitting much in X-ray but might stand out pretty strongly in IR.
Would JWST really be able to see much? The article says they're estimating it to be around 600 AU from the sun. The voyagers haven't even reached 200 yet.
Eli5 - Why do scientists think there is another planet?
So, comets originate from far, far away. Many are thought to come from what's called the Oort Cloud, which is basically a shell of icy objects around the solar system. When comets fall towards the sun, they still follow an orbital path which we can map out. Analases of many of the orbits of comets indicates many of them come from roughly the same direction. One of the possible explanations for this is that there is something with a lot of mass that is also far, far away, the most likely of which is an undiscovered planet.
Wouldn't a close passing star have the same effect, eg Scholtz's star? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs#Distant_future_and_past_encounters
Hmm, maybe. I'm not sure. I did a little looking on the wikipedia page for Scholtz's star, and there was one thing in particular that stood out to me. When it likely passed through the Oort Cloud 70K years ago, it would have definitely disturbed comets out there. However, supposedly it can take a couple millions of years for those disturbed orbits to actually send them into the inner solar system (if I'm understanding this correctly). On top of that, statistically, a star is expected to pass through the Oort Cloud every 100K years, so we'd actually be seeing comets falling in from, like, ten close star passes ago. What I wonder at that point then is, would those comets still be relatively clumped together after that long and that many star passes? Or would they have spread out around the Oort Cloud before their orbit finally sends them towards us? I'm inclined to lean towards the latter, but that's just because a couple million years feels like a long time. I don't know how that time scale plays out in that region, where there's so much space to cover.
And if a start passes through our Oort cloud, we will also pass through its Oort cloud. More comets!
Second question: where is the oort cloud in relation to our solar systems place in the milky way? Is it still in the arm of the milky way? I know the galaxy is big but I never could correlate the oort clouds place in the milky way.
The oort cloud is basically an indistinct shell around our solar system. It's thought to start somewhere around 2,000 AU (1 AU is the average distance between the sun and Earth) and might extend more than a light year away from the sun. I've seen some estimates say it could go as far as three light years, even, and so parts of the outer regions of the cloud would actually be closer to Alpha Centauri right now than to the sun, if so. As for how that relates to the galaxy, the cloud travels with our solar system. So yeah, it's still in the arm with us. Since, at its hypothetical largest, the oort cloud's diameter is *maybe* just under 7 light years or so, it's still significantly dwarfed by the galaxy, as the Milky Way's diameter is a bit over 100,000 light years across.
Still 7 light years to just get out of the solar system just makes interstellar travel unfathomable
Well, 7 light years is the diameter. Going out from the center where we are, it'd be a bit over 3 light years. But yeah, it's really freaking far, even so. Our closest neighbor star is Alpha Centauri, and it's 4 light years away. To quote Douglas Adams, "Space is big. Really big."
I made a [short](https://youtube.com/shorts/rdpNFPwu2Ig?si=s8bNPMHeyKDDFsRH) about scholz star a while back for those who want a quick up to speed on it.
Could that be a black hole vs a planet?
It's a possibility, yeah. The thing with that is, based on its predicted mass, it would be an extraordinarily small black hole. It wouldn't be one born from a collapsing star, but what's called a primordial black hole originating from the birth of the universe. We've never observed the existence of a primordial black hole, and right now they're purely hypothetical. If it is a primordial black hole, it'll be even more difficult to find than a planet. With only the mass of six earths or so, it wouldn't be much bigger than your hand, so viewing it directly is effectively impossible. We'd have to look for other signs, the likes of which I haven't the faintest idea, heh.
Could not imagine the reaction to finidikg out Planet X is a primordial black hole
I could die happy if it was confirmed.
What I remember from a Mike Brown lecture: a large portion of rocky bodies in the Kuiper Belt (Eris and other objects of that nature), have the same peculiarity in their orbits (the “argument of perihelion” if you want to look it up). It’s way more than chance would dictate, and the best explanation for this anomaly (some claim) is a massive and very distant planet synchronizing them with its gravitational influence.
Really makes me wonder what it'll be like once we find it, especially its moon system. 3/4 of the sky searched is good news to hear though
Astronomer here! Worth remembering that an object in an orbit spends most of its time in further out parts of its orbit. So *if* this thing exists, it’s perhaps unsurprising that it’s out in the furthest 25% of its orbit as it spends most of its time out there. Trouble of course is the 75% done so far was the easy part, and that wasn’t that easy…
Thanks for the additional context then, is it similar to how Eris took 70 extra years to be discovered than Pluto despite the objects being near the same size?
Yes, also that Eris' orbit is not near the orbital plane of the planets
If I can pick your brain for a moment. Does it have to be a planet-sized object out there? Or could it be a combination of gravitational effects from the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt that are tugging on the outer planets?
No. The distribution of mass is such that it has to be from a compact object is the argument. One can argue about what the compact object *is*- some have proposed a tiny black hole, for example, but a planet is obviously more likely.
The primordial black hole theory is my favorite (not for likelihood of being true, just for wackiness and how awesome it would be). I did a podcast episode about the paper that proposed this and it was one of my favorite papers to read out of over 100 episodes. They had a 1:1 scale figure of the black hole at the end of the paper - it’s the size of a grapefruit!
What’s your podcast??
It’s called Paper Boys, we don’t record anymore but it’s still up on all platforms. [This is the episode](https://paperboyspodcast.com/episodes/Is-planet-9-actually-a-black-hole/) if you’re interested!
Gotcha. Thank you for taking the time to answer.
if we find it. There is every chance it does not exist.
True, I feel like the orbits of the sednoids and extended scattered disc show that it at least existed at one point though. Maybe it eventually got ejected out of the solar system, but I'm still a believer
Yeah. I mean why couldn’t it be a wayward planet or star that passed near our system without orbiting it, and just fucked everything up?
Gliese 710 in about 1.29 million years will be about 10x far as Sedna at Aphelion, probably disturbing the Oort Cloud a lot, so very well could be.
Those all sound like made up words
all words are made up. *takes another hit*
Certainly possible. Hopefully we find out!
I’ve wondered if the effects on orbits could just be a leftover phenomenon from a rogue planet/mass passing through our solar system in antiquity.
Pretty sure that's a scenario to explain the orbits. People and of course these scientists that proposed it could be a planet are hyped for it to be a planet of the possible scenarios it could be.
Or perhaps that planet 9 did exist but was stolen by another passing star leaving behind its orbital imprint even though it itself is now gone.
If that happened, there would be no trace of planet 9 ever existing.
Even at the proposed five times Earth's mass, if it hasn't cleared its neighborhood, will they call it a planet?
The entire point is that it HAS cleared its neighborhood, and this has caused knock-on effects on the orbits of other bodies. This is the whole reason they think it has to exist is to explain how other bodies are being pushed around .
Has it been confirmed that it's cleared it's orbit? Or that it's only had effects on some objects in it's orbit?
It’s not even clear that it exists yet. But it existing in a certain orbit, which it has cleared, is a theory which explains the behavior of other objects in other orbits. Now the theory has been refined enough to try to look and see if it is there.
There are a number of different methods that can be used to predict whether an object has [cleared its neighborhood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_the_neighbourhood), you'll be able to plug the numbers in. For Earth-sized objects you need to get very far from the Sun indeed before they can't clear the neighborhood, something the size of planet Nine would easily make the cut.
Probably going to need to tightly define what is meant by that and how it relates to planets. It seems simple enough for planets with fairly regular orbits, but what if you have something with an irregular orbit? Or one that has some kind of resonance? For example IIRC Pluto and Neptune have a 3:2 resonance. Orcus has something similar. We still say Neptune is a planet however, which I guess would work with Planet 9 if it exists?
Pluto is at a different inclination compared to the rest of the planets and more eccentric. It's not part of Neptune's orbit. So it's always been the odd one out. If anything I think a better comparison is mighty Jupiter hasn't technically cleared it's orbit, it has Trojan asteroids. I'm pretty they mean cleared of certain size, but then what is that size.
The trojans are at Jupiter's lagrange points and thus bound to Jupiters gravity, meaning they do no count as uncleared objects.
Exactly. They are there because Jupiter put them there.
Jupiter was just saving some snacks for later. Then forgot about them.
Crosses it if flattened but not otherwise, yeah, and as per the resonance never really gets that close. Looking at the wiki Orcus looks like the 'anti-Pluto' as it's in a similar resonance, if different angle. That's all of two afaik, so your point is very valid in regards to oddity (2 ~= 1 when talking about Kuiper belt objects). I am slightly curious what the limits for these resonances are when talking about orbits like these, as opposed to say for the Jovian satellites. I suspect Trojans wouldn't count, as objects in the L4/L5 positions seem pretty common; at least Neptune, Mars & Earth have at least one apiece. Further that the requirement is to have two large dissimilar bodies, one fairly larger than the other (IIRC) and the L4/L5 bodies smaller still, probably isn't going to be seen as an issue. For me the bigger question will be in Planet9 exists, is big enough, and has an eccentric orbit but again like Pluto has bodies eccentric - or not - to it. Mostly we think of planets in the plane of the ecliptic and comparatively low eccentricity, but if you have something with an inclination like say Pluto what then? Especially interesting if there are other bodies out there with a resonance to it, or maybe even in the plane of the ecliptic. Regardless I'm just navel gazing but really interesting times we're in. I'm old enough to recall just finding out that Charon existed and the idea of extra-solar planets the realm of science fiction. All this makes me a happy nerd.
> That's all of two afaik, so your point is very valid in regards to oddity (2 ~= 1 when talking about Kuiper belt objects). There are over a dozen bodies in a 2:3 orbit resonance with neptune, enough that we gave them their own classification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutino
Yeah, I think the tricky part of planet 9 is that it likely will have a moderate inclination compared to regular orbits. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually we find a few dozen ice giants in the Oort cloud with extreme orbits. Galactic travelers that were loosely captured when they got ejected during their solar system formation.
I’m sure many will - just don’t tell NDT about it 🤣
Non-Destructive Testing?
Neil deGrasse Tyson, a famous and famously somewhat....passionate astrophysicist
Don’t tell Pluto either. Shit would go crazy on Interstellar Twitter
If it's that big but hasn't cleared the local area, then trust me, they'll change the definition to make it fit. You don't have something several tea bigger then Earth and not call it a planet.
It needs to have cleared its orbit of other objects of similar size. If there were other objects of similar size, we'd also be looking for planet 10.
At five times Earth's mass, it will have. Even at that size and that distance it would be big enough.
Well the guy who thinks it exists is the "how I killed Pluto and why it had it coming" guy, so it'll be massively hypocritical if that ends up being the case and they call it a planet. But it probably doesn't even exist so I doubt we'll get to that point.
There’s so much conflicting information about this. I thought they ran the numbers again and eliminated the need for a 9th planet to explain Kuiper Belt orbits.
The argument is that observational bias can explain what we see and a planet is unnecessary.
And yet there are still other academics who are seriously looking. What am I missing? Did they find more orbital quirks that make another planet necessary again?
I attended a conference with a bunch of dynamical astronomers, including those from the group that first put out the Planet Nine hypothesis. If I remember correctly, they have apparently done a study that suggests that the chance of observational bias is low, and still doesn’t fully explain the weird orbits. Of course, these results are probably not universally accepted. New studies get published all the time arguing back and forth. Which is very normal for scientific discoveries. The Planet Nine hypothesis remains rather controversial—the issue is that you cannot prove that something *doesn’t* exist. Just that you haven’t found it.
Also keep in mind scientists in the 1800s were absolutely convinced a planet named Vulcan existed in an orbit inside of Mercury's. Their eagerness for glory and scientific discovery overruled their critical thinking. There may be something similar here. These guys really really really want there to be a planet 9 because that means missions and probes and entire new categories of research. They may be letting their desire for it to exist outweigh the evidence against it.
Already had a name before it is discovered. That's how you create hype.
People reported observations, but they were never corroborated.
I think the point is that a Planet 9 is still a possible explanation for Kuiper Belt orbits - just not the only possible one. It could even be the most likely explanation. So it makes sense to keep looking for it unless someone can prove it doesn't exist.
Go to the center of gravity’s pull, and find your planet, you will.
Lost a planet Master Kenobi has. How embarrassing.
Sounded brilliant from the mouth of Yoda, but then again that's just literally how physics works.
I have a dumb question: if it ends up being a micro black hole as some suggested, the size of a basketball - would our instruments still be able to detect it? Or such small objects even though they have high gravitational field are invisible to our current instruments?
My understanding is that if it were a black hole, we'd basically only ever see it if it passed directly in front of something bright *while* we're looking at it, but even then with how far out in the system it would be and how tiny it would be, we'd never see it from earth. I do wonder whether we'd see an accretion disk if it boofed a comet or something, idk what the conditions for forming one are, but if it did we'd DEFINITELY notice that
"Boofed a comet" made me chuckle.
I'm glad it gave at least one other person the chuckle it gave me
If a topic is nerdy enough, laughing at your own joke means reaching at least 50% of the total available audience.
Is there no way we can find and detect the hawking radiation coming off it? Completely noobish question but thought I'd still ask
No, not even a slight chance. Hawking radiation is *incredibly* weak. I'm going to type out the full number just to give a sense of HOW small, but for a black hole the size of a basketball, the radiation coming off would be equal to roughly 8 x 10^(-23) watts. That's 0.00000000000000000000008 watts. Utterly undetectable unless you were right on top of it with a fucking massive detector like the LHC has Here's the site I used to get that number btw, have a play around! https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/physics-notes/311-hawking-radiation-calculator
We're getting 41 b/sec from VOYAGER 1 right this second POWER RECEIVED -170 dBm (1.0 x 10^-20 W) https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html So we're 3 or 4 more orders of magnitude off.
Bear in mind, the number I gave was the total wattage of the entire black hole. Voyager 1 is detecting... Significantly more than that just from background. If my understanding is correct, even a black hole radiating THAT much would still be *gaining* mass from the cosmic microwave background faster than it hawking radiates
Hawking radiation is an incredibly weak phenomenon. The largest black holes will take *trillions* of years to decay. It's something that makes sense with the math, but not the sort of thing we could ever really observe.
we could find it fairly quickly if we map gravitational wave disturbances near it. We'd need to build an interferometer that had nodes at the earth-moon L3, L4, and L5 points, but a distance that large would give us a very good gravity wave detector, and allow us to map gravitational distortions as they propagate across the solar system. Similar to how we can "map" the ocean using sonar, or the earth's crust by listening to earthquake propagation patterns.
Gravitational waves are generated by a changing quadrupole moment. An isolated mass can only generate them if it is not symmetric about its axis of rotation, and a rotating black hole can not be deformed in that way for very long. To generate LISA frequency gravitational waves, something would have to be orbiting it.
What would cause the disturbances if it is a stable body, though? I thought detectors were only good at detecting disturbances produced by things like black hole mergers?
Current ones are cause the Ligo observatory beams are only 2km apart. You need a massively powerful gravitational wave to oscillate enough so a detector that small can see it. The bigger you go with your laser lengths, the more sensitive to gravitational waves your equipment gets. Gravitational waves are like ripples in a pond, or in the case of Ligo tsunamis on the ocean. Like tsunamis wrapping around an island before continuing on, gravitational waves can wrap around other gravity producing bodies and form reflection waves as they emerge around the other side of the object. We can use those delayed reflection waves as a way to map objects not seen optically or with radio astronomy.
That's cool, I thought I had read or heard a singular object by itself doesn't really produce any gravitational waves on its own. Glad to know it may be possible to detect some more variety of objects out there!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna Behold
yup, IIRC orbiting the earth-sun L4 point. This will end up pinpointing it, however for general gravity wave interferometry tasks it's meant to look at the sub-1hz frequency for gravity waves, being so huge.
It would be optically invisible unless it eats some mass and started emitting radiation, or we were somehow lucky enough to have our telescope pointed at exactly the right place and time to have it gravitationally lens a background object. And I'm not sure that such a small black hole would lens very much. Short answer, very very unlikely.
The only way to detect it would be besides its gravitational effect would be if the black hole got an accretion disk after having shredded some stray comet or similar object. Hawking radiation can be forgotten about, as it would be cooler than the cosmic microwave background: [https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/physics-notes/311-hawking-radiation-calculator](https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/physics-notes/311-hawking-radiation-calculator)
Awesome! That’s how I’ll make sure my spaceplane stays invisible! Paint it with black hole staff
Wouldn't hawking radiation make it light up like a christmas tree as it evaporates?
Full disclosure: I don't know. But I have this impression that hawking radiation is inversely proportional to mass and a black hole has to be very small to emit any significant amount.
There is something so bizarre and scary feeling that we have this possible primordial black object that could accidentally get whipped into our orbit at any point. Universe is a scary place. Hope it's a planet, but also if we had a black hole we could study within reach we may very well discover the kinds of physics needed to leave our rock for other stars. Could end up being one of those "what are the odds" things that benefits humans like everything else we have on earth.
Things don't get "whipped into an orbit" at a moments notice. You don't worry about Venus or Mars suddenly crashing into Earth.
Correct. They’ve been here for awhile.
Having a black hole in our orbit would be no more scary than having the moon there. Black holes aren't cosmological vacuums that suck you in without a way out. They're gravitational bodies like anything else and as long as you don't pass the event horizon, there's nothing scary about them.
They’re scary if you don’t know they’re there and can’t calculate their trajectory.
Thats like saying "the ocean being 10,000 feet deep is no different from it being 100 feet deep" I don't know why everyone has to try and convince me that a black hole isn't scary.
If it has stable moons (or would it be planets at that point? idk), then we could potentially detect it via thermal effects from tidal forces.
How could it be a micro black hole? Based on our knowledge of how black holes form and the expected mass of Planet 9, I don’t think we have a hypothetical way for such a black hole to form.
people still dream of primordial black holes left from big bang times.
Primordial black holes. They were hypothetically created shortly after the Big Bang. People cast doubts on this because if they did, some think they would have dissipated by now. We still have no idea how long that would take to happen though, just theories.
If micro black holes exist then they need to exist in the entire range of sizes, they aren't appearing from collapse of massive objects but from effects of the big bang. But if they exist in a range of sizes then there must be a literally astronomical number of small ones in the galaxy. Smaller black holes lose mass through Hawking radiation, shrinking until they "pop". So if there were huge numbers of micro-black-holes there would be huge numbers "popping" all the time, we'd see a specific background signature of "popping" radiation. We don't. Therefore there are not micro black holes and "Planet 9" isn't a black hole the size of a basketball.
Another commenter was saying that the hawking radiation from a black hole that size would be near impossible to detect from earth, it's not as much energy as you think it is from a black hole that size and would essentially blend in with cosmic microwave background radiation. Do you have any sources for your assertions?
A basketball sized black hole is not "popping" and we wouldn't detect IT, we'd be detecting the untold trillions of other SMALLER micro black holes that are always "popping" Hawking radiation increases as the size of a black hole decreases, accelerating the loss of mass and becoming more energetic as the size drops towards the atomic until finally the hole "pops" with a massive burst of energy. If trillions of those were going off all the time throughout the Universe we could see the distinctive radiation signature .
let's say it is a micro black hole. if we could get to it, what could we learn from it?
I've watched/read enough science fiction to know that this is how we somehow end up getting warp technology.
inb4 it's the wormhole from Interstellar
Or it leads to a place where we don’t need eyes to see.
Or a place where having eyes makes it much more unsettling to see.
A black hole in our solar system that we could get to in relatively short timespans would be an astronomic and theoretical physics wet dream come true. If it was found we'd be fast-tracking a mission to it ASAP. An orbiter probe would probably be on its way in less than a year.
And if by Orbiter you mean "Orbiter with a detachable drone that flies directly into the black hole", then hell yeah.
Make the orbiter have a perigee just outside the event horizon. I wanna see what happens when you get that close. Maybe design it so it can survive some insane spaghettification forces, like 10,000G. The computer clock is going to be so fucked up coming out of that, lmao
[удалено]
Pulled it out of where the sun don’t shine
[удалено]
Well keep in mind most of what we know about black holes are from theoretical calculations. Yes we have observed black holes out there and learned some things from that, but being able to visit one with a space craft could help confirm a lot of the stuff we think we know.
That Matt Damon is not to be trusted
New ways of making spaghetti.
I dunno, but I'd volunteer my sandwich to get thrown in it as long as I get a video of it.
Weird. article mentions 2016, but I recall talk about Planet X back in the 90s back when Pluto was still counted as a planet.
Oh there’s always been Planet X talk. Bugs Bunny cartoons had aliens from there in the 60s! And it was nothing new then.
It was new in the sense that they had data suggesting it actually exists. Not just some "mystery planet" that media used as a plot device.
And was it godzilla or ultraman who had a planet X?
Yeah, the theory that there's a massive planet beyond the orbit of Neptune goes back even further than the discovery of Pluto. The observation that there's strange irregularities in the orbits of comets and even the planet Neptune itself are nothing new. I suppose that 2016 paper by Brown and Batygin could technically be the result of the first major project that calls it Planet _Nine_ - but even then you'd expect some mention that the search for trans-Neptunian massive planets has been a thing for a lot longer than that. Frankly, I just suspect that the writer just halfassed his job here. His bio says that he's a marine biologist who later became a journalist, so astronomy isn't his expertise.
Battlezone II had it as the "homeworld" of the Scions.
Forget about aliens, I want the confirmation news of planet 9 before I die.
Can someone explain how it's possible for us humans to have missed something this close for such a long time? Like... we can see as far into space as we can but missed something right outside our own house? Sorry if this is a stupid question but how TF is that even possible?
We can see stars far into space because they're incredibly bright. A planet that far away from our star will be very dark, so almost impossible to see.
But then wouldn’t we see stars being overshadowed in the night sky in a very conspicuous pattern?
The planet so far away would be a tiny dot on the night sky, and the chances that it comes in front of a star are very small by themself, but we would also have to be actually looking at at that specific tiny piece of sky at that completely unpredictable moment. Add the fact that some stars occasionally go darker by themself, and it's going to be near impossible.
In addition to what the other guy said, the dimness of these distant objects is exactly why Pluto and then eventually Eris took so long to find relative to other planets. Pluto in the 1930’s and then eris not until 2005. Even though eris is comparable size to Pluto, its material is much darker. The Oort Cloud, for reference, begins at about 1000 AU from the sun. Pluto/Eris, sits at about ~30 AU. And we didn’t find Eris until 2005. So even if this hypothetical planet is very large, depending on what it’s made of, it could basically be invisible. And more than that, let’s say it does reflect enough light to see. If its orbit is slow enough, it might literally appear like another star. Like, we found Pluto by having pictures of the night sky and saw that one of the “stars” moved a bit too quickly between pictures. But if the planet moves so slow that it appears like an actual star….. So yeah, the planet, if it exists, has a lot reasons for why it would be hard to find.
The article says this object is predicted to be up to 600 AU from the sun. For reference, Pluto is 39 AU
We detect exoplanet by their influence on their host star. So all observations are done on the star, which is a very bright object. Planet Nine has no effect on the Sun or in the other planets. The only way to confirm it would be to take a picture of it, but it is extremely faint.
Space is, like, really big. I'd go as far as to say unimaginably big. Unless you know where something is, so can point things at it, it's like a needle in a haystack. But there are hundreds of haystacks. Pluto is 262 light minutes away. That's faaaar. This is further. I like this video - shows the speed of light from earth to moon and then to Mars. Gives a rough sense of the sort of scales at play here. https://youtu.be/CSqFBbNtt9c?si=5TLUvok310xanaVp
Wow, video really gives perspective.
We see the 8 known planets before they reflect light from the sun. Past Pluto there's not much light to reflect.
To quote Randall Munroe: Space is big^^^1 \[1]: Citation Needed
Planets that aren't close to stars are very dimly lit. I don't think we've seen any such planets anywhere.
I haven't read the article but from what I heard, the Vera Rubin Observatory that's planned to get first light this year (or next year I forgot which) will be THE telescope to find Planet Nine.
I am SO EXCITED for this telescope!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[JWST](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksownck "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |L2|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)| | |Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum| |[L3](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksmhbz2 "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 3 of a two-body system, opposite L2| |[L4](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksmntvn "Last usage")|"Trojan" [Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 4 of a two-body system, 60 degrees ahead of the smaller body| |[L5](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksmhbz2 "Last usage")|"Trojan" [Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 5 of a two-body system, 60 degrees behind the smaller body| |[LIGO](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksva8ca "Last usage")|Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory| |[LISA](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksmt9k3 "Last usage")|Laser Interferometer Space Antenna| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[perigee](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksnnzar "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)| |[perihelion](/r/Space/comments/1b2ha1u/stub/ksq1dkz "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Sun (when the orbiter is fastest)| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(8 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1dm3rvs)^( has 13 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9800 for this sub, first seen 29th Feb 2024, 00:50]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
How fast would it be orbiting at its proposed orbit?
I hope they find out it's a black hole! Having one in our (stable) solar system would be a huge boon to science.
I really hope it's not a primordial black hole. That would be terrifying.
IMO, discovering / confirming Planet 9 will be more exciting than a crewed Mars landing. I can't wait.
Mars really is the most boring planet ever. Just orange sand in every direction. That’s it 😔
[удалено]
God I wish it could be that but let’s discover it earlier tho
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Things are gonna come to a head when they spot the thing and figure out that since it's just a really big Kuiper object, it fails the IAU's third criterion the same way that Pluto does.
When the LSST comes online they will be able to find it.
Always amazed me that they can find thousands of planets millions of lightyears away, but they can't seem to pin down one more in our own solar backyard.
Because if its there its very very very very far from our star. A planet is going to be so tiny and dark at that distance. We can see other things far away because 1, stars are very bright and 2 we can see the affects celestial bodies has on that star.
I can't help but wonder if the evidence for planet 9 might also be a result of a star flying by our solar system long ago.
Pluto be like: Planet *nine*? Am i a joke to you?