- *
THE BIG WOBBLE - 12 Oct 2020
Astronomers are so sure of the 10th planet they think there is nothing left to do but to name it." Ray T. Reynolds, NASA (NASA press release, 1992). NASA have nicknamed it "Planet Nine," could have a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbit about 20 times farther from the Sun on average than Neptune. - *
DOES THE SUN HAVE A TWIN? - OUR SOLAR SYSTEM MAY HAVE ONCE BEEN A BINARY STAR
SYSTEM - Aug 20, 2020
A twin of the Sun, formed billions of years ago as the Solar System took shape, could help explain movements of bodies at the outer reaches of our family of planets, a new study suggests. Astronomers from The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics believe that if a ninth planet is discovered beyond the orbit of Pluto, its movements could help us better understand how the Sun and our planetary neighborhood formed. - * COULD PLANET 9 BE A PRIMORDIAL BLACK HOLE? - Aug 24, 2020
- IS VULCAN A CHTHONIAN PLANET THAT HAS NOT HAD ITS GASEOUS ATMOSPHERE
STRIPPED AWAY?
-
Chthonian planet - Wikipedia
These exoplanets are orbiting very close to their stars and could be the remnant cores of evaporated gas giants or brown dwarfs. If cores are massive enough they could remain compressed for billions of years despite losing the atmospheric mass.
As there is a lack of gaseous "hot-super-Earths" between 2.2 and 3.8 Earth-radii exposed to over 650 Earth incident flux, it is assumed that exoplanets below such radii exposed to such stellar fluxes could have had their envelopes stripped by photoevaporation.
HD 209458 b is an example of a gas giant that is in the process of having its atmosphere stripped away, though it will not become a chthonian planet for many billions of years, if ever. A similar case would be Gliese 436b, which has already lost 10% of its atmosphere.
Possible examples
Transit-timing variation measurements indicate for example that Kepler-52b, Kepler-52c and Kepler-57b have maximum-masses between 30 and 100 times the mass of Earth (although the actual masses could be much lower); with radii about 2 Earth radii[2], they might have densities larger than that of an iron planet of the same size. These exoplanets are orbiting very close to their stars and could be the remnant cores of evaporated gas giants or brown dwarfs. If cores are massive enough they could remain compressed for billions of years despite losing the atmospheric mass.
As there is a lack of gaseous "hot-super-Earths" between 2.2 and 3.8 Earth-radii exposed to over 650 Earth incident flux, it is assumed that exoplanets below such radii exposed to such stellar fluxes could have had their envelopes stripped by photoevaporation.[5]
HD 209458 b is an example of a gas giant that is in the process of having its atmosphere stripped away, though it will not become a chthonian planet for many billions of years, if ever. A similar case would be Gliese 436b, which has already lost 10% of its atmosphere. -
HD 209458 b, also given the nickname Osiris,[2] is an exoplanet that orbits
the solar analog HD 209458 in the constellation Pegasus, some 159 light-years
from the Solar System. The radius of the planet's orbit is 7 million kilometres,
about 0.047 astronomical units, or one eighth the radius of Mercury's orbit.
This small radius results in a year that is 3.5 Earth days long and an estimated
surface temperature of about 1,000 °C (about 1,800 °F). Its mass is 220 times that of Earth (0.69 Jupiter masses) and its volume is some 2.5 times greater than that of Jupiter. The high mass and volume of HD 209458 b indicate that it is a
gas giant.
HD 209458 b represents a number of milestones in extraplanetary research. It was the first of many categories:- a transiting extrasolar planet
- the first planet detected through more than one method
- an extrasolar planet known to have an atmosphere
- an extrasolar planet observed to have an evaporating hydrogen atmosphere
- an extrasolar planet found to have an atmosphere containing oxygen and carbon
- one of the first two extrasolar planets to be directly observed spectroscopically
- the first extrasolar gas giant to have its superstorm measured
- the first planet to have its orbital speed measured, determining its mass directly.
In July, 2014, NASA announced finding very dry atmospheres on HD 209458 b and two other exoplanets (HD 189733 b and WASP-12b) orbiting Sun-like stars. - Gliese 436 b
In 2019, USA Today reported that the exoplanet's burning ice continued to have scientists "flabbergasted." Its main constituent was initially predicted to be hot "ice" in various exotic high-pressure forms,[13][15] which would remain solid despite the high temperatures, because of the planet's gravity. The planet could have formed further from its current position, as a gas giant, and migrated inwards with the other gas giants. As it arrived in range, the star would have blown off the planet's hydrogen layer via coronal mass ejection.
However, when the radius became better known, ice alone was not enough to account for it. An outer layer of hydrogen and helium up to ten percent in mass would be needed on top of the ice to account for the observed planetary radius. This obviates the need for an ice core. Alternatively, the planet may be a super-earth.
-
Chthonian planet - Wikipedia
- * ELUSIVE 'PLANET NINE' THOUGHT TO BE LURKING IN THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM MAY ACTUALLY BE A GRAPEFRUIT-SIZED BLACK HOLE - AND A NEW TELESCOPE WILL HELP ASTRONOMERS CONFIRM THE THEORY - 13 July, 2020
- *
BEYOND PLUTO: THE HUNT FOR OUR SOLAR SYSTEM'S NEW NINTH PLANET - 28 JUN
2020
You’d think that if you found the first evidence that a planet larger than the Earth was lurking unseen in the furthest reaches of our solar system, it would be a big moment. It would make you one of only a small handful of people in all of history to have discovered such a thing.
But for astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, it was a much quieter affair. "It wasn’t like there was a eureka moment," he says. "The evidence just built up slowly."
He’s a master of understatement. Ever since he and his collaborator Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University, first published their suspicions about the unseen planet in 2014, the evidence has only continued to grow. Yet when asked how convinced he is that the new world, which he calls Planet X (though many other astronomers call it Planet 9), is really out there, Sheppard will only say: "I think it’s more likely than unlikely to exist." - *
PLANET X: THE RETURN OF OUR SUN'S MYSTERIOUS COMPANION - June 13, 2020
Beyond Belief TV Series Special…Something massive is tugging on the planets of our solar system, and astrophysicists tell us, it is getting closer. Jason Martell deciphers clues left by ancient cultures which reveal that the sun is but one star in a binary system. - * WHY ASTRONOMERS NOW DOUBT THERE IS AN UNDISCOVERED 9TH PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM - May 26, 2020
- *
COULD THEORIZED PLANET 9 BE A PRIMORDIAL BLACK HOLE? RESEARCHERS PROPOSE METHOD
TO FIND OUT - MAY 25, 2020
If Planet Nine exists, it's a bit odd that we haven't found it. Several sky surveys are sensitive enough to see a planet of its size. It's possible that the planet is more distant than we expect, or has a lower albedo, but observations are starting to rule some of these out. There is, however a much more radical idea. What if Planet Nine hasn't been observed because it isn't a planet? What if it is a primordial black hole? - * DOES PLANET NINE ACTUALLY EXIST? MAYBE NOT SAY ASTRONOMERS - 25 May 2020
-
IF PLANET NINE IS A TINY BLACK HOLE, THIS IS HOW TO FIND IT - May 7,
2020
Our best bet could be to send a swarm of nanospacecraft - propelled from Earth by a powerful laser - to take a look.
Now, astronomers have a similar puzzle on their hands. For some time, they have been gathering evidence that a massive planet must be orbiting the sun at a distance of around 500 astronomical units, or 70 billion kilometers.
But there is certainly motivation to try. The discovery of a black hole orbiting the sun would be quite a prize for whoever undertook such a task. Indeed, it may be the last chance to discover a significant new body orbiting our star. - * PLANET NINE IS A MIRAGE ACCORDING TO EXPERTS WHO SAY IT IS A SPRAWLING DISK OF ICY DEBRIS AND NOT AN UNSEEN PLANET - May 6, 2020
- * NOT A PLANET, BUT NOT A STAR - ALL ABOUT BROWN DWARFS - Feb 03, 2020.
-
PLANET 9 MAY HAVE ALREADY BEEN FOUND, STUDY SUGGESTS - Nov. 11, 2019
Since its launch in April 2018, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has found a number of exoplanets, including a so-called "missing link" and an exoplanet with three suns. But a new study suggests the $200 million satellite may have also discovered the mysterious Planet 9.
Since TESS is able to detect objects at approximately 5 pixel displacement and Planet Nine "has an expected magnitude of 19 < V < 24," the possibility is raised "that TESS could discover it!" the authors wrote in the study. - *
IS PLANET 9 A BLACK HOLE? WITH DR. JAKUB SCHOLTZ AND DR. JAMES UNWIN - Oct
31, 2019
What if Planet 9 is a Primordial Black Hole? - 24 Sep 2019
We highlight that the anomalous orbits of Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) and an excess in microlensing events in the 5-year OGLE dataset can be simultaneously explained by a new population of astrophysical bodies with mass several times that of Earth (M?). We take these objects to be primordial black holes (PBHs) and point out the orbits of TNOs would be altered if one of these PBHs was captured by the Solar System, inline with the Planet 9 hypothesis. Capture of a free floating planet is a leading explanation for the origin of Planet 9 and we show that the probability of capturing a PBH instead is comparable. The observational constraints on a PBH in the outer Solar System significantly differ from the case of a new ninth planet. This scenario could be confirmed through annihilation signals from the dark matter microhalo around the PBH.
- * WHAT IF PLANET 9 WAS A PRIMORDIAL BLACK HOLE? COULD WE DETECT IT? - (Night Sky News October 2019) - Oct. 23, 2019
- * IS PLANET NINE STILL OUT THERE? DiscoverMagazine.com September/October issue
- * PLANET NINE COULD BE A PRIMORDIAL BLACK HOLE, NEW RESEARCH SUGGESTS - Sep 30, 2019
- * ENIGMATIC PLANET X AT LEAST 45 BILLION KM AWAY FROM SUN MIGHT BE DENSE BLACK HOLE, PHYSICISTS SAY - 29.09.2019
- * PLANET NINE: HOW WE'LL FIND THE SOLAR SYSTEM’S MISSING PLANET - Sep. 23, 2019
- *
DOES PLANET 9 EXIST? - Sep 13, 2019
A planet has been predicted to orbit the sun with a period of 10,000 years, a mass 5x that of Earth on a highly elliptical and inclined orbit. What evidence supports the existence of such a strange object at the edge of our solar system?
Huge thanks to:
Prof. Konstantin Batygin, Caltech
Prof. David Jewitt, UCLA
I had heard about Planet 9 for a long time but I wondered what sort of evidence could support the bold claim: a planet at the very limits of our ability to detect one, so far out that its period is over 60 times that of Neptune. The planet 9 hypothesis helps explain clustering of orbits of distant Kuiper belt objects. It also explains how some of these objects have highly inclined orbits - up to 90 degrees relative to the plane of the solar system. Some are orbiting in reverse. Plus their orbits are removed from the orbit of Neptune, the logical option for a body that could have ejected them out so far. The fact that the perihelion is so far out suggests another source of gravity was essential for their peculiar orbits. - *
PLANET NINE: ASTRONOMER ALAN DUFFY ON THE SEARCH FOR MEGA WORLD - June 20,
2019
An enormous and undiscovered planet is making waves in our neighbourhood and astronomers are frantically trying to find it.
Astronomers across the globe are searching for an enormous undiscovered world dubbed Planet Nine, which could change everything we think we know about the solar system.
They know it's out there, such is its size — potentially 10 times bigger than earth — and its powerful gravitational pull.
But Planet Nine is proving impossible to find, demonstrating how much we still don't know about what's in our own world's backyard. -
PLANET NINE AND SOLAR SYSTEM MYTHS - May 10, 2019
* Eugene Bagashov: Planet Nine And Solar System Myths - May 8, 2019 - * PLANET 9 BREAKTHROUGH! HIDDEN SUPER SIZED PLANET MAY BE FOUND SOON, BIZARRE SOLAR ECLIPSE - Mar 9, 2019
- *
A MAP TO PLANET NINE: HUNTING OUR SOLAR SYSTEM'S MOST DISTANT WORLDS
- Mar 6, 2019
Last December, a trio of astronomers set the record for the most distant object ever discovered in the solar system. Because the small world is located about three times farther from the sun than Pluto, the researchers dubbed it Farout. Now, not to be outdone (even by themselves), the same group of boundary pushers have announced the discovery of an even more far-flung object. And since the new find sits a couple billion miles farther out than Farout, the team has fittingly nicknamed it Farfarout.
The discovery of Farfarout, which is about 140 astronomical units from the sun (where 1 AU equals the distance between Earth and the sun), is quite impressive by its own right. But Farfarout and its nearer sibling are not just record-breakers, they could be trend-setters. Depending on how their orbits shake out, the two may add to a growing pile of evidence that hints at the existence of an elusive super-Earth lurking in the fringes of our solar system: Planet Nine. - AN ANCIENT STELLAR FLYBY COULD HAVE PUT PLANET NINE INTO ITS DISTANT ORBIT - March 4, 2019
- d*d PLANET 9 HYPOTHESIS GETS A BOOST - March 3, 2019
- *
NEW EVIDENCE SUPPORTS EXISTENCE OF HYPOTHETICAL PLANET NINE - 02.28.2019
* Evidence Of A Ninth Planet - Jan 20, 2016 - *
MORE SUPPORT FOR PLANET NINE - FEBRUARY 27, 2019
"My favorite characteristic of the Planet Nine hypothesis is that it is observationally testable," Batygin says. "The prospect of one day seeing real images of Planet Nine is absolutely electrifying. Although finding Planet Nine astronomically is a great challenge, I'm very optimistic that we will image it within the next decade." - *
DOES PLANET NINE EXIST? FEATURING DR. KONSTANTIN BATYGIN - Feb 23, 2019
An exploration into the concept that a ninth, undiscovered planet may lurk in the outer solar system. We speak with Dr. Konstanin Batygin on the search for planet 9, and how he and his partner Mike Brown might discover it within only the next year or two.
Astronomers Discover Solar System’s Most Distant Object, Nicknamed 'FarFarOut' - Feb. 21, 2019
Like Farout, FarFarOut's orbit is not yet known; until it is, it's uncertain whether it will stay far enough away from the rest of the solar system to be free of the giant planets' gravitational tug. If it does, the two could join another of Sheppard’s recent distant discoveries, "the Goblin," which ovetails with projections of the Planet Nine’s possible orbit.
It will take several years to determine the orbits of Farout and FarFarOut, and whether they will provide more clues. - * STAR-HOP FROM ORION TO PLANET 9 - January 28, 2019
- *
MASSIVE DISK OF TRANS-NEPTUNIAN OBJECTS CASTS DOUBT ON PLANET NINE - Jan 23,
2019
In 2016, Caltech astronomers showed that six distant solar system objects (2007 TG422, 2013 RF98, 2004 VN112, 2012 VP113, 2012 GB174 and a minor planet called Sedna) possessed orbital features indicating they were affected by the gravity of an as-yet-undetected planet, nicknamed Planet Nine. According to University of Cambridge researcher Antranik Sefilian and American University of Beirut’s Professor Jihad Touma, the strange orbits of those objects can instead be explained by the combined gravitational force of a disk of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with a combined mass as much as 10 times that of Earth. - * NEW STUDY CASTS DOUBT ON PLANET NINE HYPOTHESIS - January 22, 2019
- * IS PLANET NINE JUST A RING OF ICY BODIES? - January 22, 2019
- * DOES 'PLANET NINE' EXIST? ASTRONOMERS SAY AN UNSEEN DISK OF ICY SPACE ROCKS MAY EXPLAIN THINGS - January 22, 2019
- * MYSTERY ORBITS IN OUTERMOST REACHES OF SOLAR SYSTEM NOT CAUSED BY ‘PLANET NINE’, SAY RESEARCHERS - 21 Jan 2019
- * = Comment added, d*d = Delayed Comment Deletion, Evidence offered that Vulcan/Planet Nine may have been found by IRAS in 1983 and the find suppressed. See Vulcan's Orbital Parameters (Via Blavatsky's Theosophy & Astronomer Forbes)
- * PLANET NINE MAY NOT EXIST, SAY SCIENTISTS, AFTER FINDING SIMPLER EXPLANATION - 21 Jan 2019
- *
ASTRONOMERS FIND SUN'S LOST COMPANION, GIANT WAVES ENGULF BUILDINGS,
CALIFORNIA'S FIERY APOCALYPSE - Nov. 21, 2018
Skywatch Media News
* Signs Of Planet X Location As Scientists Reveal Evidence Of Wandering Dwarf Star - Nov. 13, 2018
* Ground Shaking Meteor Explosion Over South Africa, Violent Cosmic Collision In The Asteroid Belt - Jan. 23, 2019 - * MYSTERY ORBITS IN OUTERMOST REACHES OF SOLAR SYSTEM NOT CAUSED BY 'PLANET NINE' - January 21, 2019
- * PLANET NINE MAY NOT EXIST, SO WHAT IS BEHIND SOLAR SYSTEM CHAOS? SHOCK NEW THEORY EMERGES - January 21, 2019
- POPE'S ASTRONOMER SAYS NO CONFLICT BETWEEN FAITH AND SCIENCE - 23 Dec. 2018
-
MORE EVIDENCE THAT PLANET 9X — AT LEAST SEVEN TIMES EARTH’S MASS — IS HIDDEN IN
KUIPER BELT! -Oct. 30, 2018
"It's seven times the mass of our planet and it’s 500 times further away from the sun than Earth." - *
NEW DISCOVERY STRENGTHENS THE CASE FOR ELUSIVE PLANET 9 - Oct. 3, 2018
The biggest problem with Planet 9 is that we haven’t found it. The biggest problem for those who want to argue it doesn’t exist is that we keep finding evidence it does. The most recent piece — rock? — of evidence is 2015 TG387, colloquially known as “The Goblin.” What makes the Goblin so interesting is what it doesn’t do: namely, interact with other planets in the solar system. It never comes close enough to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune to be gravitationally influenced by them. Yet its orbit around the solar system shows that it’s clearly being influenced by something. - DWARF PLANET TG387 POINTS TO LARGER
PLANET X IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM - Oct. 2, 2018
Warmkessel's Comment
Note that the orbital period of 2015 TG387 is in an 8:1 orbital resonance with Forbes' Planet (5000 +/- (200) years) /Vulcan's (4969.0 +/- 11.5 years) orbital period:
40000/5000 = 8.000 [Forbes Planet: an exact integer value. Barry W.]
40000/4969 = 8.050 [Vulcan: close to an integer value. - Barry W.]
Both suggest that 2015 TG387 is in a 8:1 orbital resonance with Vulcan.
If so, future refinements of 2015 TG387's orbit may approach 39792 years.
Vulcan Revealed
Vulcan's Orbital Parameters (Via Blavatsky's Theosophy & Astronomer Forbes)The chances of these three vectors fortuitously [accidently] falling in the same orbit plane inclination with such a tiny angular uncertainty as Vulcan's is about one chance in 250 [1/250 or 0.4 %]. Put another way, there are about 249 chances out of 250 [99.6%] that the body described in Table 2 is Blavatsky's 'Vulcan'. Vulcan/Planet Nine's existence was either missed or suppressed with the NEWS media releases suggesting the latter (Mystery Heavenly Body Perhaps As Big As Jupiter - O'Toole). This Vulcan/Planet Nine correlation indicates the following:
- 1. The very low probability of fortuitous occurrence (0.004) strongly suggests that our solar body Vulcan/Planet Nine is at or is very near one of the first nine IRAS Objects detected (1732+239).
- 2. Assuming that Vulcan has been photographed, a simple way to find which of the many objects on the appropriate photographic plate that contains the cited IRAS object 1732+239 is to re-photograph this region of the sky and do a 'blink' comparison using this and the new photograph. The stars will remain fixed, Vulcan will have moved on to a new location.
- 3. This very low probability of fortuitous occurrence suggests that IRAS point 1732+239 was moving (past aphelion but "not incoming mail"). The IRAS satellite was targeted by the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft results thus a body (Almost As Big As Jupiter) as depicted on Sitchen's Akkadian seal was found. This IRAS point was the probable cause of the NEWS media releases.
- 4. The U. Of AZ astronomers estimating that Planet Nine's orbital inclination could be near 18o or 48o and Vulcan's 48.44o suggests that they are one and the same body.
- 5. The Spanish astronomers suggesting that Planet Nine's semi major axis in the 300 to 400 AU range re-enforces the suspicion that both it and Vulcan's/Forbes' planet (semi major axis 291.2/292.4 AU) belong to one and the same body because the probability of Fortuitous [accidental] correlation of Vulcan's/Forbes' planet orbital parameters is almost zero (0.00000263).
- *
'THE GOBLIN': NEW DISTANT DWARF PLANET BOLSTERS EVIDENCE FOR PLANET X - Oct.
3, 2018
The few that we do know of behave in a curious way, though. Though most orbit too far from the giant planets like Jupiter and Neptune to be influenced by their gravity, most distant objects seem to be moving in accordance with some powerful gravitational force in the outer solar system. This planetary harmony was first picked up on by Sheppard and collaborator Chad Trujillo in 2012, when they discovered 2012 VP113, but subsequent discoveries have only bolstered their theory.
In essence, their orbits are arranged in such a way that it seems like there’s another large planet tugging them into alignment. Called either “Planet X” or “Planet Nine,” this still-hypothetical world could remain undiscovered in much the same way The Goblin did. - * ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER A DISTANT SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECT - 2015 TG387 - Oct. 3, 2018
- *
STATE-SIZED OBJECT BEYOND PLUTO HINTS AT HIDDEN PLANET X - Oct. 2, 2018
A newly spotted dwarf planet, 2015 TG387, adds to the mounting evidence that an unseen super-Earth prowls the edge of the solar system.
2015 TG387 makes very elongated, 40,000-year orbits around our star that take it as far as 2,300 AU at its furthest point from the sun. It's actually pretty lucky that astronomers were able to spot it as they say it would be too faint to see for 99 percent of its orbit. - *
NEW EXTREMELY DISTANT SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECT FOUND DURING HUNT FOR PLANET X -
October 2, 2018
"We think there could be thousands of small bodies like 2015 TG387 out on the Solar System's fringes, but their distance makes finding them very difficult," Tholen said. "Currently we would only detect 2015 TG387 when it is near its closest approach to the Sun. For some 99 percent of its 40,000-year orbit, it would be too faint to see."
The object was discovered as part of the team's ongoing hunt for unknown dwarf planets and Planet X. It is the largest and deepest survey ever conducted for distant Solar System objects.
The object was discovered as part of the team's ongoing hunt for unknown dwarf planets and Planet X. It is the largest and deepest survey ever conducted for distant Solar System objects. - *
DWARF PLANET TG387 POINTS TO LARGER PLANET X IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM - October
2, 2018
And that larger planet may be Vulcan. -
WHILE SEEKING PLANET X, ASTRONOMERS FIND A DISTANT SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECT -
OCTOBER 2, 2018
“We think there could be thousands of small bodies like 2015 TG387 out on the Solar System's fringes, but their distance makes finding them very difficult," Tholen said. "Currently we would only detect 2015TG387 when it is near its closest approach to the Sun. For some 99 percent of its 40,000-year orbit, it would be too faint to see, even with today's largest telescopes." -
EXTREME DWARF PLANET – 'THE GOBLIN' – INFLUENCED BY PLANET X? - 2 October
2018
Astronomers searching the outer solar system for dwarf planets and the theorised but elusive Planet X far beyond Pluto have found an extremely remote body that never comes closer to the Sun than 65 astronomical units, or 9.7 billion kilometres (6 billion miles). The 40,000-year orbit is consistent with the presumed gravitational effects of the as-yet-unseen Planet X, a so-called super Earth thought to be lurking even farther away. - *
EXTREMELY DISTANT SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECT DISCOVERED - October 2, 2018
The object with the most-distant orbit at perihelion, 2012 VP113, was also discovered by Sheppard and Trujillo, who announced that find in 2014. The discovery of 2012 VP113 led Sheppard and Trujillo to notice similarities of the orbits of several extremely distant solar system objects, and they proposed the presence of an unknown planet several times larger than Earth -- sometimes called Planet X or Planet 9 -- orbiting the Sun well beyond Pluto at hundreds of AU.
"We think there could be thousands of small bodies like 2015 TG387 out on the solar system's fringes, but their distance makes finding them very difficult," Tholen said. "Currently we would only detect 2015 TG387 when it is near its closest approach to the Sun. For some 99 percent of its 40,000-year orbit, it would be too faint to see." -
THE SEARCH FOR PLANET X GETS A BOOST WITH THE DISCOVERY OF A SUPER DISTANT
OBJECT - Oct 2, 2018
TG387 takes a whopping 40,000 years to complete just one orbit around the Sun. And it’s on a very elliptical path far from the inner Solar System; the closest it ever gets to the Sun is 65 Astronomical Units (AU), or 65 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
TG387 is not influenced in any way by the large objects in the inner Solar System. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune don't have any effect on its orbit. That means if this object was truly batted around by Planet X, it might hold more information about the planet's orbit than other objects do. And when the team ran simulations of the Solar System with a Planet X in it, they found that this object’s orbit isn’t subject to change. "This one joins an elite group of six objects that are stable," says Batygin. - *
PLANET NINE MIGHT BE INVISIBLE FOR AT LEAST 1,000 YEARS - Sep. 3, 2018
With the planet thought to orbit so far from Earth-based telescopes, it could be impossible to find with current telescopes. The challenge is that the planet is thought to be so dim, about a million times dimmer than Neptune, that it could hide in the light pollution from the Milky Way. Earth’s most potent observatory currently is the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii.
That massive telescope can view a field in the sky about the size of 4,000 full moons at once. Even with such a gigantic field of view, Planet Nine is very difficult to observe. Researchers note that if the orbit of the mysterious world is beyond the 1,000 AU limit of current telescopes, it could lie invisible for the next 1,000 years. - "PLANET NINE" MIGHT BE INVISIBLE, HIDING BEYOND NEPTUNE, SCIENTISTS THINK - Sep. 2, 2018
- IS THERE A MYSTERIOUS PLANET NINE LURKING IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM BEYOND NEPTUNE? - September 2, 2018
-
99% OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC PAPERS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN POLITICALLY-MOTIVATED
PSEUDOSCIENCE, WARNS SCIENCE PIONEER - August 14, 2018
"People just don't do it," Wharton School professor and forecasting expert J. Scott Armstrong told Brietbart.com after making the shocking claim that less that one percent of papers published in scientific journals follow the scientific method. "I used to think that maybe 10 percent of papers in my field…were maybe useful. Now it looks like maybe, one tenth of one percent follow the scientific method." - * PLANET NINE: 'INSENSITIVE' TERM RILES SCIENTISTS - August 1, 2018
- CATACLYSMIC' COLLISION SHAPED URANUS' EVOLUTION - July 2, 2018
-
NO PLANET NINE? COLLECTIVE GRAVITY MIGHT EXPLAIN WEIRD ORBITS AT SOLAR SYSTEM’S
EDGE - June 10, 2018
Meanwhile, Madigan, Fleisig and Zderic have explored a new idea about the orbits of these outer solar system bodies. The new calculations show the orbits might be the result of these bodies jostling against each other and debris in that part of space. In that case, no Planet Nine would be needed. Madigan said:
There are so many of these bodies out there. What does their collective gravity do? We can solve a lot of these problems by just taking into account that question. -
OUR OBSESSION WITH HIDDEN PLANETS DIDN'T START WITH PLANET NINE -
June 8, 2018
In the early 1880s, astronomers looking for evidence of a ninth planet noticed two comets, 1862 III and 1889 III, whose orbital paths appeared to show the invisible gravitational influence of a trans-Neptunian planet, which might have stretched their orbits into ellipses. Astronomer George Forbes studied the orbits of several more comets and calculated that it would take not just one but two hidden planets to shepherd the comets onto their observed orbital paths. The masses and orbits Forbes predicted actually sound a lot like an early version of the Planet Nine that astronomers are currently searching for.
And Forbes wasn't alone. In 1911, Indian astronomer Venkatesh P. Ketakar proposed that Neptune, Uranus, and two hypothetical planets he named Brahma and Vishnu were in an orbital resonance. When two objects’ orbital periods are related by a ratio of two whole numbers – Jupiter's moons Io, Europa, and Ganymede are in a 1:2:4 resonance, for instance – their gravitational interactions can have a greater effect than usual. - *
PLANET NINE: NEW EVIDENCE STRONG BUT NOT PROOF - May 28, 2018
In a paper on a preprint archive reporting the discovery, a large team of scientists has concluded that 2015 BP519 "adds to the circumstantial evidence for the existence of this proposed new member of the Solar System".
“The computer simulations we use takes all objects in the Solar System and evolves them forward or backwards in time, and looks at how the orbits of the objects change over time,” lead author Juliette Becker, a PhD student at the University of Michigan, told The Indian Express by email. “When we ran a simulation without Planet Nine, we found it was very hard to make objects like BP519. When we ran a different simulation including Planet Nine, we found that it was very easy to make objects like BP519,” she said. - * DOES PLANET NINE EXIST? ASTRONOMERS POINT TO NEW EVIDENCE - May 27, 2018
-
MYSTERIOUS SPACE ROCK ADDS EVIDENCE FOR A 'PLANET NINE' IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM,
SCIENTISTS CLAIM - May 22, 2018
he space rock, dubbed 2015 BP519, was discovered by researchers led by the University of Michigan - * WEIRD SPACE ROCK PROVIDES MORE EVIDENCE FOR MYSTERIOUS 'PLANET NINE' - May 21, 2018
- * WEIRD SPACE ROCK PROVIDES MORE EVIDENCE FOR MYSTERIOUS 'PLANET NINE' - May 21, 2018
- *
NEW EVIDENCE FOR EXISTENCE OF PLANET NINE - May 21, 2018
A large international team of researchers has found what they are describing as more evidence of the existence of Planet Nine. In their paper posted on the arXiv preprint server, the group describes the behavior of a newly discovered distant object as suggestive of an influence of a large planet.
Discovery and Dynamical Analysis of an Extreme Trans-Neptunian Object with a High Orbital Inclination - 14 May 2018
We report the discovery and dynamical analysis of 2015 BP519, an extreme Trans-Neptunian Object detected detected by the Dark Energy Survey at a heliocentric distance of 55 AU and absolute magnitude Hr= 4.3. The current orbit, determined from a 1110-day observational arc, has semi-major axis a˜ 450 AU, eccentricity e˜ 0.92 and inclination i˜ 54 degrees. With these orbital elements, 2015 BP519 is the most extreme TNO discovered to date, as quantified by the reduced Kozai action, which is is a conserved quantity at fixed semi-major axis a for axisymmetric perturbations. -
MYSTERIOUS OBJECT BEYOND PLUTO GIVES CLUES TO EXISTENCE OF PLANET NINE May
20, 2018
2015 BP519, orbiting the sun at a 54 degree angle when compared to almost everything else inside the orbit of Pluto, has many astronomers theorizing that Planet Nine is the cause.
2015 BP519
(120216) 2004 EW95 - * EVIDENCE OF PLANET NINE POSSIBLY FOUND - May 18, 2018
- YES, THERE MIGHT ACTUALLY BE A ‘PLANET NINE,’ AND THE EVIDENCE IS MOUNTING - May 18, 2018
- * A NEW WORLD’S EXTRAORDINARY ORBIT POINTS TO PLANET NINE - May 15, 2018
- PLANET 9 PROOF? ANGLO-SAXON MANUSCRIPTS 'CONTAIN EVIDENCE OF ROGUE WORLD IN SOLAR - May 5 2018
- *
ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS CONTAIN EVIDENCE OF PLANET NINE CLAIM SCIENTISTS - May
05, 2018
Specialists integrate record of comets identified by Anglo-Saxon astronomers, in addition to modern pictures of area items, consisting of information acquired from NASA and The Northern Ireland Amateur Astronomy Society.
By integrating modern-day information with ancient accounts, scientists think they might limit the area of world 9.
"This research study job renegotiates the significance and value of middle ages science and shows how middle ages records of comets can assist check the theory of the presence of the evasive 'World 9'". "Any strong sign that a 'World 9' is needed to fit the comet sightings tape- recorded in the Middle Ages will be a distinct outcome and will definitely have an exceptional influence on our understanding of the planetary system." - ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS CONTAIN EVIDENCE OF PLANET NINE CLAIM SCIENTISTS - ? And since planet nine has eluded discovery, scientists from Queen’s University believe how ancient depictions of comets in the Dark Ages may provide crucial data on the whereabouts of the mysterious alien world.
- *
PROOF OF 'PLANET NINE' MAY BE SEWN INTO MEDIEVAL TAPESTRIES - May 4,
2018
Meanwhile, archives back on Earth are home to dozens of medieval records documenting the passage of comets through the heavens. Now, two researchers from Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland are hoping to use these old scrolls and tapestries to solve the modern astronomical mystery of Planet Nine.
Medieval records could provide another tool, said Pedro Lacerda, a Queen's University astronomer and the other leader of the project.
"We can take the orbits of comets currently known and use a computer to calculate the times when those comets would be visible in the skies during the Middle Ages," Lacerda told Live Science. "The precise times depend on whether our computer simulations include Planet Nine. So, in simple terms, we can use the medieval comet sightings to check which computer simulations work best: the ones that include Planet Nine or the ones that do not." - *
KONSTANTIN BATYGIN: PLANET NINE FROM OUTER SPACE - Jan. 3, 2018
Some of the astronomers(?) have finally noticed the Vulcan web site circa April 2020.
"No other model can explain the weirdness of these high-inclination orbits," Batygin said. "It turns out that Planet Nine provides a natural avenue for their generation. These things have been twisted out of the solar system plane with help from Planet Nine and then scattered inward by Neptune."
A recent addition to the aggregate of planetary predictions within the solar system is the Planet Nine hypothesis1 (Batygin & Brown 2016a). Within the framework of this model, the observed orbital clustering of a & 250 AU Kuiper belt objects (Figure 1) is sculpted by a m - 10 m planet residing on an appreciably eccentric (e - 0.3-0.7), large semi-major axis (a - 300-700 AU) orbit, whose plane roughly coincides with the plane of the distant bodies, and is characterized by perihelion direction that is anti- aligned with respect to the average apsidal orientation of the KBOs.
Vulcan's e = 0.537. a = 291.2 AU
One of its most dedicated trackers, in fact, says it is now harder to imagine our solar system without a Planet Nine than with one.
"There are now five different lines of observational evidence pointing to the existence of Planet Nine," said Konstantin Batygin, a planetary astrophysicist at Caltech in Pasadena, California, whose team may be closing in. "If you were to remove this explanation and imagine Planet Nine does not exist, then you generate more problems than you solve. All of a sudden, you have five different puzzles, and you must come up with five different theories to explain them."
The distant objects, on average, do not have the same inclination as Planet Nine. The distant objects live in an average orbital plane that is close to midway between that of the 8 other planets and Planet Nine. Though this result is simple to state, a lot of work (or perhaps a lot of electricity for computers) went in to that statement! And the good news is that can now estimate the node much more precisely. If we take those same eccentric distant Kuiper belt objects and look at their nodes, we find that Planet Nine has a longitude of ascending node of ~94 degrees. The average inclination of those objects, by the way, is 18 degrees, so we know that the inclination of Planet Nine is higher than this, but not much higher , because otherwise, as we found earlier, it doesn’t make an anti- aligned population.
Dr Parker said: "We know that planetary systems form at the same time as stars, and when stars are very young they are usually found in groups where interactions between stellar siblings are common. Therefore, the environment where stars form directly affects planetary systems like our own, and is usually so densely populated that stars can capture other stars or planets.
"In this work, we have shown that - although capture is common - ensnaring planets onto the postulated orbit of Planet 9 is very improbable. We're not ruling out the idea of Planet 9, but instead we're saying that it must have formed around the sun, rather than captured from another planetary system."
"In this work, we have shown that - although capture is common - ensnaring planets onto the postulated orbit of Planet 9 is very improbable. We're not ruling out the idea of Planet 9, but instead we're saying that it must have formed around the sun, rather than captured from another planetary system."
Low Probability
In the new study, researchers looked at the stolen exoplanet hypothesis to work out the probability of this happening. By running computer simulations, the researchers showed that only 1 to 6 percent of free-floating planets (like Planet 9) are ensnared by stars, "even with the most optimal initial conditions for capture."
They found that just five to 10 of the 10,000 planets simulated were captured into orbits that would fit within the constraints required for Planet 9 to have ended up in its supposed position. However, when they put in constraints relating to the formation of the solar system in general, they found "the probability for the capture of Planet 9 to be almost zero."
At the beginning of this year, the astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech, USA) announced that they had found evidence of the existence of a giant planet - with a mass ten times larger than Earth's - in the confines of the solar system. Moving in an unusually elongated orbit, the mysterious planet will take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete one revolution around the Sun.
In order to arrive at this conclusion, Batygin and Brown ran computer simulations with input data based on the orbits of six extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs). Specifically, these ETNOs are: Sedna, 2012 VP113, 2004 VN112, 2007 TG422, 2013 RF98 and 2010 GB174.
Now, however, brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, two freelance Spanish astronomers, together with scientist Sverre J. Aarseth from the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), have considered the question the other way around: How would the orbits of these six ETNOs evolve if a Planet Nine such as the one proposed by K. Batygin and M. Brown really did exist? The answer to this important question has been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"With the orbit indicated by the Caltech astronomers for Planet Nine, our calculations show that the six ETNOs, which they consider to be the Rosetta Stone in the solution to this mystery, would move in lengthy, unstable orbits," warns Carlos de la Fuente Marcos.
"These objects would escape from the solar system in less than 1.5 billion years," he adds, "and in the case of 2004 VN112, 2007 TG422 and 2013 RF98 they could abandon it in less than 300 million years; what is more important, their orbits would become really unstable in just 10 million years, a really short amount of time in astronomical terms."
Since new evidence of Planet 9’s existence emerged a few years ago, experts have been weighing in on how it might have ended up in its distant orbit. One of the most popular explanations is that it was stolen by the sun in an interstellar takeover 4.5 billion years ago.
Now a team of researchers from the U.K. and Switzerland have largely ruled out this hypothesis, with their calculations showing the probability that Planet 9 was captured by the sun in this way is "almost zero."
Abstract
The observational census of trans-Neptunian objects with semi-major axes greater than ~ 250AU exhibits unexpected orbital structure that is most readily attributed to gravitational perturbations induced by a yet-undetected, massive planet. Although the capacity of this planet to reproduce the observed clustering of distant orbits in physical space, a coherent theoretical description of the dynamical mechanisms responsible for these effects remains elusive.
According to Medford, around 10 billion ways to combine the images exist. Even if the methodology doesn’t locate Planet Nine, it could narrow the search area or help locate new objects.
"I think it’d be the absolute coolest way to discover Planet Nine because they’re looking within existing data," Batygin said.
A race is on to discover Planet Nine using classical astronomy and new computational technique
Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at Yale University, says, "Our best estimate for its current position and brightness put it about 950 times farther than Earth from the sun."
Although many astronomers share Brown’s enthusiasm at the prospect of finding a planet bigger than Earth for the first time in 170 years, some worry about being fooled by subtle biases or simple coincidences in the data. "My instinct— completely unjustifiable—is that there’s a two-thirds chance it’s really there," Laughlin says.
"But our simulation gives a more precise place in the sky to look for it." Their paper, published in February, as well as more recent supercomputer simulations presented in April by Trujillo, puts Planet Nine somewhere in the constellation Cetus (the whale) or Eridanus (the river), at about 28 times the current distance to Pluto. "It’s still a vast search area," Trujillo says.
"I actually think we will not discover Planet Nine by scanning the sky," Brown says. "We could, but I think somebody will find it first in archival data," from surveys that have already photographed huge swathes of the heavens.
Caltech astronomers said over a year ago they had solid theoretical evidence for a 9th major planet in our solar system, located some 700 times farther from the sun than Earth. They nicknamed it Planet 9 and said they hoped other astronomers would search for it. At least two searches involving citizen scientists (one in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere) are currently ongoing. Meanwhile, some astronomers have said there were “biases” in the observational data used by the Caltech astronomers, which calls their Planet 9 hypothesis into question. This week, two Spanish astronomers announced word of their analysis of the orbits of a special class of extreme trans-Neptunian objects, that is, the small, known objects beyond Neptune’s orbit. The work of the Spanish astronomers confirms that something is perturbing the orbits of small bodies in the outer solar system. They say it might be an unknown planet located 300-400 times farther from the sun than Earth.
For the first time, the distances from their nodes to the sun have been analysed, and the results, published in the journal MNRAS, once again indicate a planet beyond Pluto.
The nodes are the two points at which the orbit of an ETNO, or any other celestial body, crosses the plane of the solar system. These are the precise points where the probability of interacting with other objects is the highest, and therefore, at these points, the ETNOs may experience a drastic change in their orbits or even a collision.
"If there is nothing to perturb them, the nodes of these extreme trans-Neptunian objects should be uniformly distributed, as there is nothing for them to avoid, but if there are one or more perturbers, two situations may arise," . . . But if they are unstable, they would behave as the comets that interact with Jupiter do, tending to have one of the nodes close to the orbit of the hypothetical perturber."
Using calculations and data mining, the Spanish astronomers have found that the nodes of the 28 ETNOs analysed (and the 24 extreme Centaurs with average distances from the sun of more than 150 AU) are clustered in certain ranges of distances from the sun; furthermore, they have found a correlation where none should exist between the positions of the nodes and the inclination, one of the parameters which defines the orientation of the orbits of these icy objects in space.
"Assuming that the ETNOs are dynamically similar to the comets that interact with Jupiter, we interpret these results as signs of the presence of a planet that is actively interacting with them in a range of distances from 300 to 400 AU,"
Note, Vulcan spends most of its time occupying the part of its orbit between 291.2 au and 447.6 au.
Scientists have been arguing for years about whether the mysterious, distant planet really exists
Last year, the existence of an unknown planet in our solar system was announced. However, this hypothesis was subsequently called into question as biases in the observational data were detected. Now Spanish astronomers have used a novel technique to analyse the orbits of the so-called extreme trans-Neptunian objects and, once again, they point out that there is something perturbing them: a planet located at a distance between 300 to 400 times the Earth-Sun separation.
"Assuming that the ETNOs are dynamically similar to the comets that interact with Jupiter, we interpret these results as signs of the presence of a planet that is actively interacting with them in a range of distances from 300 to 400 AU," says De la Fuente Marcos, who emphasizes: "We believe that what we are seeing here cannot be attributed to the presence of observational bias".
Evidence For A Possible Bimodal Distribution Of The Nodal Distances Of The Extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects: Avoiding A Trans-Plutonian Planet Or Just Plain Bias? - 06/2017
This proposed correlation is unlikely to be the result of observational bias as data for both large semimajor axis Centaurs and comets fit well into the pattern found for the ETNOs, and all these populations are subjected to similar background perturbations when moving well away from the influence of the giant planets. The correlation found is better understood if these objects tend to avoid a putative planet with semimajor axis in the range 300-400 au.
Vulcan's semimajor axis is 291 AU
"The idea that many stars form with a companion has been suggested before, but the question is: how many?" said author Sarah Sadavoy, a NASA Hubble fellow at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
"We ran a series of statistical models to see if we could account for the relative populations of young single stars and binaries of all separations in the Perseus molecular cloud. And the only model that could reproduce the data was one in which all stars form initially as wide binaries. These systems then either shrink or break apart within a million years."
New research has offered evidence to support the theory that our sun was born with a non-identical twin named “Nemesis” and some astronomers are blaming it for the death of the dinosaurs.
Did our sun have a twin when it was born 4.5 billion years ago?
Almost certainly yes—though not an identical twin. And so did every other sunlike star in the universe, according to a new analysis by a theoretical physicist from UC Berkeley and a radio astronomer from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard University.
The new assertion is based on a radio survey of a giant molecular cloud filled with recently formed stars in the constellation Perseus, and a mathematical model that can explain the Perseus observations only if all sunlike stars are born with a companion.
"We ran a series of statistical models to see if we could account for the relative populations of young single stars and binaries of all separations in the Perseus molecular cloud, and the only model that could reproduce the data was one in which all stars form initially as wide binaries. These systems then either shrink or break apart within a million years."
In this study, "wide" means that the two stars are separated by more than 500 astronomical units, or AU, where one astronomical unit is the average distance between the sun and Earth (93 million miles). A wide binary companion to our sun would have been 17 times farther from the sun than its most distant planet today, Neptune.
Embedded Binaries and Their Dense Cores
It's possible that Planet Nine - or perhaps a "brown dwarf" star or two - is lurking in its speckled images of space.
A new initiative by Nasa and the University of California at Berkeley, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, is crowd-sourcing the hunt for Planet Nine. It will use archived observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (Wise) mission, which scanned the skies for asteroids and other faint objects. It's possible that Planet Nine - or perhaps a "brown dwarf" star or two - is lurking in its speckled images of space.
This planet could be 500 times as far from the Sun as Earth is, but it would still be part of our solar system, with a highly elliptical orbit that never takes it anywhere close to the Sun.
The mystery planet's existence is inferred from the orbits of many smaller bodies in the outer solar system. They orbit the Sun and cluster in a manner that suggests the possible gravitational influence of an unseen, large planet.
Vulcan is an ultra-tiny half Jupiter mass brown dwarf star whose aphelion is at 447.6 AU.
A new website funded by NASA lets the public search for new worlds in the outer reaches of our solar system and in neighboring interstellar space. The website, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, allows everyone to participate in the search though brief movies made from images captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.
* Did The Sun Steal Planet Nine From Another Solar System? - Jan 21, 2017
These five ETNOs belong to the group of seven linked to the Planet Nine hypothesis. A dynamical pathway consistent with these findings is dissociation of a binary asteroid during a close encounter with a planet and we confirm its plausibility using N-body simulations. We thus conclude that both the dynamical and spectroscopic properties of 474640–2013 RF98 favour a genetic link and their current orbits suggest that the pair was kicked by a perturber near aphelion.
"Because Planet Nine is so massive and has an orbit tilted compared to the other planets, the solar system has no choice but to slowly twist out of alignment," says Elizabeth Bailey, a graduate student at Caltech and lead author of a study announcing the discovery.
In 1983 the Washington Post wrote about the discovery of an unknown heavenly celestial body. Then, in recent years several scientists have reported on this mysterious planet and many of them died under suspicious circumstances. Furthermore, since 1983 Governments around the world building huge underground bunkers and shelters. Why? To ensure the survival of the elite from an impending cataclysm?
Image left: Buzz Aldrin got on a Russian plane to visit Antarctica!
Could the recent trips of Patriach Kirill, then John Kerry, then Buzz Aldrin to Antarctica have something to do with this planet Nine?
"Apparently the US government had made the decision to keep Nibiru and its projected earthly destruction under wraps."
Then, in the mid 1990s, Wisconsin resident Nancy Lieder published her idea of the Nibiru Cataclysm on her website Zeta Talk after claiming to have received telepathic messages from aliens.She gave a number of dates for an impending apocalypse including 2012 at the end of the Mayan calendar, and NASA was forced debunk the theory, Ames Center researcher David Morrison told Space.com at the time.
"While this is a joke to some people and a mystery to others, there is a core of people who are truly concerned."
Planet Nine may be detectable at 3.4?m with WISE, but single exposures are too shallow except at relatively small distances (d9?430 AU).
Vulcan is about 444 AU from the Sun now.
Neither study is a slam-dunk case for the planet's existence, scientists said, but the evidence continues to mount. But researchers said they're continuing to study the motions of the solar system's objects for more clues.
"Because Planet Nine is so massive and has an orbit tilted compared to the other planets, the solar system has no choice but to slowly twist out of alignment", Elizabeth Bailey, a graduate student at Caltech, said in Phys.Org.
Curious tilt of the sun traced to undiscovered planet - October 19, 2016
Or maybe a giant planet. When Brown and Batygin found five more TNOs curiously clustered in the sky, they realized with extensive modeling that a giant planet's gravity would have flung any objects away from its path, leaving the orbits of the remaining objects huddled on the opposite side of the solar system.
Now, additional objects may be adding to the pattern. At the conference, Sheppard and his colleague Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hilo, Hawaii, presented the first two new entrants: 2014 SR349 and 2013 FT28. "The big question is do they make the planet case better or worse," Sheppard says. "And they make it better."
Corralling a distant planet (arxiv)
with extreme resonant Kuiper belt objects
The orbital plane can be one of two: either inclined at 18 degrees or 48 degrees.
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NEW WORK ON PLANET NINE - OCTOBER 20, 2016
Through analysis of what they call 'extreme Kuiper Belt Objects' - on eccentric orbits with aphelia hundreds of AU out - the team finds a clustering of orbital parameters that may point to the existence of a planet of 10 Earth masses with an aphelion of more than 660 AU. Two orbital planes seem possible, one at 18 degrees offset from the mean plane, the other inclined at 48 degrees. -
THERE'S A NINTH PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM AND IT'S GIANT, SAY ASTRONOMERS -
October 25, 2016
And, important for trying to locate the elusive object in the night sky, the new study suggests two likely orbital planes for Planet Nine, one at about 18 degrees from the ecliptic plane and the other at 48 degrees. (The ecliptic plane describes that two-dimensional surface of the Earth’s elliptical orbit around the Sun, which happens to also be, roughly, the same plane on which all the known planets travel.) -
CLOSING IN ON A GIANT GHOST PLANET - October 25, 2016
More potential evidence of Planet Nine's influence may be found in how long it takes outer solar system bodies to orbit the sun. For instance, the four KBOs with the longest-known orbits revolve in patterns most readily explained by the presence of Planet Nine, says astronomer Renu Malhotra, chair of theoretical astrophysics at the University of Arizona at Tucson. Work by Malhotra and her colleagues also suggests two likely tilts for Planet Nine's orbit, one closer to the plane of the solar system at 18 degrees and the other steeper at about 48 degrees-information that could help shrink the vast part of the sky to be searched.
Table 2
Vulcan's Orbital ParametersParameter Value Max. Error Min. 2 Sigma Error Forbes'(1880)* Orbital Inclination 48.44o +3.12o/-9.05o +/- 0.23o 45o
"Because Planet Nine is so massive and has an orbit tilted compared to the other planets, the solar system has no choice but to slowly twist out of alignment," lead author Bailey said in a statement
Solar Obliquity Induced by Planet Nine - 14 Jul 2016
The six-degree obliquity of the sun suggests that either an asymmetry was present in the solar system's formation environment, or an external torque has misaligned the angular momentum vectors of the sun and the planets. However, the exact origin of this obliquity remains an open question. Batygin & Brown (2016) have recently shown that the physical alignment of distant Kuiper Belt orbits can be explained by a 5-20 Earth-mass planet on a distant, eccentric, and inclined orbit, with an approximate perihelion distance of ~250 AU. Using an analytic model for secular interactions between Planet Nine and the remaining giant planets, here we show that a planet with similar parameters can naturally generate the observed obliquity as well as the specific pole position of the sun's spin axis, from a nearly aligned initial state. Thus, Planet Nine offers a testable explanation for the otherwise mysterious spin-orbit misalignment of the solar system.
"Planet Nine is not going to cause the Earth's destruction. If you read that it will, you have discovered idiotic writing!" Brown said via his Twitter account, @plutokiller."
He also dismissed the idea that the world played a role in mass extinctions of the past. While the planet orbits a significant distance from the sun, it isn't quite far enough out to stir up the Oort Cloud, the region of icy comets beyond the Kuiper Belt. With a 10,000-year orbit, it would also constantly bombard the Earth, Brown said.
Don't Blame 'Planet Nine' For Earth's Mass Extinctions - January 25, 2016
"I suspect it has something like zero effect on us," said Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena.
"Really big planets really far away could do that," Brown told Space.com. " Planet Nine is smaller than all these things that people have called 'Planet X' - that's always been sort of Jupiter-sized, or even brown dwarf-sized, or something. This is a good bit smaller, and a good bit closer; it's not in the realm of the comets."
The putative Planet Nine also completes one orbit every 10,000 years or so, he added.
The planet would have between 5 and 20 times Earth’s mass and be in a wildly eccentric orbit, reaching 250 times the sun-Earth distance at its farthest point. That elongated trajectory has led some to suggest that it was once an exoplanet and was kidnapped by the sun.
Planet Nine’s tilt, not its mass, is key, says Alessandro Morbidelli at Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice, France, who has independently come to a similar conclusion. If it were a question of mass, Jupiter would be the prime suspect.
"What is important is that the perturbing planet is off-plane. Jupiter cannot cause its own tilt," he says.
It's also interesting to note, then, that another current paper attempting to piece the jigsaw together does not rely on the anti-aligned orientation favoured by Batygin and Brown (7). Instead, it concerns itself with resonance relationships between the six members of this cluster, potentially in-step with a hypothetical planet whose orbital period is approximately 17,000 years:
"We point out hitherto unnoticed peculiarities of the orbits of the eKBOs mentioned above: we find that the orbital period ratios of these objects are close to integer ratios. This helps us identify a particular orbital period of the hypothetical planet which is in simple integer ratios with the four most distant eKBOs. That is, we identify mean motion resonances between these eKBOs and the hypothetical planet" (8)
In terms of mass, the authors conclude that the hypothetical object would have to have at least ten Earth masses to maintain a long-term resonant relationship with the four outermost eKBOs. Beyond that, the position of the planet takes on a wide selection of possibilities, with a broader range of inclination.
The eight major planets still circle the sun in the original plane of their birth. The sun rotates on its own axis, but surprisingly, that spin is tilted: the axis lies at an angle of 6 degrees relative to a line perpendicular to the plane of the planets.
His hypothesis is that around 4.5 billion years ago, our then young Sun "stole" this planet from a neighbouring star with the help of a series of favourable conditions (proximity of stars within a star cluster, a planet in a wide and elongated orbit,...). Other scientists, however, believe that this scenario is improbable.
Dr. Rand shared his view that Planet X is drawing close to Earth and will wreak havoc as it makes its return passage through the solar system. Culled from his study of ancient sources, as well as his alien contacts (which began when he was a young child), he’s determined that Planet X is a brown dwarf star the size of Saturn or bigger , that’s on an elongated orbit which comes our way every 3,600 to 4,000 years.
In January, Caltech astronomers predicted the existence of Planet Nine
Simulations explained a clumping behaviour of a group of dwarf planets
New study shows these dwarf planets would not be as stable as thought
Most stable scenario would be if there was more than one extra planet
"It is almost ironic that while astronomers often find exoplanets hundreds of light-years away in other solar systems, there's probably one hiding in our own backyard," study lead author Alexander Mustill, an astronomer at Lund University in Sweden, said in a statement.
Its not ironic if this object causes comet swarms that threaten the inner solar system to form.
What about Nibiru or Planet X, as modern astronomers call it? Is it possible that there is another planet in our solar system? While, for several decades, scientists unsuccessfully have searched for Planet X, as it turns out, on December 11th, 2015, Wouter Vlemming and his scientific team announced that they finally found the renegade planet (See Washington Post article titled: "Scientists claimed they found elusive ‘Planet X.’ Doubting astronomers are in an uproar.") Of course, and to no one's surprise, several astronomers immediately disputed the surprising announcement, including Mike Brown (a Cal Tech astronomer best known as the "Man who killed Pluto".) Most unpredictably, however, Mike Brown and his own team, although harsh critics of the earlier announcement, less than a month later, in January 2016 stepped forward to announce their own discovery of Planet X (See article in Los Angeles Times: "Astronomers' findings point to a ninth planet, and it's not Pluto".)
Also, a mysterious, unnamed object that appears in the sky close to the alpha centauri system that may be a “Super-Earth” planet far beyond even Pluto or a super-cool brown dwarf that’s really far. It could also conceivably be an icy “trans Neptunian object,” of which there are plenty in the frozen darkness past the eighth planet, but the researchers say that’s less likely (it’s also, not coincidentally, less interesting).
Page 9 mentions Forbes' planet at 100 AU and possibly of it being Vulcan.
2. On Comets. By Professor Forbes.
The author commenced by stating that although these researches lead him to believe in the existence of two planets revolving in orbits external to that of Neptune, and although there was a great deal of evidence to show that he had actually determined the elements of the orbits, yet the latter point, being dependent on a coincidence of probabilities only, cannot be considered a certainty until the planets are observed.
At the British Association in 1879 Professor Newton of America proved some important propositions with respect to the introduction of planets into the solar system. In answer to a question he said that his theory explained why the aphelion distance of a comet is generally about the same as the distance of the planet which rendered its orbit elliptic. The author then publicly stated that there could be no longer a doubt that two planets exist beyond the orbit of Neptune, one about 100 times, the other about 300 times the distance of the earth from the sun, with periods of revolution of about 1000 and 5000 years respectively.
[Additional Note, 31s£ March 1880.
From the six comets whose aphelion distance is about 300 times the distance of the earth from the sun, the elements of the perturbing planet have roughly been calculated. This gives
Omega long. of asc. node = 185 o
i= 45o nearly the same orbit as the preceding.
- PLANET NINE: A WORLD THAT SHOULDN'T EXIST - May 05, 2016
- WHERE DID PLANET NINE COME FROM? - May 4, 2016
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THE RACE TO FIND PLANET NINE - Apr 17, 2016
Whoa! That is news, my friends. That is a freaking planet, a whole new world, on the larger side of a super-Earth, pushing into the heavier category of an ice- giant. But until it is within the frame of a telescope with a state-of-the- art spectrometer, we can only speculate on what such a planet, if it does indeed turn out to exist, might be like. The chart above gives some basic idea about the gross physical dimensions of such a planet. Beyond that, drop on down and let the speculation begin … - WE ARE CLOSING IN ON POSSIBLE WHEREABOUTS OF PLANET NINE - 20 April 2016
- PLAN(ET) 9 FROM OUTER SPACE: WHAT THE STILL-HYPOTHETICAL PLANET MIGHT LOOK LIKE - April 11, 2016
- MYSTERIOUS PULL ON CASSINI PROBE MAY HELP FIND PLANET NINE - 15 Apr , 2016
- NO. PLANET NINE IS NOT ABOUT TO WIPE OUT LIFE ON EARTH? - 11 April 2016
- NEW YORK POST’S VIDEO ON PLANET NINE IS MISLEADING - 11 Apr 2016
- What's All The Fuss About Planet Nine: Just Another Planet Or Something Scientists Are Worried About? - April 10, 2016
- SCIENTISTS STUNNED BY NEW MODEL OF MYSTERIOUS PLANET 9 - April 10, 2016
- CASSINI SPACECRAFT DID NOT DETECT PLANET NINE, NASA CLAIMS - April 10, 2016
- PLANET X TO REALLY CAUSE MASS EXTINCTION THIS MONTH? - 9 Apr, 2016
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OUR SUN MAY HAVE STOLEN PLANET NINE FROM PASSING STAR - April 9,
2016
- WHAT MIGHT THE PUTATIVE 'PLANET NINE' LOOK LIKE?? - April 8, 2016
- NEWLY DISCOVERED PLANET COULD DESTROY EARTH ANY DAY NOW - April 6, 2016
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NEWLY DISCOVERED PLANET COULD DESTROY EARTH ANY DAY NOW - April 6,
2016
A mysterious planet that wiped out life on Earth millions of years ago could do it again, according to a top space scientist.
And some believe the apocalyptic event could happen as early as this month. -
S MYSTERIOUS 'PLANET NINE' TUGGING ON NASA SATURN PROBE?? - April 5,
2016
Just this month, evidence from the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn helped close in on the missing planet. Many experts suspect that within as little as a year someone will spot the unseen world, which would be a monumental discovery that changes the way we view our solar system and our place in the cosmos. "Evidence is mounting that something unusual is out there — there's a story that's hard to explain with just the standard picture," says David Gerdes, a cosmologist at the University of Michigan who never expected to find himself working on Planet Nine. He is just one of many scientists who leapt at the chance to prove — or disprove — the team's careful calculations. -
DID THE SUN STEAL PLANET NINE? - 4 Apr , 2016
Formed five billion years ago in a cluster of other stars, our Sun once had hundreds if not thousands of stellar siblings (now long since dispersed through the nearby galaxy.) As the stars developed many likely had planets form around them, just as the Sun did, and with all the young star systems in such relatively close proximity it’s possible that some planets wound up ejected from their host star to be picked up — or possibly even outright stolen — by another.
What the researchers found based on their models - which took into consideration the orbits of known KBOs and trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) but not the effects of known planets - was that the Sun could very easily capture nearby exoplanets as well as clusters of smaller bodies (like "mini Oort clouds") given that the objects are far enough from their host star and the relative velocities during the "pick-up" are low.
While the researchers admit that the chances of a heist scenario having actually taken place are quite small - anywhere from 0.1 to 2% - they’re not zero, and so should be considered a reasonable possibility. - COULD 'PLANET X' CAUSE COMET CATASTROPHES ON EARTH? - March 31, 2016
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RESEARCHER LINKS MASS EXTINCTIONS TO 'PLANET X' - March 30, 2016
Though scientists have been looking for Planet X for 100 years, the possibility that it's real got a big boost recently when researchers from Caltech inferred its existence based on orbital anomalies seen in objects in the Kuiper Belt, a disc-shaped region of comets and other larger bodies beyond Neptune. If the Caltech researchers are correct, Planet X is about 10 times the mass of Earth and could currently be up to 1,000 times more distant from the sun
Matese has since retired and no longer publishes. Whitmire retired from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2012 and began teaching at the University of Arkansas in 2013.
Whitmire says what's really exciting is the possibility that a distant planet may have had a significant influence on the evolution of life on Earth. -
COULD 'PLANET X' CAUSE COMET CATASTROPHES ON EARTH? - MAR 30, 2016
“Whitmire has been speculating for decades about a very distant very massive planet pushing comets around. It has to have an orbital period of something like 27 million years,” said Brown. “While that idea may or may not make sense, it definitely has nothing to do with Planet Nine, which is much closer to the sun and thus ‘only’ takes 15,000 years to go around.”
“The evidence for Planet Nine says nothing about whether or not there is a more distant Planet X.” -
10 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT THE NEW NINTH PLANET - February 18, 2016
4) Conspiracy Theorists Are Claiming It Could Spell Doom . . .
3} . . . And There’s A Very Small Chance They’re Right
The more intelligent doomsayers claim that Planet Nine’s gravity well might slingshot asteroids toward the Earth, resulting in potentially devastating meteor strikes. Scientifically, this theory carries more weight: the gravitational effects of Planet Nine (or whatever’s out there) are documented. After all, Fatty was hypothesized in the first place because of the apparent effects of its gravity well on small, rocky objects. So it’s within the realm of possibility that one or two of those objects could slingshot their way toward Earth. But it’s still not all that likely-remember that space is still very, very big. Even after an object was thrown back toward our neighborhood, it would still have to actually hit Earth, instead of just continuing on into the vast, surrounding emptiness. It’s possible, but it’s far from likely. Astronomer Scott Sheppard has said that Planet Nine could "throw a few small objects into the inner solar system every so often, but [won’t] significantly increase the odds for a mass extinction event." - FIND PLANET NINE! NASA'S SATURN PROBE HELPS WITH THE HUNT - February 24, 2016
- SEARCHING FOR PLANET 9 - 23 February 2016
- Planet X Discovered?? + Challenge Winners! | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios - Feb 17, 2016
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COMPUTER SIMULATIONS HEAT UP HUNT FOR PLANET NINE - JANUARY 31, 2016
For a planet that hasn’t technically been discovered yet, Planet Nine is generating a lot of buzz. Astronomers have not actually found a new planet orbiting the sun, but some remote icy bodies are dropping tantalizing clues about a giant orb lurking in the fringes of the solar system. -
DON'T BLAME 'PLANET NINE' FOR EARTH'S MASS EXTINCTIONS - January 25,
2016
Don't Blame 'Planet Nine' for Earth's Mass Extinctions. But Planet Nine - a newly proposed but not yet confirmed world perhaps 10 times more massive than Earth that's thought to orbit far beyond Pluto - probably could not have triggered such "death from the skies" events, researchers said.
"I suspect it has something like zero effect on us," said Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena.
Brown and lead author Konstantin Batygin, also of Caltech, suggested the existence of Planet Nine in a paper that was published last week. They infer the planet's presence based on indirect evidence: Computer models suggest that a distant, unseen world has shaped the strange orbits of a number of small objects in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune.
Planet Nine likely has an elliptical orbit, coming within 200 to 300 astronomical units (AU) of the sun at its closest approach and getting as far away as 600 to 1,200 AU,
Tom Van Flandern: Dark matter, Missing Planets & New Comets, North Atlantic Books; P.O.Box 12327, Berkeley, California, 1993, Page 313.
Kuiper Belt
At its fullest extent, including its outlying regions, the Kuiper belt stretches from roughly 30 to 55 AU.
Vulcan's perihelion (134 AU) and aphelion (448).
Vulcan is more massive (half Jupiter mass - 141 +/-35 Earth masses) and closer to the Kuiper Belt than Planet Nine (~10 Earth masses). Vulcan can be blamed for taking us into and out of Ice Ages. -
THE SEARCH FOR PLANET NINE - January 25, 2016
Right Ascension, Declination and range of Planet 9
Vulcan is at Aphelion ~1970 (447.6 AU
TIME(yrs) MEAN & TRUE ANOM RT.ASC(deg) DECLN(deg)
1970.00 180.072572 180.025907 263.077990 23.707364
1971.00 180.145021 180.051770 263.116177 23.710860
At RA 263 degrees, range is 200 - 450 AU which is about right, but Dec is at -15 to + 10 degrees.
At Dec of about +23 degrees, ranges is still about 200 - 450+ AU, RA is about 225 degrees.
The Range is within Van Flandern's/J. Allen Hynek's spec. at least (less than 490/538 AU). - * HE SEARCH FOR PLANET NINE: THE LONG AND WINDING HISTORY OF PLANET X - January 24, 2016
- * COULD YOU LIVE ON PLANET NINE? - 01.22.16.
- HOW ASTRONOMERS COULD ACTUALLY SEE 'PLANET NINE' - January 21, 2016
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'PLANET NINE' MAY EXIST: NEW EVIDENCE FOR ANOTHER WORLD IN OUR SOLAR
SYSTEM - January 20, 2016
The new modeling work by Brown and Batygin bolsters this intriguing scenario. Their simulations show that the gravitational influence of a roughly 10- Earth-mass Planet Nine in an anti-aligned orbit — one in which the planet's closest approach to the sun is 180 degrees across from that of all the other planets - could explain the KBOs' odd orbits -
HOW ASTRONOMERS COULD ACTUALLY SEE "PLANET NINE" - January 22, 2016
Evidence of this new addition to our solar system is indirect at the moment, but direct evidence could come relatively soon, in the form of a telescope observation, Planet Nine's proposers say
But, Sheppard told Space.com, "if it's not on the extreme ends of the orbit or the size, then Subaru should be able to find it."
Vulcan pasted aphelion (447.3 AU) around 1970. Its now around 444 AU or so. Not to worry, they never look at those extreme places -
MASSIVE PLANET X NOW URGENTLY SOUGHT BY TOP PLANET-HUNTERS - January 2016
The group's calculations suggest the object orbits 20 times farther from the
Sun on average than does the eighth - and currently outermost - planet, Neptune,
which moves about 4.5 billion km from our star. But unlike the near-circular
paths traced by the main planets, this novel object would be in a highly
elliptical trajectory, taking between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete one
full lap around the Sun."
Some of this data will sound eerily reminiscent of Zecharia Sitchin's work (6) - particularly the 30 degree downward tilt of the undiscovered planet's gravitational influence. It's highly elliptical. It's at least ten times the Earth's mass, they think (2). It's located about 600 Astronomical Units away, they think, with an orbit of tens of thousands of years - more like my own conclusions some years ago, as I came to realised that Sitchin's assumption of a 3600 year orbit was likely far too small a figure
But why has this object so far evaded detection? Why didn't the infra-red sky survey WISE discover Planet Nine? After all, it's very substantial indeed, and relatively close (lying in the gap between the Kuiper Belt and the inner Oort Cloud). That's a critical issue here, as the scientists working on the WISE data seemed to rule this possibility out in no uncertain terms, declaring that no Saturn-sized planet could be lurking within 10,000 AU (8). By contrast, Planet Nine may be a mere 600 AU, or less, albeit much smaller than Saturn by Batygin and Brown's reckoning. Even so, surely WISE should have spotted it?
In terms of the origin of this distant object, the authors think that Planet Nine may have started out as a gas giant core among the ice giants Uranus and Neptune, before being scattered from this zone by the 'gaseous component of the [primordial] nebula'. But, at the same time, they don't seem to entirely rule out a much larger object than 10 Earth masses, particularly if the orbit is highly eccentric:
ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF ABSENCE! -
ASTRONOMERS SAY A NEPTUNE-SIZED PLANET LURKS BEYOND PLUTO - Jan. 20,
2016
The orbit of the inferred planet is similarly tilted, as well as stretched to distances that will explode previous conceptions of the solar system. Its closest approach to the sun is seven times farther than Neptune, or 200 astronomical units (AUs). (An AU is the distance between Earth and the sun, about 150 million kilometers.) And Planet X could roam as far as 600 to 1200 AU, well beyond the Kuiper belt, the region of small icy worlds that begins at Neptune’s edge about 30 AU. - A NEW PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM ACCORDING TO RESEARCHERS - January 20, 2016
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EVIDENCE FOR A DISTANT GIANT PLANET IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM - 2016 January
20
Abstract
Recent analyses have shown that distant orbits within the scattered disk population of the Kuiper Belt exhibit an unexpected clustering in their respective arguments of perihelion. While several hypotheses have been put forward to explain this alignment, to date, a theoretical model that can successfully account for the observations remains elusive. In this work we show that the orbits of distant Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) cluster not only in argument of perihelion, but also in physical space. We demonstrate that the perihelion positions and orbital planes of the objects are tightly confined and that such a clustering has only a probability of 0.007% to be due to chance, thus requiring a dynamical origin. We find that the observed orbital alignment can be maintained by a distant eccentric planet with mass gsim10 m? whose orbit lies in approximately the same plane as those of the distant KBOs, but whose perihelion is 180o away from the perihelia of the minor bodies. In addition to accounting for the observed orbital alignment, the existence of such a planet naturally explains the presence of high-perihelion Sedna-like objects, as well as the known collection of high semimajor axis objects with inclinations between 60o and 150o whose origin was previously unclear. Continued analysis of both distant and highly inclined outer solar system objects provides the opportunity for testing our hypothesis as well as further constraining the orbital elements and mass of the distant planet. -
PLANET 9 "FROM OUTER SPACE" MAY WELL BE REAL - January 20, 2016
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CASE MADE FOR 'NINTH PLANET' - January 20, 2016
The group's calculations suggest the object orbits 20 times farther from the Sun on average than does the eighth - and currently outermost - planet, Neptune, which moves about 4.5 billion km from our star.
But unlike the near-circular paths traced by the main planets, this novel object would be in a highly elliptical trajectory, taking between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete one full lap around the Sun.
Alternatively, the researchers propose, it could be an undiscovered planet floating much farther out, or even a brown-dwarf (bigger than a planet, smaller than a star) passing through interstellar space.
Also, a mysterious, unnamed object that appears in the sky close to the Alpha Centauri system that may be a "Super-Earth" planet far beyond even Pluto or a super-cool brown dwarf that’s really far. It could also conceivably be an icy "trans Neptunian object," of which there are plenty in the frozen darkness past the eighth planet, but the researchers say that’s less likely (it's also, not coincidentally, less interesting).
Until the nature of the source becomes clear, we have named it Gna. Unless there are yet unknown, but significant, issues with ALMA observations, we have detected a previously unknown objects in our solar system. Based on proper motion analysis we find that, if it is gravitationally bound, Gna is currently located at 12?25 AU distance and has a size of ?220?880 km. Alternatively it is a much larger, planet-sized, object, gravitationally unbound, and located within ?4000 AU, or beyond (out to ?0.3~pc) if it is strongly variable.
A New Submm Source Within A Few Arcseconds Of ? Centauri ALMA Discovers The Most Distant Object Of The Solar System
4.2. A new member of the solar system: an ETNO?
Again, a low-albedo, thermal Extreme Trans Neptunian Object (ETNO), such as the hypothetical super-Earth of Trujillo & Sheppard (2014), would be consistent with our flux data (e.g., for R ~ 1.5R?, D ~ 300 AU, Tbb ~ 15 K, Theta ~ 80 mas, Fig. 5).
One may expect the distribution of the Oort cloud TNOs (Trans Neptunian Objects)initially to be isotropic. However, the vast majority of known TNOs are not very far off the ecliptic. For instance, Sedna is at i ~ 12o, and other Sedna-like objects, Biden (2012 VP113) and V774104 (10 November 2015, Science, DOI:10.1126/science.aad7414) are at i = 24o and within 15o, respectively. This is certainly due to observational bias, as one generally scans the sky around the ecliptic (Schwamb et al. 2010). However, high inclinations are not excluded, with the most massive dwarf planet Eris at i = 44o being a prime example. For reasons of sensitivity (or rather, lack thereof), TNOs on highly eccentric orbits have traditionally been firstly detected when close to their perihelia. Further away, there would have remained unseen (e.g., Sheppard et al. 2011). However, a sizable population of such bodies is expected to exist at large distances from the Sun. It is clear, therefore, that ALMA with its high submm sensitivity provides presently the only existing means to detect TNOs far from their perihelia, where temperatures are merely some tens of Kelvin. There must be a vast reservoir of objects between, say, roughly 100 and 1000 AU, of which we hitherto have seen only a tiny fraction (see also de la Fuente Marcos & de la Fuente Marcos 2014, and references therein).
"A massive object or great disturber would perturb or disturb anything that came close to it. So objects that stay away from the great disturber would be the most stable objects," Sheppard explained. "Thus the great disturber can "shepherd" objects into similar types of orbits with similar arguments of perihelion which are the orbits which constantly keep the smaller objects away from the bigger object."
Planet X has long been a staple of legends. One conspiracy theory claims that NASA embarked on the New Horizons project two years after the publication of a 1998 study that revealed the existence and location of the then postulated tenth planet.
Conspiracy theorists claim that the New Horizon's final destination is Planet X but the U.S. space agency pretended that the probe's destinations are Pluto and the Kuiper belt.
The location of Planet X - 10/1988
Observed positions of Uranus and Neptune along with residuals in right ascension and declination are used to constrain the location of a postulated tenth planet. The residuals are converted into residuals in ecliptic longitude and latitude. The results are then combined into seasonal normal points, producing average geocentric residuals spaced slightly more than a year apart that are assumed to represent the equivalent heliocentric average residuals for the observed oppositions. Such a planet is found to most likely reside in the region of Scorpius, with considerably less likelihood that it is in Taurus.
New study shows the sun may have snatched Sedna, Biden and other objects away from a neighbor
- Group of rocks known as the kernel has a mysterious orbit in Kuiper belt
- Astronomer David Nesvorny used a simulation to rewind 4 billion years <>I>He discovered the kernel was once caught in Neptune's gravitational pull
- But a collision with a massive planet may have caused Neptune's orbit to jump, freeing the asteroids and explaining the orbits we see today
It is not clear what became of the solar system's fifth gas giant, but if Nesvorny's calculations are correct, it may have been expelled from the solar system permanently.
This is not the first time astronomers have predicted the existence of possible extra planets in our solar system.
In January, scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Cambridge said there must be at least two extra planets to explain the orbital behaviour of objects orbiting near Neptune.
Our early solar system may have had a fifth gas giant that disappeared after a crash with Neptune
Our early solar system may have had an extra planet that was ejected from its orbit by a collision with Neptune.
The planet would have once been the fifth gas giant, and evidence of its existence still remains in the asteroid belt that sits in the outer reaches of the solar system.
In particular, the orbit of a cluster of icy rocks in the Kuiper belt known as the 'kernel' suggests Jupiter was forced out of its original orbit by a significant impact with a large object.
According to Nesvorny, the only thing that would cause Neptune to jump in this way, freeing the kernel from its gravitational pull, is another massive gravitational field - one as big as a planet.
None of the other gas giants in the solar system could have been responsible, as their orbits have never interacted with Neptune's in this way, according to Nesvorny.
Nesvorny first proposed the missing planet theory to explain the existence of the kernel in 2011, but now he believes he has a model that shows how this interaction would have taken place.
It is not clear what became of the solar system's fifth gas giant, but if Nesvorny's calculations are correct, it may have been expelled from the solar system permanently.
The paper assigns the term 'Sednitos' (also sometimes referred to as ‘Sednoids’) for these Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt intruders with similar characteristics to Sedna. In 2012, 2012 VP113, dubbed the ‘twin of Sedna,’ was discovered by astronomers at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in a similar looping orbit. The ‘VP’ designation earned the as yet unnamed remote world the brief nickname ‘Biden’ after U.S. Vice President Joe Biden… hey, it was an election year.
There’s good reason to believe something(s?) out there shepherding these Senitos into a similar orbit with a comparable argument of perihelion. Researchers have suggested the existence of one or several planetary mass objects loitering out in the 200-250 AU range of the outer solar system… note that this is
a separate scientific-based discussion versus any would-be Nibiru related non- sense, don’t even get us started...
A sednoid is a trans-Neptunian object with a perihelion greater than 50 AU and a semi-major axis greater than 150 AU. Only two objects are known from this population, 90377 Sedna and 2012 VP113, both of which have perihelia greater than 75 AU, but it is suspected that there are many more.
Unexplained orbits
The sednoids' orbits cannot be explained by perturbations from the giant planets,[5] nor by interaction with the galactic tides. If they formed in their current locations, their orbits must originally have been circular; otherwise accretion (the coalescence of smaller bodies into larger ones) would not have been possible because the large relative velocities between planetesimals would have been too disruptive.[6] Their present elliptical orbits can be explained by several hypotheses:
- 1. These objects could have had their orbits and perihelion distances "lifted" by the passage of a nearby star when the Sun was still embedded in its birth star cluster.
- 2. Their orbits could have been disrupted by an as-yet-unknown planet- sized body beyond the Kuiper belt.
- 3. They could have been captured from around passing stars, most likely in the Sun's birth cluster.
A recent survey of the sky carried out by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE and its follow-up missions, NEOWISE and the All-WISE sky survey) found no evidence of an object Saturn-sized or larger out to 10,000 AUs, or 16% of one light year. And while that may rule out the existence of a brown dwarf companion to our Sun, that leaves plenty of possibilities for planet sized objects out there still waiting to be discovered.
Of course this pretty much closes the door on the Nemesis hypothesis of a large dark companion to our Sun on a long, 100,000 year orbit that triggers a periodic rain of comets pummeling the inner solar system, and leaves the idea of a hypothetical remote gas giant in the extreme outer solar system known as Tyche, only slightly more tenable. And of course, the conspiracy mongers hoping to resurrect Nibiru need not apply!
Still, the strange orbits of Biden and Sedna and their brethren have a story to tell. Is a good sized planet out there, tugging them out of their orbits? Or did our solar system suffer a passage from a nearby star early in its remote history that drew these objects into the bizarre orbits that we see today? Next year, we’ll get our first good looks at one of these worlds, when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft passes Pluto, — the King of the Kuiper Belt — and its retinue of moons in July 2015. Astronomers are still scouring the sky beyond, looking for possible targets to explore after the encounter.
This isn’t your father’s solar system, that’s for sure.
The following study is his second work on the subject of irregularities in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune (after his first article <
To get some idea of how the Sun is moving about in its dance with Vulcan, we can assume for the sake of discussion that Vulcan is orbiting somewhat like the orbit we guessed at to model NASA’s IRAS observation of 1983. To do this we assumed an eccentricity of .54, an orbital period of 12500 years and a semi major axis a of 538 AU. If we consider the corresponding value of Vulcan’s mass from Table 2.0 computed as 0.0036 S and the other numbers as indicated immediately above, then on applying equation (17) rM is found to be about 2.97 AU for this case. This implies that the Sun would have an orbit about the common center of mass with a maximum radius three times Earth’s orbital radius around the Sun. With longer periods and / or a larger mass for Vulcan, the Sun’s orbital radius would be appropriately larger. Presuming Cruttenden’s 26000 yr period, the eccentricity also at 0.54 (he actually proposed 0.038), the orbit’s semi major axis of 879 AU and a computed mass for Vulcan of 0.0063 S, then rM becomes 8.47 AU, which is larger than the orbital radius of Jupiter! An interesting thing to note is that as with this case, the orbits of the Sun and Vulcan never intersect. Vulcan appears to have the orbital character of a very out-sized planet.
The following article [Speculations On The Sun's Dark Star Companion, According To Physics} - unpublished so far - is written by R.F., an American applied mathematician who lives in USA and is interested in discussing Nibiru's approach and the possible existence of a dark star, beyond the outer planets of the Solar System. He contacted me by e-mail a few months ago, after reading my articles in English language published on Internet. That's why he sent me his writings. I know his first name and surname but he kindly asked me to spread his study only with his initials. The following study is his second work on the subject of irregularities in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune (after his first article <
Of course there is no guarantee on these speculations, above all because we do not know all the astronomical data with enough thoroughness, and everything is based on clues come out in the course of the search for Planet X and Nemesis (a Dark Star, perhaps a brown dwarf) carried out by NASA, by U.S Naval Observatory and by other scientific institutions involved in the last century. The same existence of Nibiru beyond Neptune is not sure and accepted by modern Astronomy yet. The main idea of the author is that the Sun is involved in a cosmic dance with its invisible dark star companion: Vulcan (another name used after the well-known name of Nemesis). As the Author R.F. says in his scientific article,
The eccentricities of .54 and .90 were selected because one researcher is pushing very hard for the former, and the latter induces a cometary orbit for comparison. Also, visual binary stars have been found to have eccentricities of about .50 on average anyway, so the former number is close to one we might expect anyway.
Conclusion
The real question of the hour is does Vulcan pose a threat to the Earth? The best answer for now is it depends. All of the orbits examined or that are reasonably likely imply that Vulcan's perihelion is well outside the orbit of Pluto, but even if that's so an object of several Jovian masses coming that close to the Sun would be sorely felt throughout the solar system you can be certain. Possibly a larger threat is that Vulcan may well have its own retinue of satellites which at perihelion could come careening through the inner solar system to create cataclysmic havoc on a scale difficult to imagine. The other major threat of such an object is its likely ability to drive any number of comets hurtling in our direction. As more about Vulcan's orbit and properties becomes known, the threat assessment will become more realistic. For now, stay tuned.
"Planet X" might actually exist — and so might "Planet Y."
At least two planets larger than Earth likely lurk in the dark depths of space far beyond Pluto, just waiting to be discovered, a new analysis of the orbits of "extreme trans-Neptunian objects" (ETNOs) suggests.
Researchers studied 13 ETNOs — frigid bodies such as the dwarf planet Sedna that cruise around the sun at great distances in elliptical paths.
Theory predicts a certain set of details for ETNO orbits, study team members said. For example, they should have a semi-major axis, or average distance from the sun, of about 150 astronomical units (AU). . . . These orbits should also have an inclination, relative to the plane of the solar system, of almost 0 degrees, among other characteristics.
But the actual orbits of the 13 ETNOs are quite different, with semi-major axes ranging from 150 to 525 AU and average inclinations of about 20 degrees.
"This excess of objects with unexpected orbital parameters makes us believe that some invisible forces are altering the distribution of the orbital elements of the ETNOs, and we consider that the most probable explanation is that other unknown planets exist beyond Neptune and Pluto," lead author Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, of the Complutense University of Madrid, said in a statement
The potential undiscovered worlds would be more massive than Earth, researchers said, and would lie about 200 AU or more from the sun — so far away that they'd be very difficult, if not impossible, to spot with current instruments.
Trujillo and Sheppard suggested that the orbits of 2012 VP113 and Sedna are consistent with the continued presence of a big "perturber" — perhaps a planet 10 times more massive than Earth that lies 250 AU from the sun.
"If it is confirmed, our results may be truly revolutionary for astronomy," de la Fuente Marcos said.
"The idea’s not crazy," says David Jewitt, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "But I think the evidence is slim." The trail of bread crumbs leading to an undiscovered planet is sparse: just 12 chunks of ice lead the way. But it’s enough to get some researchers wondering about a ninth (or 10th, depending on your attitude regarding Pluto) planet roaming the outer solar system and how it might have arrived there.
Kuiper belt clues
"The exciting thing for me is that 2012 VP113 exists," says Megan Schwamb, a planetary scientist at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. "Whatever put Sedna on its orbit should have put a whole bunch of other objects out there."
The gigantic, extended circles of Sedna and 2012 Vp113 are not at all like all else in the earth’s planetary group. Both are too a long way from Neptune to feel its belongings. Furthermore they’re too a long way from the Oort cloud, the removed shell of ice rocks thought to conceal the earth’s planetary group. Their trajectories could be a relic of a passing star, or the changing impact of the Milky Way’s gravity as the sun moves around the cosmic system — or of a gigantic planet, long-gone or yet to be recognized.
The case for an extra planet got stronger when Trujillo and Sheppard understood that Sedna and 2012 Vp113 had something just the same as 10 different articles. All the articles past 150 galactic units (AU) come closest to the sun, a point known as perihelion, at almost the same time that they cross the plane of the earth’s planetary group. There’s no purpose behind these perihelia to pack up like that. Billions of years of advancement ought to have left the perihelia scattered, in the same way as whatever remains of the Kuiper cinch — unless something was holding the perihelia set up.
Trujillo and Sheppard assessed that a planet around two to 15 times as monstrous as Earth, at a separation of 250 cosmic units (AU) (around eight times as a long way from the sun as Neptune) could clarify why these 12 perihelia were packed together. Anyhow the space experts concede that is by all account not the only plausibility. A closer planet as enormous as Mars would have the same impact as a Neptune-mass body much more remote away.
"If it is confirmed, our results may be truly revolutionary for astronomy," de la Fuente Marcos said.
There could be at least two unknown dwarf planets hidden well beyond Pluto, whose gravitational influence determines the orbits and strange distribution of objects observed beyond Neptune. This has been revealed by numerical calculations. If confirmed, this hypothesis would revolutionize solar system models. Astronomers have spent decades debating whether some dark trans- Plutonian planet remains to be discovered within the solar system. According to scientists not only one, but at least two planets must exist to explain the orbital behavior of extreme trans-Neptunian objects.
Susana Romero's version of the Vulcan Web Site.
Astronomers have spent decades debating whether some dark trans-Plutonian planet remains to be discovered within the solar system. According to the calculations of scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain) and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) not only one, but at least two planets must exist to explain the orbital behaviour of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO).
The most accepted theory establishes that the orbits of these objects, which travel beyond Neptune, should be distributed randomly, and by an observational bias, their paths must fulfil a series of characteristics: have a semi-major axis with a value close to 150 AU (astronomical units or times the distance between the Earth and the Sun), an inclination of almost 0° and an argument or angle of perihelion (closest point of the orbit to our Sun) also close to 0° or 180°.
Yet what is observed in a dozen of these bodies is quite different: the values of the semi-major axis are very disperse (between 150 AU and 525 AU), the average inclination of their orbit is around 20
The quest to find a Planet X in our solar system beyond Pluto continues — and we may be a step closer to not one, but two undiscovered planetary masses.
The discovery of 2012 VP113 confirmed that Sedna is not a fluke but is possibly the first of a large population of icy bodies distinct from others in the rest of the solar system. So Trujillo and Sheppard continued to poke around the Kuiper belt, and the mystery deepened. They noticed that beyond 150 astronomical units (150 times the distance from the sun to the Earth), 10 previously discovered objects, along with Sedna and 2012 VP113, follow orbits that appear strangely bunched up.
“That immediately piqued our interest,” says Sheppard. Could an unseen planet, a Planet X, be holding the orbits of all these far-out bodies in place?
A dwarf planet with the most distant orbit known found beyond the observed edge of our Solar System.
Sheppard and Trujillo suggest a Super Earth or an even larger object at hundreds of AU could create the shepherding effect seen in the orbits of these objects, which are too distant to be perturbed significantly by any of the known planets.
a) Orbit diagram for the outer solar system. The Sun and Terrestrial planets are at the center. The orbits of the four giant planet Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are shown by purple solid dotted light blue region just beyond the giant planets. Sedna's orbit is shown in orange while 2012 VP113's orbit is shown in red. Both objects are currently near their closest approach to the Sun (perihelion). They would be too faint to detect when in the outer parts of their orbits. Notice that both orbits have similar perihelion locations on the sky and both are far away from the giant planet and Kuiper Belt regions. b) Plot of all the known bodies in the outer solar system with their closest approach to the Sun(Perihelion) and eccentricity.
There are three competing theories for how the inner Oort cloud might have formed. As more objects are found, it will be easier to narrow down which of these theories is most likely accurate. One theory is that a rogue planet could have been tossed out of the giant planet region and this planet could have perturbed objects out of the Kuiper Belt to the inner Oort cloud on its way out. This planet could have been ejected or still be in the distant solar system today. The second theory is that a close stellar encounter could put objects into the inner Oort cloud region while a third theory suggests inner Oort cloud objects are captured extra-solar planets from other stars that were near our Sun in its birth cluster.
| Parameter | Value | 2 Sigma Error | 2012VP113(Biden) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Period (years) | 4969.0 | +/- 11.5 | 4320 +/- 183 yr |
| Orbital Eccentricity | 0.537 | +/- 0.0085 | 0.696 +/- 0.011 |
| Orbital Inclination | 48.44o | +/- 0.23o | 24.017o +/- 0.004o |
| Longitude of the Ascending Node | 189.0o | +/- 1.3o | 90.887o +/- 0.010o |
| Argument Of Perihelion | 257.8o | +/- 0.90o | 294o +/- 2o |
| Aphelion AU | 447.6 | +/- 3.2 | 450 +/- 13 |
Now, however, brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, two freelance Spanish astronomers, together with scientist Sverre J. Aarseth from the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), have considered the question the other way around: How would the orbits of these six ETNOs evolve if a Planet Nine such as the one proposed by K. Batygin and M. Brown really did exist? The answer to this important question has been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).
In any case, the statistical and numerical evidence obtained by the authors, both through this and previous work, leads them to suggest that the most stable scenario is one in which there is not just one planet, but rather several more beyond Pluto, in mutual resonance, which best explains the results. "That is to say we believe that in addition to a Planet Nine, there could also be a Planet Ten and even more," the Spanish astronomer points out.
- The aligned orbits of rocky bodies around Pluto hints at an unseen planet
- Spanish scientists claim this world would be 10 times the mass of Earth
- They believe this planet is moving in resonance with a much larger world
- They calculated this world would have a mass between that of Mars and Saturn and would orbit 200 times Earth's distance from the sun
The monsters are multiplying. Just months after astronomers announced hints of a giant "Planet X" lurking beyond Pluto, a team in Spain says there may actually be two supersized planets hiding in the outer reaches of our solar system.
Now Carlos and Raul de la Fuente Marcos at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain have taken another look at these distant bodies. As well as confirming their bizarre orbital alignment, the pair found additional puzzling patterns. Small groups of the objects have very similar orbital paths. Because they are not massive enough to be tugging on each other, the researchers think the objects are being "shepherded" by a larger object in a pattern known as orbital resonance.
For instance, we know that Neptune and Pluto are in orbital resonance – for every two orbits Pluto makes around the sun, Neptune makes three. This is called a 2:3 resonance. Similarly, one group of small objects seems to be in lockstep with a much more distant, unseen planet. That world would have a mass between that of Mars and Saturn and would sit about 200 times Earth’s distance from the sun.
Some of the smaller objects have very elongated orbits that would take them out to this distance. It is unusual for a large planet to orbit so close to other bodies unless it is dynamically tied to something else, so the researchers suggest that the large planet is itself in resonance with a more massive world at about 250 times the Earth-sun distance – just like the one predicted in the previous work.
The large planet would have a mass between that of Mars and Saturn (90 Earth Masses) and would sit about 200 AU.
The large planet is itself in resonance with a more massive world at about 250 AU. Vulcan's mass is anticipated to be 141 to 165 Earth Masses and its average distance from the Sun is 291 AU
SUMMARY: CR105 - COMET OF VULCAN - 18 January 2006
The presence of a brown dwarf companion to our Sun has long been suspected, but until recently there has been no direct evidence that could convince astronomers. Originally, only circumstantial evidence (newspaper articles, ancient artifacts and even extraterrestrial alien contacts) have support its existence. This web site has proposed its mass and orbital parameters based on multi-source data. Apparently, it forms comet swarms with a 3:2 orbital period resonant (Vulcan - 4969 years):(comet - 3312.7 years) ratio . Now, the computation of giant comet CR105's average orbital period has shown it to be statistically certain that it is in just such a predicted resonant relationship.
There may be at least three other Vulcan related planetoids. A similar average period of these has not been evaluated, but the initial values are within the range expected when Vulcan is included in computer simulations. Specifically, 2001 FP185 (3433.7 years) and 2002 GB332 (3234.2 years) appear to be in a similar 3:2 resonance and 1999 DP8 (1246 years) in a 4:1 resonance with Vulcan.
The monsters are multiplying. Just months after astronomers announced hints of a giant “Planet X” lurking beyond Pluto, a team in Spain says there may actually be two supersized planets hiding in the outer reaches of our solar system.
When potential dwarf planet 2012 VP113 was discovered in March, it joined a handful of unusual rocky objects known to reside beyond the orbit of Pluto. These small objects have curiously aligned orbits, which hints that an unseen planet even further out is influencing their behaviour. Scientists calculated that this world would be about 10 times the mass of Earth and would orbit at roughly 250 times Earth’s distance from the sun.
Now Carlos and Raul de la Fuente Marcos at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain have taken another look at these distant bodies. As well as confirming their bizarre orbital alignment, the pair found additional puzzling patterns. Small groups of the objects have very similar orbital paths. Because they are not massive enough to be tugging on each other, the researchers think the objects are being "shepherded" by a larger object in a pattern known as orbital resonance.
| Period | Ecc./Peri./Ap. | Inc. | Arg.Peri./Year | Long.Asc.N./Dist./S. Mass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VULCAN (updated Aug. 2002) | ||||
| 4,969 | 0.537/134.8/447.6 | 48 deg. | 256 deg./515 BC | 189 deg./~446/0.05% |
| VULCAN | ||||
| 5,030* | 0.545/134/454 | 49 deg. | 256 deg./546 BC | 192 deg./453/0.1% |
| FORBES' TWO PLANETS | ||||
| 5,000* | n.c./n.c./n.c. | 45 deg. | n.c./n.c. | 185 deg./n.c./n.c. |
| 1,076 | 0.167/87/122 | 52 deg. | 115 deg./1702 | 247 deg./n.c./n.c. |
| THREE OF PICKERING'S PLANETS | ||||
| 500,000 | 0.20/5040/7560 | 26 deg. | 80 deg. | 234 deg./?/3% |
| 26,000 | 0.54/404/1352 | 86 deg. | 105 deg. | 93 deg./575/6% |
| 1,400 | 0.35/81/169 | 37 deg. | 160 deg. | 51 deg./95/n.c. |
an approximate mean motion resonance with an unseen planet.
Discovery of 2012 VP-113 beyond Pluto might hint at an invisible giant and help us understand early interplanetary movement
What’s more, their work indicates the potential presence of an enormous planet, perhaps up to 10 times the size of Earth, not yet seen, but possibly influencing the orbit of 2012 VP113, as well as other inner Oort cloud objects.
New View Of The Outer Solar System
A surprise monster may be lurking in our solar system. A newly discovered dwarf planet has grabbed the crown as the most distant known object in our solar system – and its orbit hints at a giant, unseen rocky world, 10 times the mass of Earth and orbiting far beyond Pluto.
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) scoured this region of space in 2010 and 2011 searching for a so-called Planet X and came up empty.
However, WISE was looking for the tell-tale warmth of gas giants – a rocky "super-Earth", like the one Sheppard's team suggest, would be too cold for the telescope to pick up. "This is too faint for WISE," says Ned Wright, the space telescope's principal investigator. Even if the planet has a small internal heat source – and absorbs some sunlight, it would still not generate enough heat to register, he adds.
Note: 2012 VP113 Aphelion 450 ± 13 AU
VULCAN'S ORBITAL PARAMETERS FROM BLAVETSKY'S THEOSOPHY - " Vulcan's Aphelion is 41.6 billion miles (448 AU) vs. Hynek's 50 billion."
The scientists noticed something else that seemed too odd to be a coincidence: Both Sedna and 2012 VP113 seemed to be making their closest approach to the sun at similar angles. That could mean that there's a giant planet out there, tugging at both of their orbits in the same way. If so, this ghost planet could have a size of anywhere from 1 to 20 Earth masses, Sheppard said.
Future telescopes should be able to help settle whether a super-Earth exists by finding more dwarf planets like Sedna and 2012 VP113, scientists said.
Figure. How 2012 VP113 And "Super Earth" Compare With Some Of Their Neighbors
Notice that the diameters of Earth and super Earth are compared and range from two to ten Earth's diameter implying a diameter of 80,000 miles, vs. Sitchin's reported value of 80,691 miles. These values differ by only 0.86%
Anomalies in the orbits of Sedna and 2012 VP113 tantalizingly suggest that one or more giant planets 10 times the mass of Earth could orbit in the dark, frozen outer fringe of our solar system, 250 A.U.s or more from the Sun.
This 250 A.U. values is based on a nominal 4000 year period (2501.5 = 3953). The admitted period for VP113 goes up to 4590 years (2761.5 = 4585). Thus, the corresponding value for the postulated giant planet must be more than 276 A.U. The corresponding value for Vulcan is 291 A.U. (291.21.5 = 4969).
Nibiru is a comet swarm, not a planet. More likely to pass circa August 2016.
This is why, despite the failure with Planet X, NASA thinks "there are even more stars out there left to find with WISE. We don't know our own sun’s backyard as well as you might think," Wright added.
The brown dwarf, named ULAS J222711-004547, caught the researchers' attention for its extremely red appearance compared to "normal" brown dwarfs.
However, the recently discovered brown dwarf ULAS J222711-004547 has a very different atmosphere where the sky is always red. 2014 PLANET X WATCH TRENDS - 10-December-2013
Why 1983 is When Our World ChangedYou can read a watered-down cover-up on Wikipedia, the truth about what IRAS found in 1983 and how it changed the course of human history is profound.
The real back story on IRAS was given to us by John Maynard, Defense Intelligence Agency (Retired) who played an instrumental role in the creation of Yowusa.com in 1999 and then worked with Dr. Greer's CSETI Disclosure Project.
What Maynard told us in 2000, was that while IRAS was publicly touted as a wide sky survey space based infrared telescope, it was built as a result of the preliminary data coming from the Pioneer probes suggesting a large body at the edge of our solar system.
He further maintains that NASA found Planet X and this corroborated by a December 30, 1983 article published by the Washington Post.
IRAS and the Elites
However, what the IRAS data made these ambitions pointless given that the impending flyby of Planet X actually a comet swarm through the core of our system will lay waste to the world's various political and economic systems.
Dead Star and comet like planet
THE LOCATION OF PLANET X
R. S. Harrington
Anderson concluded that the tenth planet must have a highly elliptical orbit, carrying it far away to be undetectable now but periodically bringing it close enough to leave its disturbing signature on the paths of the outer planets. He suggests a mass of five Earth masses, an orbital period of about 700-1000 years, and a highly inclined orbit. Its perturbations on the outer planets won't be detected again until 2600. Anderson hoped that the two Voyagers would help to pin down the location of this planet.
Lewis Swift (co-discoverer of Comet Swift-Tuttle, which returned 1992), also saw a 'star' he believed to be Vulcan -- but at a different position than either of Watson's two 'intra-Mercurials'. In addition, neither Watson's nor Swift's Vulcans could be reconciled with Le Verrier's or Lescarbault's Vulcan.
Improvements in WISE's infrared vision over past missions have allowed it to pick up the faint glow of many of these hidden objects. In August 2011, the mission announced the discovery of the coolest brown dwarfs spotted yet, a new class of stars called Y dwarfs. One of the Y dwarfs is less than 80 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius), or about room temperature, making it the coldest star-like body known. Since then, the WISE science team has surveyed the entire landscape around our sun and discovered 200 brown dwarfs, including 13 Y dwarfs.
Several initial states stand out in that they show a relatively large likelihood of success in matching the constraints. Some of the statistically best results were obtained when assuming that the solar system initially had five giant planets and one ice giant, with the mass comparable to that of Uranus and Neptune, was ejected to interstellar space by Jupiter. This possibility appears to be conceivable in view of the recent discovery of a large number free-floating planets in interstellar space, which indicates that planet ejection should be common.
We present updated dynamical and statistical analyses of outer Oort cloud cometary evidence suggesting that the Sun has a wide-binary jovian mass companion. The results support a conjecture that there exists a companion of mass ?1-4 MJupiter orbiting in the innermost region of the outer Oort cloud. Our most restrictive prediction is that the orientation angles of the orbit plane in galactic coordinates are centered on ?, the galactic longitude of the ascending node = 319° and i, the galactic inclination = 103° (or the opposite direction) with an uncertainty in the orbit normal direction subtending <2% of the sky. Such a companion could also have produced the detached Kuiper Belt object Sedna. If the object exists, the absence of similar evidence in the inner Oort cloud implies that common beliefs about the origin of observed inner Oort cloud comets must be reconsidered. Evidence of the putative companion would have been recorded by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) which has completed its primary mission and is continuing on secondary objectives.
We present updated dynamical and statistical analyses of outer Oort cloud cometary evidence suggesting that the Sun has a wide-binary jovian mass companion. The results support a conjecture that there exists a companion of mass ?1-4 MJupiter orbiting in the innermost region of the outer Oort cloud. Our most restrictive prediction is that the orientation angles of the orbit plane in galactic coordinates are centered on ?, the galactic longitude of the ascending node = 319o and i, the galactic inclination = 103o (or the opposite direction) with an uncertainty in the orbit normal direction subtending <2% of the sky. Such a companion could also have produced the detached Kuiper Belt object Sedna. If the object exists, the absence of similar evidence in the inner Oort cloud implies that common beliefs about the origin of observed inner Oort cloud comets must be reconsidered. Evidence of the putative companion would have been recorded by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) which has completed its primary mission and is continuing on secondary objectives.
The group made the rounds of all the news web sites in the past two weeks, claiming they discovered something very significant. It's almost twice the size of Jupiter and just beyond our furthest planetoid, Pluto. Although it's not a planet, it appears to have planets or large satellites encircling it. It's what astronomers call a "brown dwarf star" and its official name is "G1.9".
This newly discovered "brown dwarf" is believed to have formed from the same condensed matter that gave birth to our Sun. It is believed that, after the large planets formed around the Sun, they pushed it to the edge of the Solar system where it formed a sphere about 1.9MJ -- well below the mass needed to ignite it as a "sun."
The newly discovered brown dwarf is reported to be located just about 60 to 66 AU (1 AU=the distance from the Sun to Earth) from us (its parigee), currently in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. Because of periodic gravitational disturbances in areas of space further out, specifically in the Oort Cloud, the Spanish group of astronomers believe G1.9 travels in an elliptical orbit extending possibly hundreds of AU beyond the furthest known planets (its apogee). Its position just beyond Pluto suggests it is at its closest approach to the Sun and Earth.
When we previewed this article to the Starviewer Team, we asked them to send us a rebuttal. We think we have focused on the Achillies Heel of their assertions. We waited for an answer and received the following statement, which was translated for us:
1.-Some self-motivated International committee of astronomers, by their own innitiative, are presently calculating the exact orbit for the Brown Dwarf Sagitarius-Oort-Kuiper perturbation, using the StarViewerTeam’s work sheets based on Lissauer, Murray and Matese’s original drafts. A final report, will be published by Feb 2010.2.-There are huge scientific evidences concerning to the fact that Cosmic causes and Brown Dwarf are the real causes of Climate change. On July the 10th, Dr.Paul Clark, published on Science.com an article concerning to this matter, and almost 700 scientists signed the minority Report on climate change.
It appears the evidence is inferential and based on mathematics. So we must wait until February. I give this a validity rating (from 1 to 10) of 4.
Does Earth have a new friend? An astrophysicist says it's likely that an as- yet undiscovered planet exists on the dark fringes of our solar system, messing with the orbits of celestial bodies in the Kuiper Belt, just beyond Neptune.
Odd orbits of remote objects hint at unseen world, new calculations suggest.
Too far out to be easily spotted by telescopes, the potential unseen planet appears to be making its presence felt by disturbing the orbits of so-called Kuiper belt objects, said Rodney Gomes, an astronomer at the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.
The group made the rounds of all the news web sites in the past two weeks, claiming they discovered something very significant. It's almost twice the size of Jupiter and just beyond our furthest planetoid, Pluto. Although it's not a planet, it appears to have planets or large satellites encircling it. It's what astronomers call a "brown dwarf star" and its official name is "G1.9".
We are close to our Sun and within its gravitational influence. So as we are travel through space, it appears to us that the G1.9 is moving in an elipse between our furthest planetoid, Pluto, and the edge of our Solar system, near the Oort Cloud.
The newly discovered brown dwarf is reported to be located just about 60 to 66 AU (1 AU=the distance from the Sun to Earth) from us (its parigee), currently in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. Because of periodic gravitational disturbances in areas of space further out, specifically in the Oort Cloud, the Spanish group of astronomers believe G1.9 travels in an elliptical orbit extending possibly hundreds of AU beyond the furthest known planets (its apogee). Its position just beyond Pluto suggests it is at its closest approach to the Sun and Earth. NASA EMPLOYEE SPEAKS ABOUT NIBIRU AKA PLANET X - March 29, 2012
It so happened that just two weeks before the recent news, at the Sitchin Reunion in Chicago July 15 – 16, 2005, I reviewed the search for “Planet X” by various astronomers. A significant highlight of that search was the announcement in December 1983 by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that IRAS (the infra-red telescope) has found a planet, much larger than Earth, moving in the distant heavens in our direction. The announcement – hastily retracted as a “misunderstanding” – prompted the Reagan-Gorbachov meetings and President Reagan’s speech at the U.N. about the common danger to Mankind from “an alien planet out there.”
Of course there is controversy. The Spanish asrtonomers, who call themselves the "Starviewer Team" must still convince the scientific community that G.19 is not a supernova, but rather a brown dwarf star inside our Solar System. This is not an easy task. But we asked them to do just that for this article.
UPDATE FEBRUARY 19, 2010: -- We patiently waited and monitored the StarViewer Team's web site for the "proof" that claimed would be forthcoming. Needless to say, it never materialized. Also, the initial popularity of their claim appears to have been nothing more than a way to attract a large viewership. The web site now is full of ridiculous claims, including some satirical stories taken from "the onion" (a very funny site) which the SV Team promoted as "real." There is no mention of the mathematical validation that was expected with regards to the G1.9 object. Perhaps the validation disproved their theory... perhaps it was never going to be validated by anyone... I think it is safe to take this theory of object G1.9 being a brown dwarf down to ZERO possibility!
In recent years, astronomers have discovered a bunch of planets located at least 100 astronomical units, or the distance from the Sun to the Earth, away from their host stars. These planets are gas giants - they would have to be for us to see them at all - so this is something very different the dwarf planets like Pluto and Eris discovered in our solar system's Kuiper Belt and beyond. There's almost no chance that these giant planets could have formed as part of their host star's planetary disc, considering their immense distance away. That strongly suggests that these are former rogue planets captured by the star's gravity. Hagai Perets of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Thijs Kouwenhoven at Peking University's Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics teamed up to figure out just how often we can expect stars - potentially including those like our own Sun - to capture these giant wandering planets. ScienceNOW reports their results:
A NASA press conference with some of the team from WISE has described some of the preliminary findings, and how far they've still got to go as they crunch the data available for the infra-red telescope's sky survey. During the press conference, they took a question about Planet X/Nibiru. They ruled out an incoming object, but could not rule out a substantial body in the outer solar system moving in a roughly circular orbit:
Also admitted was that WISE is very good at detecting comets and asteroids and such objects that are in our 'backyard'
"In principle, a viable candidate would be a putative trans-Plutonian massive object (PlanetX/Nemesis/Tyche), recently revamped to accommodate certain features of the architecture of the Kuiper belt and of the distribution of the comets in the Oort cloud, since it would cause a non-vanishing long-term variation of the eccentricity. Actually, the values for its mass and distance needed to explain the empirically determined increase of the lunar eccentricity would be highly unrealistic and in contrast with the most recent viable theoretical scenarios for the existence of such a body. For example, a terrestrial-sized body should be located at just 30AU [Astronomical Units], while an object with the mass of Jupiter should be at 200AU."
or
ON THE ANOMALOUS SECULAR INCREASE OF THE ECCENTRICITY OF THE ORBIT OF THE MOON
On the other hand, the values for the physical and orbital parameters of such a hypothetical body required to obtain at least the right order of magnitude for e(epsilon) are completely unrealistic: suffice it to say that an Earth-sized planet would be at 30 au, while a Jovian mass would be at 200 au. Thus, the issue of finding a satisfactorily explanation for the anomalous behavior of the Moon’s eccentricity remains open.
We show that the retrograde perihelion precession of Saturn \Delta\dot\varpi, recently estimated by different teams of astronomers by processing ranging data from the Cassini spacecraft and amounting to some milliarcseconds per century, can be explained in terms of a localized, distant body X, not yet directly discovered. From the determination of its tidal parameter K = GM_X/r_X^3 as a function of its ecliptic longitude \lambda_X and latitude \beta_X, we calculate the distance at which X may exist for different values of its mass, ranging from the size of Mars to that of the Sun. The minimum distance would occur for X located perpendicularly to the ecliptic, while the maximum distance is for X lying in the ecliptic. We find for rock-ice planets of the size of Mars and the Earth that they would be at about 80-150 au, respectively, while a Jupiter-sized gaseous giant would be at approximately 1 kau. A typical brown dwarf would be located at about 4 kau, while an object with the mass of the Sun would be at approximately 10 kau, so that it could not be Nemesis for which a solar mass and a heliocentric distance of about 88 kau are predicted. If X was directed towards a specific direction, i.e. that of the Galactic Center, it would mimick the action of a recently proposed form of the External Field Effect (EFE) in the framework of the MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND).
Vulcan is about half Jupiter mass (141 +/- 35 Earth masses), and a tiny bit closer than its aphelion of 448 AU aphelion.
A potentially viable Newtonian candidate would be a trans-Plutonian massive object (Planet X/Nemesis/Tyche) since it, actually, would affect e with a non- vanishing long-term variation.
On the other hand, the values for the physical and orbital parameters of such a hypothetical body required to obtain the right order of magnitude for de/dt are completely unrealistic.
Moreover, they are in neat disagreement with both the most recent theoretical scenarios envisaging the existence of a distant, planetary-sized body and with the model-independent constraints on them dynamically inferred from planetary motions.
Within our solar system, an extra giant planet, or possibly two, might once have accompanied Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.
The 4500 year old Akkadian seal appears to indicate the relative size of the Jovian planets to our Sun.
A Mathematical Fit Of The Diameters Of The Jovians And The Sun Against The Logarithm Of Their Masses. This plot was done by a NASA scientist. Note that the 'fit' forms a very good straight line indicating that the Jovians planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) and the Sun are mathematically related and that their mass relative to the Sun’s was apparently known to whoever was the source of the information depicted on the Akkadian seal. See the ANALYSIS OF THE AKKADIAN SEAL for measurement details.
According to Tom Van Flandern, it is entirely possible that Planet X began its career in our solar system as a distant outer planet, which was disturbed from its orbit by the force of a passing dwarf star. This interaction would have caused Planet X to veer into the heart of the solar system, towards a fateful encounter with one of the inner planets.
In his book 'Dark Matter, Missing Planets & New Comets', Van Flandern wrote as follows: 'Statistically, a few passing stars would approach within 40 times Pluto's distance of the Sun over the life of the solar system. They would tend to perturb the outermost planets... into planet-crossing orbits. Eventually the crossings would result in close encounters between planets.' According to Van Flandern, this perturbation process was not only feasible but inevitable, given the existence of planets in such distant orbits.
Van Flandern noted, however, that once Planet X had been forced inwards, it would suffer repeated encounters with the other planets, eventually leading to its ejection from the solar system. Van Flandern confirmed that such a planet- crossing orbit was highly unstable and unlikely to last for more than 100,000 years, mainly due to the powerful influence of Jupiter, by far the largest planet of the solar system:
If Planet X crosses Jupiter's orbit, it is a goner, either by collision with Jupiter or ejection from the solar system, within 100,000 years... The encounters with Jupiter are not merely potential, but inevitable, because of forced precession of the orbit by Jupiter... Jupiter's gravity is so strong that it can eliminate another body in a single close approach.
J. D. Anderson, G. Giampieri, E. L. Lau (JPL), R. T. Hammond (NDSU)
Using coherent radio Doppler data generated by the Deep Space Network (DSN) at S band (wavelength \sim 13 cm), we have produced five-day averages of radial accelerations acting on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft between 40 and 60 AU. The one- sigma accuracy of the reduced accelerations is 2.5 \times 10^-10 m s^-2. Here we develop the theory of weak gravitational interactions of a spacecraft with orbiting bodies, and show that it is feasible to determine the mass and location of an unknown object from the acceleration data, subject to reasonable assumptions. We search the data record for candidate flybys, and apply the theory to one of the best candidates at distance 56 AU, ecliptic longitude 73.9 Deg and latitude 3.1 Deg.
Using coherent radio Doppler data generated by the Deep Space Network (DSN) at S band (wavelength ~ 13 cm), we have produced five-day averages of radial accelerations acting on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft between 40 and 60 AU. The one- sigma accuracy of the reduced accelerations is 2.5 x 10(-10) m s(-2) . Here we develop the theory of weak gravitational interactions of a spacecraft with orbiting bodies, and show that it is feasible to determine the mass and location of an unknown object from the acceleration data, subject to reasonable assumptions. We search the data record for candidate flybys, and apply the theory to one of the best candidates at distance 56 AU, ecliptic longitude 73.9 Deg and latitude 3.1 Deg.
A photocopy of the November 1982 Science Digest Article - Mysterious Planet X depicting both planet X and a Brown Dwarf Star in our solar system.
Van Flandern (see below): 'Statistically, a few passing stars would approach within 40 times Pluto's distance of the Sun over the life of the solar system. These stars would tend to perturb the orbits any possible outermost planets (10 to 40 times more distant than Pluto’s aphelion) into unstable orbits. They would be forced into orbits that would pass through the inner solar system and then these planets would be ejected from our solar system because they would be forced into orbits that would cross the orbits of other planets. Van Flandern said this concept was explained in standard celestial mechanics books. Jupiter's gravity is so strong that it can eliminate another body in a single close approach.
The safe distance for a planet like object was 10 X Pluto's aphelion of 49 AU = 490 AU or 45.6 billion miles away. This value was rounded off (on the high end) to 50 billion miles in order to specify the maximum range a potential new planet like body could be in our solar system. This is why they were looking for a brown dwarf 50 billion miles away as depicted in the 1982 Science Digest article shown below. And the image of the object depicted above on the Akkadian seal could well have been the reason the discovery of “an object in our solar system possibly as big as Jupiter” by Henry O’toole was reported in the December 30, 1983 Washington Post article depiced below (Mystery Heavenly Body Discovered).
One of the more amusing pieces of evidence for the existence of Planet X is a picture from the 1987 New Science and Invention Encyclopedia. In a section on space probes, the encyclopedia shows the paths of the 2 Pioneer probes and illustrates how the probes were used in the search for more planets. It shows the Earth, the Sun, a dead star (at 50 billion miles or 538 AU) and a tenth planet (at 4.7 billion miles or 50 AU).
With the discovery of Eris (AKA Xena and AKA 2003 UB 313) whose orbit varies from 36 to about 97 AU, the image is a reasonable fit to Eris' position. This Vulcan web site carries Vulcan at 41, not 50 billion miles
Nearly all binary stars orbit each other in fairly elliptical orbits. Some of these support a 3:2 comet resonance as does our dark star Vulcan. See comment two by our orbit analyst. Here three or four of our nearest ten star systems support such a resonance. Any astronomer skilled in celestial mechanics would be aware of this possibility. So the existence of a 'dead star' in our solar system implies a nominal 40% chance that the inner planets of our solar system would be subject to bombardment by comet swarms in resonate orbits. However, most of these star systems are close together, so the comets in resonate orbits would be rapidly swept out of these solar systems by a variety of means. However, in our solar system, the 'dead star' draws Kuiper belt bodies into the inner solar system. These bodies crumble rounding the Sun producing comet swarms. These comet swarms would stay around for several million years. Some of these comets would impact Earth causing massive natural catastrophes. The above illustration clearly associates the 'tenth planet' with the 'dead star' that in turn indicates Earth's vulnerability to natural comet impact catastrophes. This may be why the existence of 2003 UB 313 (AKA Eris) was kept secret.
Photocopies of newspaper articles reporting the discovery of an object possibly as large as Jupiter (Our Vulcan) or a nearby protostar that never got hot enough to become a star (AKA brown dwarf) 50 billion miles away.
Is somebody trying to hide something from us? One must wonder how many other planetary systems about other stars the ancient Akkadians knew about.
AN ASTRONOMER'S ANALYSIS OF THE AKKADIAN SEAL - by Tom Van Flandern
Referring to Figure 101, p. 205 of Sitchin's "Twelfth Planet": a large star symbol is in the center. It is way too small in diameter relative to the planets; but we might overlook that as artist's license, if only the planets were shown to scale.
In summary, the Seal does not, by itself, suggest anything more to an astronomer than an artistic rendition of a star surrounded by planets. There are simply no instances where consecutive identifications of orbs with real planets support one another. Each must be argued ad hoc, and each is problematic.
Given the lack of easy recognition of familiar solar system bodies, the extension to unfamiliar ones (based on the Seal alone) must be regarded as an act of pure faith. Perhaps the Akkadian Seal depicts some other planetary system around some other star; but it seems most unlikely to refer to our own solar system.
Back in the 1980s there was a rash of Planet X related articles that were published in various venues. Then the grand one of them all, the 1987 Encyclopedia that shows NASA sending the Pioneers to intercept the "Dead Star" and the "10th Planet". All of a sudden news of Planet X just dropped off the map. What did the Pioneer Spacecraft find?
NEW YORK TIMES June 19th, 1982 Spacecraft May Detect Mystery Body in Space "If it is a dark star type of object, it may be 50 billion miles beyond the known planets"
THE WASHINGTON POST December 30th, 1983 Orbiting Eye Reveals Mystery Space Monster "The most fascinating explanation of this mystery body, which is so cold it casts no light and has never been seen by optical telescopes on Earth or in space, is that it is a giant gaseous planet as large as Jupiter and as close to Earth as 50 billion miles."
US NEWS WORLD REPORT Sept 10, 1984 Planet X - Is It Really Out There? "Last year, the infrared astronomical satellite (IRAS), circling in a polar orbit 560 miles from the Earth, detected heat from an object about 50 billion miles away that is now the subject of intense speculation. "All I can say is that we don't know what it is yet," says Gerry Neugesbeuer, director of the Palomar Observatory for the California Institute of Technology."
Thomas C Van Flandern (June 26, 1940 – January 9, 2009) was an American astronomer and author specializing in celestial mechanics. Van Flandern had a career as a professional scientist, but was noted as an outspoken proponent of non-mainstream views related to astronomy, physics, and extra- terrestrial life.
He attended Yale University on a scholarship sponsored by the U.S. Naval Observatory(USNO),[citation needed] joining USNO in 1963.[
Van Flandern was a prominent advocate of the belief that certain geological features seen on Mars, especially the "face at Cydonia", are not of natural origin, but were produced by intelligent extra-terrestrial life, probably the inhabitants of a major planet once located where the asteroid belt presently exists, and which Van Flandern believed had exploded 3.2 million years ago.
"We've shown conclusively that at least some of the artifacts on the surface of Mars were artificially produced, and the evidence indicates they were produced approximately 3.2 million years ago, which is when Planet V exploded. Mars was a moon of Planet V, and we speculate that the Builders created the artificial structures as theme parks and advertisements to catch the attention of space tourists from Planet V (much as we may do on our own Moon some day, when lunar tourism becomes prevalent), or perhaps they are museums of some kind. Remember that the Face at Cydonia was located on the original equator of Mars. The Builder's civilization ended 3.2 million years ago. The evidence suggests that the explosion was anticipated, so the Builders may have departed their world, and it produced a massive flood, because Planet V was a water world. It is a coincidence that the face on Mars is hominid, like ours, and the earliest fossil record on Earth of hominids is the "Lucy" fossil from 3.2 million years ago. There have been some claims of earlier hominid fossils, but Lucy is the earliest that is definite. So I leave you with the thought that there may be a grain of truth in The War of the Worlds, with the twist that WE are the Martians. "Face on Mars" is listed the number four in an astronomers ranking of astronomical pseudo-science topics
Seven years ago, the moment I first calculated the odd orbit of Sedna and realized it never came anywhere close to any of the planets, it instantly became clear that we astronomers had been missing something all along. Either something large once passed through the outer parts of our solar system and is now long gone, or something large still lurks in a distant corner out there and we haven’t found it yet.
Our first idea was that perhaps there was an unknown approximately earth- sized planet circling the sun about twice the distance of Neptune.
The second possibility that we considered and wrote about was that perhaps a star had passed extremely close to our solar system at some point during the lifetime of the sun. “Extremely close” for a star means something like 20 times beyond the orbit of Neptune,
The third possibility was the one that we deemed the most likely. Instead of getting one big kick from an improbably passing star, imagine that Sedna got a lot of really small kicks from many stars passing by not quite as closely.
Not finding anything else like Sedna was disappointing, of course, but, really, not surprising. Sedna was so far away and moving so slowly that we had almost missed it the first time around. And Sedna’s orbit is so elongated that is spends the vast majority of the time even further from the sun than it is now. In fact, most of the time Sedna is so far away from the sun that it would be moving so slowly that we would have missed it entirely. Of Sedna’s 12,000 year orbit around the sun,, we would only have been able to detect it for the 200 years when it was the absolute closest to the sun.
The Other Theories Each Had Their Own Unique Pattern,
We were lucky to have found Sedna to start with. We would need luck to find more.
To be continued. And eventually finished. Promise.
Robert Sutton Harrington (October 21, 1942 – January 23, 1993) was an American astronomer who worked at the United States Naval Observatory (USNO).
Harrington became a believer in the existence of a Planet X beyond Pluto and undertook searches for it, with positive results coming from the IRAD probe in 1983. Harrington collaborated initially with T. C. (Tom) Van Flandern.[1] They were both "courted" by Zecharia Sitchin and his followers who believe in a planet Nibiru or Marduk, who cite the research of Harrington and van Flandern as possible collaborating evidence, though no definitive proof of a 10th planet has surfaced to date.
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Harrington's Planet X
Forbes' Similar Planet
- Period: 1,076 yr.
- Inc.: 52 deg
- Ecc.: 0.167
- Peri: 87
- Aph.: 122
- Arg.Peri./Year: 115 deg./1702
- Long.Asc.N: 247 deg.
- Perihelion Epoch T: 6 August 1789
- Semi-major a: 101.2 AU
- Eccentricity e: 0.411
- Argument Of Perihelion: 208.5o
- Argument Of Node: 275.4o
- Inclination: 32.4o
- Mass: 4 Earth Masses
Have made no accusations or asserted any motives. Just the facts. None of these men died from the number one killer of men over 60. I don't know what it means. But it certainly is worthy of note and the list of dead astronomers is much, much longer than these listed here. We tried to focus on the pairs of astronomers more so than single astronomers as their deaths would be less probable as a pair. Hey everyone...do you see the attached videos below? No? Where are They? You see...they were deleted by somebody other than us, This is proof we are onto something, proof you are being lied to, proof that evil is all around us.
Dr. Robert S. Harrington, The Chief Astronomer Of The U.S. Naval Observatory, Died Before He Could Publicize The Fact That Planet X Is Approaching Our Solar System.
In 1991, Dr. Robert S. Harrington, the chief astronomer of the U.S. Naval Observatory, took a puny 8-inch telescope to Black Birch, New Zealand, one of the few viewing points on Earth optimal for sighting Planet X, which he definitively calculated to be approaching from below the ecliptic at an angle of 40 degrees.
Dr Harrington says the most remarkable feature predicted for Planet X is that its orbit is tilted 30 degrees away from the ecliptic, the main plane of the solar system, where all previous searches have concentrated. His models also predict a greater distance from the Sun, about 10 billion miles, or between two or three times as distant as Pluto.
- Furthermore, in publishing Dr. Harrington's obituary, the U.S. Naval
Observatory went out of its way to gratuitously lie about Dr. Harrington's
final
achievement, stating that "in his final years, Dr. Harrington had lost
interest
in the" [two-century astronomical] "search for Planet X." The obituary had
the
following to say about Planet X:
Considerations on the stability of the solar system led Bob to collaborate with T.C. Van Flandern in studies of the dynamical evolution of its satellites, and to an eventual search for "Planet X", conjectured to lie beyond Pluto and to be responsible for small, unexplained, residuals in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. Late in his career Bob seemed quite skeptical of such an object, however.
- Dr. Harrington's colleague in the search for Planet X, Dr. Tom Van
Flandern
reversed his affirmative statements about the approach of Planet X and became
peculiarly silent on the issue. In Meta Research Bulletin 4:3 (September
1999),
he states:
"Three more trans-Neptunian objects confirm the presence of a second asteroid belt in the region beyond Neptune. This probably indicates that the hypothetical Planet X is now an asteroid belt rather than an intact planet."
- Dr. Harrington's colleague in the search for Planet X, Dr. Tom Van Flandern reversed his affirmative statements about the approach of Planet X and became peculiarly silent on the issue;
Astronomers at the U.S. Naval Observatory are narrowing their solar system search for a 10th planet, a mysterious, phantom giant that has long captured the speculation and interest of stargazers.
Speculation about the existence of another planet evolved because something, perhaps a massive object orbiting the sun on the outer edge of the solar system, is giving a gravitational nudge that disrupts the predicted orbits of Uranus and Neptune, said astronomer R.S. Harrington.
''We are still incapable of predicting the location of Uranus,'' Harrington said Wednesday. ''It's clear something is wrong in the outer solar system.'' But Harrington said calculations later showed the combined mass of Pluto and its moon are about 1,000 times too small to account for the detected, but unexplained irregularity of the Neptune and Uranus orbits. (0.00218 X 1000 = 2.18)
Planet X, Harrington said, is thought to be three to five times larger than Earth and moving in an orbit about three times farther from the sun than Neptune or Pluto. That would make the phantom planet about as visible as Pluto, a planet seen only by sophisticated telescopes.
A planet in such a distant orbit would take about 1,000 years to circle the sun.
COMMENT ONE - THE WHISTLEBLOWER
In a recent unrecorded conversation with us, not yet reported on our site, Henry confirmed the existence of the "Dark Star", and that its reality had been deduced by American military astrophysicists because of the need to account for certain gravitational anomalies that had been observed. (He mentioned the Pioneer spacecraft, for instance.) This is very important: the "Dark Star" is fully known and understood in the "black world". When he told us this, we immediately realised how extraordinarily important this was.
Right See:
IS IRAS OBJECT 1732+239 NEAR VULCAN? - CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
"Henry went on to explain that this was linked to Dan Burisch's testimony and to the 2012 problem. Again, he was citing real-life feet-on-the-ground "black physics", and NOT esoteric knowledge. The Dark Star (he did not mention whether it had been named, and we neglected to ask) has an extremely elliptical orbit
Right See:
SUMMARY: VULCAN'S NEW ORBITAL PARAMETERS Its in the C"EV orbit.
And
THE 2006(7) AND 2012 STRIKE DATES
"The problems started a few years ago when the current approach of the Dark Star began to create resonance effects on Sol, our own sun. Kerry and I presumed these resonance effects are electromagnetic in nature rather than purely gravitational, but again we didn't verify this. This, crucially, is what is causing the current increase in solar activity, and the rapid heating up not only of Earth (as in global warming), but of every planet in the system."
Right See:
ANALYSIS - PHYSICAL DATA IMPACTING CANDIDATE VULCAN ORBITS
It rotates the core of the planets causing a heat pulse to arrive some years later. For Earth this happened in 1970 and the big heat pulse finally hit the oceans circa 2005 causing lots of hurricanes, rain, etc.
It's now approaching, and NOAA knows that this is the indirect cause (triggering increased solar activity through complex forms of resonance) of the heating of all the planets, not just ours. They factor this data into all their supercomputer weather forecasting calculations. [Note: the big question is why all this has been hushed up. Henry can speculate as well as we can ?bad news on the way? ?but he did not know for certain.]
Right See:
See above hyper link. It past aphelion in 1970 and is now inbound. But it never gets near the known planets. The "bad news" is that it forms comet swarms in a 3:2 resonate orbit and we are due for a passage of several clusters of this swarm this century. Also See:
NEAR MISSES AND POSSIBLE IMPACT EVENTS SUMMARY
Also See:
- RED PLANET WARMING High-resolution images snapped by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor show that levels of frozen water and carbon dioxide at the Red Planet's poles have dwindled dramatically over a single Martian year. Mars, like Earth, is warming from the inside due to a shift of its primordial black hole core as Vulcan passed aphelion circa 1970.
- MARS EMERGING FROM ICE AGE, DATA SUGGEST
-
AND FINALLY: ASTRONOMERS DETECT SUDDEN CLIMATE CHANGE ON PLUTO
In the last 14 years, one or more changes have occurred. "Pluto's atmosphere is undergoing global cooling, while other data indicates that the surface seems to be getting slightly warmer. -
SUV'S ON JUPITER?
Are humans responsible for climate change on the outer reaches of the solar system, or is it the sun?
Or has Vulcan passing aphelion influenced the core related heating of all the solar planets? - THE WHOLE SOLAR SYSTEM IS UNDERGOING GLOBAL WARMING.
Maybe Right See:
CURRENT EVIDENCE OF SEPTIMUS' AND VULCAN'S MASS AND ORBIT See Figure 5A. Extra-terrestrial Alien Description Of Our Alphabet And Solar System.
It is connected with a human/alien meeting case that happened 6 October 1974.
Then there is talk that our Sun has a binary partner beyond Pluto, also in late tropical Sagittarius, with a highly inclined orbit in the thousands of years. Two of the main proponents of this are researcher Andy Lloyd , author of The Dark Star, and Walter Cruttenden, author of Lost Star of Myth and Time and director of the Binary Research Institute . Each has his own particular twist on the subject, but both basically agree on the location of this binary and that it is very large and orbits in the thousands of years.
Then there is Barry Warmkessel's Saturn-sized Vulcan planet postulated to have an extra-Plutonian period of just under 5000 years, and which is also currently located in late tropical Sagittarius, based on cometary orbits, IRAS obsevations, and various metaphysical and historical criteria.
What all these sources have in common is that there is mounting evidence of some very influential object or source in the heavenly direction of late tropical Sagittarius that is having a significant impact on life here on Earth, physically and in every other sense. Whether it is Vulcan, the Sun's binary, or the galactic center remains to be seen, but this author also has noted the "Sagittarius effect" through the study of numerous charts, horoscopes, and historical events or epochs.
In the Equatorial coordinate system they are: RA 17h 45m 40.04s, Dec -29deg 00min 28.1sec (J2000epoch).
- Galactic Center Right Ascension: 266.4168 degrees
- Galactic Center Declination: -29.0078 degrees
- Date: 2000.0000 AD
- Vulcan Right Ascension: 264.185738 degrees
- Vulcan Declination: 23.809304 degrees
- Date: 2000.0000 AD
Now that we have your attention, we should also note that there are some comparatively rationally-based websites and reports on Planet X as well.
(The "xkbo" reference, incidentally, is “an Unknown Kuiper Belt Object”, the latter being the supposed source of solar system comets and miscellaneous, careening objects.)
More importantly at this juncture, do I understand correctly that what IRAS spotted in 1983 was a metaphysical planet? So that means that what NASA officials mistook as a heavenly body in the direction of the constellation Orion, which they claimed was possibly as large as Jupiter, and close enough to Earth to be part of this solar system, was a mythological planet? And so the mysterious heavenly orb which mathematicians now predict may be three times the size of Jupiter, with a highly elliptical orbit that runs opposite the other nine planets in the solar system, and a retrograde orbit inclined at 120 degrees, is just the replay of an ancient event in the solar system? As the famous line in Oliver Stone’s JFK goes, "people, we’re through the looking glass here."
Van Flandern wrote: "If Planet X crosses Jupiter's orbit, it is a goner, either by collision with Jupiter or ejection from the solar system, within 100,000 years... The encounters with Jupiter are not merely potential, but inevitable, because of forced precession of the orbit by Jupiter... Jupiter's gravity is so strong that it can eliminate another body in a single close approach."* Furthermore, since the Earth's orbit was almost perfectly circular, Van Flandern ruled out any possibility that Earth had suffered a major catastrophic collision. And thus he negated the idea that the Babylonian Epic of Creation, as decoded by Sitchin, was a historical record of events in our solar system. This would appear to doom Sitchin's "twelfth planet" that ancient astronomers had referred to using the names "Marduk" and "Nibiru". But notice that it does not doom the possibility that Tiamat, Marduk and Nibiru are comet swarms that could "appear as large as a planet. While these would eventually be ejected from or solar system or collide with the known planets, at other times new ones would be drawn in from the Kuiper belt.by Vulcan. Vulcan never gets closer to the Sun than 134 AU, about 2.7 times as far as Pluto's far point is from the Sun.
'Statistically, a few passing stars would approach within 40 times (2000 AU) Pluto's distance of the Sun over the life of the solar system. They would tend to perturb the outermost planets (10 to 40 times more distant than Pluto) into planet- crossing orbits. Eventually the crossings would result in close encounters between planets. Vulcan never gets farther from the Sun than 450 AU, about 9 times as distant as Pluto's far point is from the Sun.
Van Flandern noted, however, that once Planet X had been forced inwards, it would suffer repeated encounters with the other planets, eventually leading to its ejection from the solar system.[11] Van Flandern confirmed that such a planet-crossing orbit was highly unstable and unlikely to last for more than 100,000 years, mainly due to the powerful influence of Jupiter, by far the largest planet of the solar system:
"Statistically, a few passing stars would approach within 40 times Pluto's distance of the Sun (2000 AU) over the life of the solar system. They would tend to perturb the outermost planets... into planet-crossing orbits. Eventually the crossings would result in close encounters between planets."
In a later communication (03/28/2003) Van Flandern further clarified this comment. " Orbits at large distances are unstable over the solar system’s lifetime. (This is not just my opinion, but standard dynamical astronomy based on the statistics of passing stars.) So rare cases where stars are now seen at such distances must be of relatively recent origin. These are usually either systems that have recently escaped from open clusters, or multiple-star systems that have experienced a close encounter, leading to near-ejection of a member star. Less likely are transfer captures from other passing stars. There are also many cases of recent star system formation. For example, the Orion Nebula seems to be an active stellar nursery. All we can be sure of is that it is very unlikely such systems have been around for 4.5 billion years."
Upon asking if there were any independent evidence that the Alpha Centauri trinary was a relatively new stellar system, Van Flandern on 03/28/2003 wrote. "None that I know of. The only recognized indicator of age would be metallicity in the stars. (High metallicity would indicate relative youth.) But I have no knowledge of the metallicity index for the Alpha Centauri system. Otherwise, the presence of a distant companion is the only clue. (But you are obviously looking for some *independent* evidence of youth.)."
Vulcan's orbit, as described in this web site, falls within about a fifth of this distance. Therefore its orbit would not likely be perturbed by the passage of such a star. However, if stars pass within 2000 AU, many well also pass within ten or twenty times this distance. This would appear to doom Matese' "THE MASSIVE SOLAR COMPANION" discussed below.
Van Flandern wrote: "If Planet X crosses Jupiter's orbit, it is a goner, either by collision with Jupiter or ejection from the solar system, within 100,000 years... The encounters with Jupiter are not merely potential, but inevitable, because of forced precession of the orbit by Jupiter... Jupiter's gravity is so strong that it can eliminate another body in a single close approach."
This would appear to doom Sitchin's "twelfth planet" that ancient astronomers had referred to using the names "Marduk" and "Nibiru".
Tom van Flandern examined the positions of Uranus and Neptune in the 1970s. The calculated orbit of Neptune fit observations only for a few years, and then started to drift away. Uranus orbit fit the observations during one revolution but not during the previous revolution. In 1976 Tom van Flandern became convinced that there was a tenth planet. After the discovery of Charon in 1978 showed the mass of Pluto to be much smaller than expected, van Flandern convinced his USNO colleague Robert S. Harrington of the existence of this tenth planet. They started to collaborate by investigate the Neptunian satellite system. Soon their views diverged. van Flandern thought the tenth planet had formed beyond Neptune's orbit, while Harrington believed it had formed between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. van Flandern thought more data was needed, such as an improved mass for Neptune furnished by Voyager 2. Harrington started to search for the planet by brute force -- he started in 1979, and by 1987 he had still not found any planet. van Flandern and Harrington suggested that the tenth planet might be near aphelion in a highly elliptical orbit. If the planet is dark, it might be as faint as magnitude 16-17, suggests van Flandern.
Soon their views diverged. van Flandern thought the tenth planet had formed beyond Neptune’s orbit, while Harrington believed it had formed between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. van Flandern thought more data was needed, such as an improved mass for Neptune furnished by Voyager 2. Harrington started to search for the planet by brute force -- he started in 1979, and by 1987 he had still not found any planet. van Flandern and Harrington suggested that the tenth planet might be near aphelion in a highly elliptical orbit. If the planet is dark, it might be as faint as magnitude 16-17, suggests van Flandern.
Voyager program
This article is about the space probes launched in 1977.
Pioneer program
Pioneer 10 (Pioneer F) – Jupiter, interstellar medium, launched March 1972
Pioneer 11 (Pioneer G) – Jupiter, Saturn, interstellar medium, launched April 1973
This site concludes that Vulcan is of magnitude 20.5 - 21.1, passed aphelion circa 1970 and its orbit has an eccentricity of about 0.54 placing its aphelion at 41.6 billion miles.
The Sumerian Descriptions of our solar system.
In 1983 a large planet outside our known solar system was discovered. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other major news services carried the story. Unlike our known planets that revolve around the sun in a counter clockwise and circular direction, Planet X (as it was labeled) is in a retrograde (clockwise) and longer elliptical orbit about our sun. It is estimated by some that its perigee (closest orbit to the sun) occurs every 5,000 years or so. The effects of its intrusion into our solar system could be cataclysmic to all the planets, including earth.
A heavenly body possibly as large as the giant planet Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this solar system has been found in the direction of the constellation Orion by an orbiting telescope aboard the U.S. infrared astronomical satellite. The 1999 Paper estimates that this object is just a little larger than the size of Jupiter by two methods independent of the IRAS data considered in this Washington Post article. The directionof the object is considered disinformation to mislead other astronomers.
When IRAS scientists first saw the mystery body and calculated that it could be as close as 50 trillion miles, there was some speculation that it might be moving toward Earth. The 1997 Paper estimates that Vulcan passed aphelion around 1970 by a method independent of this data and consistent with this conclusion by the IRAS team.
New York Times January 30, 1983
The Washington Post, 31-Dec-1983, (a front page story) ARTICLE: MYSTERY HEAVENLY BODY DISCOVERED
US News World Report PLANET X - IS IT REALLY OUT THERE? Sept 10, 1984
Last year, the infrared astronomical satellite (IRAS), circling in a polar orbit 560 miles from the Earth, detected heat from an object about 50 billion miles away that is now the subject of intense speculation. This is a nice summary of material that found its way into the media circa the mid eighties concerning Planet X. The Vulcan web site suggests that one of the objects found by the IRAS system could be Vulcan (IRAS object 1732+239) and according to Vulcan's orbit analysis it is now near far point, about 41.66 billion miles away.
IRAS was not launched until 1982.
At the close of the interview, Ned Wright of WISE summed up the current situation in one sentence; “No, we have not found a new planet.”
Tyche may be bigger than Jupiter and orbit at the outer edge of the solar system
COMMENT The ort cloud is a hypothesis. As there have only been 4 objects found which are thought to be in it, it's hard to know what effect Tyche has had on the other several trillion objects that are supposed to make it up (the theory being it knocks at least some of them into comet behavior).
But if they both do exist it seems unreasonable to suppose such a massive planet passes through the Ort cloud without clearing a path. That would be the biggest surprise of all, beating zmons aliens by a long shot.
One might expect that the astronomical community would be excited at the prospect of discovering this planet/sub-brown dwarf in the Oort Cloud. On the contrary, this subject lies on the very fringe of astronomy, and my own speculations are still more 'out there' than Murray and Matese!
Planet X is sweeping out the Kuiper Belt - Official!
""There's something funny going on out there." Marc Buie of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona is talking about a strange feature at the far edge of our solar system beyond Pluto, among the swarm of small worlds called the Kuiper Belt. It's a wild, uncharted place out there, teeming with icy celestial bodies that may give us essential clues to how the planets formed. It may even be a breeding ground for life. But what's intriguing Buie at the moment is the very edge, about 50 times further out from the Sun than the Earth's orbit. Here, at the "Kuiper Cliff", the number of astronomical objects drops off precipitously. Buie won't be drawn too far but, when pressed, he speaks of the possibility that some "massive object" has swept the zone clean of debris..." [Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest (6)]
Brown Dwarf at the Right Distance
Only 12 light years away, the star Epsilon Indi has been found to have a surprise brown dwarf companion, which was spotted by examining various photographic plates to the star's immediate vicinity. The star experienced no tell-tale wobble because the brown dwarf is orbiting at a whooping 1500 Astronomical Units. This is a promising development because I think it likely that the Sun's own smaller and darker companion achieves aphelion between 500 and 2000AU. Given the evidence of Epsilon Indi B, this does not appear to be all that unreasonable.
Vulcan is half the size of Jupiter and 448 AU away (in 1970).
Neptune's orbit, a nearly circular ellipse some three billion miles away from the Sun, traces the Kuiper Belt's inner edge.
Pluto and UB313 are planets of Vulcan, a brown dwarf star
Eris was officially named by the International Astronomical Union on Wednesday. It had previously been known as 2003 UB313. Astronomers last month voted to shrink the solar system to just eight planets and downgrade Pluto to a "dwarf planet". That category also now includes Eris and the asteroid Ceres.
After Pluto lost its planetary status, hundreds of scientists circulated a petition protesting against the decision. In mythology, Eris caused a quarrel among goddesses that led to the Trojan War. Eris' moon has also received a formal name, Dysnomia, the daughter of Eris known as the spirit of lawlessness.
Eris, which measures about 115km wider than Pluto, is the farthest known object in the solar system at 14.5 billion km from the Sun. It is also the third brightest object in the Kuiper belt, a disc of icy debris beyond the orbit of Neptune.
A real revolution is afoot in planetary science. The first shot was fired in 1930, with the discovery of Pluto, but almost no one realized its import. The second and third shots came in the late 1970s, with the discovery of distant objects called Chiron and Charon, but again, few recognized what they would portend. Rapid-fire volleys began in the 1990s, as myriad discoveries of icy bodies 100s to well over 1000 kilometers across occurred in the Kuiper Belt, just beyond Neptune, became an observational reality. But it was only this year, with the recently announced discovery of 2003 UB313-a world larger than Pluto- that we have heard the equivalent of the American Revolution's "shot heard round the world."
A new theory of planet formation is needed, and here is one.
The Astro-Metric Concept
The discovery of new objects in the icy junkyard called the Kuiper Belt forces science to rethink the definition of a planet. BEYOND THE KUIPER BELT: ASTRONOMERS ANNOUNCE DISCOVERY OF FARTHEST OBJECT ORBITING THE SUN Even at its closest, Sedna comes no nearer to the Sun than 76 astronomical units (AU), each AU equaling the average distance of the Earth from the Sun. In contrast, says Brown, the Kuiper Belt has a well defined outer edge at about 55 AU. Furthermore Sedna's elongated orbit takes it far beyond any known KBO, to a distance of 900 AU from the Sun.
z Ephemeris of Sedna, asteroid number 90377.
A large object has been found beyond Pluto travelling in an orbit tilted by 47 degrees to most other bodies in the solar system. Astronomers are at a loss to explain why the object's orbit is so off-kilter while being almost circular.
But at 47 degrees, 2004 XR190's orbit is one of the most tilted, or inclined, Kuiper Belt Objects known.
2004 XR190, however, follows a nearly circular path. And it is too distant to have come into direct contact with Neptune, traveling between 52 and 62 AU from the Sun. Its orbit is also too circular - and too small - to have been tilted by a passing star, says Allen.
He points out that this object was found when it happened to be passing through the plane of the solar system - where it spends just 2% of its orbit. That suggests many more such objects remain undiscovered, tilted at orbits where most surveys do not search for them.
He ventures another possible explanation - that the Sun had a twin and that both stars followed circular orbits around each other. "That could excite inclinations without exciting the eccentricities," he says. "However, this idea creates more problems than it solves, by far."
- The Astronomical Journal, volume 128 (2004), pages 2564?576
In this paper, we explore five seemingly promising mechanisms to explain the origin of the orbits of these peculiar objects: (1) the passage of Neptune through a high-eccentricity phase, (2) the past existence of massive planetary embryos in the Kuiper belt or the scattered disk, (3) the presence of a massive trans-Neptunian disk at early epochs that perturbed highly inclined scattered- disk objects, (4) encounters with other stars that perturbed the orbits of some of the solar system's trans-Neptunian planetesimals, and (5) the capture of extrasolar planetesimals from low-mass stars or brown dwarfs encountering the Sun. Of all these mechanisms, the ones giving the most satisfactory results are those related to the passage of stars (4 and 5).
Vulcan is just such a low-mass or brown dwarf star, and it is still in orbit about the Sun.
Kenyon and Bromley suggest that the near-collision occurred when our Sun was at least 30 million years old, and probably no more than 200 million years old. A fly-by distance of 150-200 A.U. would be close enough to disrupt the outer Kuiper Belt without affecting the inner planets. Vulcan ranges from 135 AU to 448 AU.
According to the simulations, the passing star's gravity would sweep clear the outer solar system beyond about 50 A.U., even as our Sun's gravity pulled some of the alien planetoids into its grasp. The model explains both the orbit of Sedna and the observed
sharp outer edge of our Kuiper Belt, where few objects reside beyond 50 A.U.
Kenyon and Bromley's simulations indicate that thousands or possibly millions of alien Kuiper Belt Objects were stripped from the passing star. However, none have yet been positively identified. Sedna is probably homegrown, not captured. Among the known Kuiper Belt Objects, an icy rock dubbed 2000 CR105 is the best candidate for capture given its unusually elliptical and highly inclined orbit. But only the detection of objects with orbits inclined more than 40 degrees from the plane of the solar system will clinch the case for the presence of extrasolar planets in our backyard. like 2003 UB313's 44o orbital inclination.
Scientists found a tiny brown dwarf, or failed star, less than one hundredth the mass of the sun, surrounded by what appears to be a disk of dust and gas.
Some objects in our solar system formed around another star
How did these adopted worlds join our solar family? They arrived through an interstellar trade that took place more than 4 billion years ago when a wayward star brushed past our solar system. According to calculations made by Kenyon and astronomer Benjamin Bromley (University of Utah) and published in the Dec. 2, 2004, Nature, the Sun's gravity plucked asteroid-sized objects from the visiting star. At the same time, the star pulled material from the outer reaches of our solar system into its grasp.
The computer models indicate thousands, possibly millions, of alien objects were stripped from the passing star. At this point, none has yet been identified. During the simulations, the Sun captures up to one-third of the star's objects, adding them to the Kuiper Belt. In fact, the models provide a 10 percent chance that Sedna was captured during the flyby. "It's possible that some of the objects in our solar system actually formed around another star," Kenyon says.
The passing star could have pulled objects like Sedna out of their circular orbits and also spun away millions of KBOs. This would have trimmed the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt to 50 AU from the Sun while leaving some of the passing star's own objects behind. "There may not have been an equal exchange, but there was certainly an exchange," says Bromley.
Kenyon, Bromley, and fellow astronomers will proceed to search for objects with highly inclined orbits. Because only captured objects have orbits inclined more than 40o, detection of such objects would confirm the presence of foreign objects in our solar system - like 2003 UB313's 44o orbital inclination.
The new computer model shows how young planet-sized objects with circular orbits around the Sun might have been gravitationally slung onto elongated paths, putting them too far away to spot with current technology. Such an interaction might also have caused a sharp cutoff detected at the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt, a region of icy objects beyond Neptune.
Our most powerful detection techniques are capable of detecting Earth-sized planet 70 AU from the Sun, a Jupiter-sized planet up to 120 AU away (neglecting its gravitational effects on the Sun). Of course, the sky is very big and the most powerful telescopes can only look at a very tiny fraction of it at a time. Pluto, for comparison, is around 30 AU away at the moment.
Vulcan is half the size of Jupiter and 448 AU away (in 1970).
By determining the moon's distance and orbit around Xena, scientists can calculate how heavy Xena is. The faster a moon goes around a planet, the more massive a planet is.
The International Astronomical Union, a group of scientists responsible for naming planets, is deciding on formal names for Xena and Gabrielle.
More observations are planned to calculate the orbit of Gabrielle around Xena, which appears to have an orbital period of about 14 days. From the orbital period and semi-major axis (approximately the average distance between Xena and Gabrielle), it is possible to determine the mass of Xena and confirm that it is more massive than Pluto,
Right now we are not certain how big the moon is, but we can make some guesses based on how much light it reflects. We know that it is about 60 times fainter than the planet, suggesting that it is perhaps 8 times smaller in diameter than the planet. Interestingly, the planet-moon system appears similar to the Earth- Moon system, except reduced in scale by a factor of about 5-10. Xena is about 5 times smaller than the Earth. Gabrielle is about 8 times smaller than the Moon. And the two are separated by a distance that is about 10 times smaller than the Earth-Moon separation. Not a perfect match but awfully close.
If Xena is 0.01 earth masses, it likely is not the tenth planet (sometimes called Septimus-B; see Table 8A in the ANALYSIS OF THE AKKADIAN SEAL) By comparison, Mercury is 0.045, Venus is 0.82 and Mars is 0.108 and Pluto 0.0025 earth mass.
Claims that the Solar System has a tenth planet are bolstered by the finding by a group lead by Bonn astrophysicists that this alleged planet, announced last summer and tentatively named 2003 UB313, is bigger than Pluto. By measuring its thermal emission, the scientists were able to determine a diameter of about 3000 km, which makes it 700 km larger than Pluto and thereby marks it as the largest solar system object found since the discovery of Neptune in 1846 (Nature, 2 February 2006).
The discovery of a new planet in our Solar System could have an unintended consequence - the elimination of Pluto in the list of planets everyone has in their heads. Is it time to wave this distant, dark piece of rock farewell?
Pluto is a planet spawned by Vulcan, so it is different than the first eight that were spawned by the Sun.
Along with Xena, the nickname for an object known officially as 2003 UB313, bodies called Sedna and Quaoar (pronounced kwa-whar) have been identified at the edge of the solar system. Although both are smaller than the smallest official planet, many astronomers believe that these all belong to a similar category of overgrown, icy asteroids in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune.
it would be better to call Pluto, Xena and Sedna "ice dwarfs" than "trans- Neptunian planets" because it is more descriptive.
Hazardous comets must have a perihelion inside the Earth's orbit. The comets and Vulcan, in our studies, have roughly the same aphelion distance from the Sun. The comets have a 3 (comet's orbit period):2 (Vulcan's orbit period) ratio with Vulcan. As pointed out elsewhere Pluto and Neptune have approximately a 2 (Pluto's period):3(Neptune's period) ratio but the geometry is very different in that case.
Orbit period is determined by semi-major axis. We could have different orbit eccentricities. Our current best Vulcan orbit has a period of about 5000 years (note: the impact data is pushing our 4969 +30/-23 years Vulcan period upward toward the 5000 years value). The orbit's eccentricity gives us aphelion of about 450 AU. Different Vulcan orbit eccentricities can produce hazardous comets in a 2:3 orbit period ratio as will be shown latter. Our current best orbit has an eccentricity of about 0.537. The 2:3 resonance is obtained for comet orbits where the encounters occur at points before and after Vulcan aphelion.
Our orbit analysis is sound. We solved the problem as a deterministic case. We did not have redundant data. Granted, Vulcan's orbit is based on a simple two body model. We have Quinn's long term Solar system data that allowed us to do reasonable DOM (Dawn Of Mankind) calculations, and we have taken into account parallax. The nature of the geometry was such that an initial orbit could be obtained without considering parallax. Then the results were refined. The data provided clearly shows that the orbital solutions agree with the assumed input data:
- Time, RA and DC of the Buddha point as observed from Earth.
- Time, RA and DC of the Christ point
- Time, RA and DC of the IRAS point
- Time of Vulcan aphelion passage
The use of Quinn's data for later work and the incorporation of parallax corrections resulted in minor changes to the Vulcan orbit parameters for the given set of input data. Quinn's data allowed us to make projections going back more than 50000 years which should be accurate to within a day! All of the Earth's orbit parameters are assumed to change with the exception of semi- major axis. Quinn's data shows that semi-major axis, and hence anomalistic period, vary insignificantly over our time frame of interest. Quinn's data remains constant to about 8 or 9 significant figures.
Of course, we cannot really use Julian Day Number 50000 years back in time. The Earth's spin rate does wander somewhat and this leads to small errors in dating which we ignore. Referencing to the Equinox for any year is as good as Quinn's data. Quinn's data has allowed us to perform all of the necessary coordinate transformations needed to reference our results properly.
A cursory comparison with Naval Observatory data for the B1950 and J2000 systems shows good agreement at this time. The reason we looked for other data was that the Naval Observatory data, while very good near term does not provide adequate formulas for propagating backwards in time. I am not aware that anyone else in the World, not even Quinn, has used his data in a way to produce the kind of accurate reference system we have produced. I am really proud of that achievement. It is the one piece of our work that has general applicability.
The comet orbits were derived from a planar three body simulation which was intended to show the essence of the problem without getting into prohibitively long calculations. The results show that approximately constant geometry can be maintained for over 20,000 years. That is over six comet orbit periods. The close encounter with Vulcan occurs every third comet period. A number of patterns are possible. one group has two short periods followed by a long one and the other group has two long periods followed by a short one. The sum of the three periods is exactly equal to two Vulcan orbit periods.
The comet swarms are the concern for Earth (not Vulcan itself). Major past strike events have been demonstrated to correlate well with certain comet perihelion passages.
The data we present here is from a simple analytical model for which comet eccentricity is assumed to be 0.9985 and Vulcan eccentricity values are obtained from the solutions of a quadratic equation. This model yields an offset angle of 6.68o for our current best Vulcan orbit. Our comet studies were done without the benefit of this analysis and employed an initial offset of 8o.
Only certain eccentricities will support a 3 (comet period):2 (Vulcan period) resonance orbit. The following eccentricities are calculated from a simple model for various values of the offset angle. The mass of Vulcan is not used in this model. The functional values simplify into a standard quadratic equation:
e2 + 1.525141 times e times cos(theta) + .525141 = 0.
The offset angle we quote is the angle in a plane subtended by the lines from the Sun to Vulcan aphelion and the line from the Sun to the comet aphelion. The maximum offset angle is found to be 18.140858o. For greater values, the eccentricity values are found to be either complex or negative. Th following table lists the non complex positive values
| Offset Angle | Low Eccentricity | High Eccentricity |
|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | .525141 | 1.000000 |
| +/- 5.00 | .531732 | .987605 |
| +/- 6.00 | .534744 | .982042 |
| +/- 6.68 | .537158 | .977630 |
| +/- 7.00 | .538401 | .975370 |
| +/- 8.00 | .542760 | .967538 |
| +/-10.00 | .553912 | .948060 |
| +/-15.00 | .604607 | .868567 |
| +/-18.00 | .696214 | .754281 |
| +/-18.14 | .724666 | .724666 |
| Star System | Eccentricity | Resonance Supported | Possible Sentient Life |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpha Centuri | 0.52 | Maybe | Likely |
| Sirius | 0.58 | Yes | Likely* |
| UV Ceti | 0.06 | No | Not Likely |
| Procyon | 0.65 | Yes | Not Likely |
| 61 Cygni | 0.4 | No | Likely |
| Sigma 2398 | 0.55 | Yes | Not Likely |
| Grb 34 | 0.25 | No | Not Likely |
| Kruger 60 | 0.42 | No | Not Likely |
| Wolf 424 | 0.28 | No | Not Likely |
| 26 Draconis | 0.19 | No | Maybe Once |
The diagram on the right appeared in the 1987 edition of the "New Science and Invention Encyclopedia", published by H.S. Stuttman, Westport, Connecticut, USA.
The article was discussing the purpose of the Pioneer 10 & 11 space probes. Clearly shown is "Nemesis", a popular name for our sun's binary companion, a dead star. (Binary solar systems are apparently the rule in our galaxy, not the exception.)
Now, will someone please explain why this diagram clearly shows the approximate location of Planet X (a.k.a. the 10th or 12th Planet)? Planet X is presented as a matter of fact in this respected encyclopedia.
Some have suggested the paths of Pioneers 10 & 11 were chosen as to get a triangulated fix on Planet X, a suggestion this chart would support.
The "dead star" 50 billion miles distant is clearly this site's Vulcan and "Tenth Planet" at 4.7 billion miles is consistent with the new 'tenth planet Xena; AKA 2003 UB 313.
We may not have an answer to the Nemesis question until mid-2013. WISE needs to scan the sky twice in order to generate the time-lapsed images astronomers use to detect objects in the outer solar system. The change in location of an object between the time of the first scan and the second tells astronomers about the object's location and orbit.
"I don't suspect we'll have completed the search for candidate objects until mid-2012, and then we may need up to a year of time to complete telescopic follow-up of those objects," said Kirkpatrick.
Even if Nemesis is not found, the WISE telescope will help shed light on the darkest corners of the solar system. The telescope can be used to search for dwarf planets like Pluto that orbit the Sun off the solar system's ecliptic plane. The objects that make up the Oort Cloud are too small and far away for WISE to see, but it will be able to track potentially dangerous comets and asteroids closer to home.
Both IRAS and WISE should be able to find our Vulcan. We think it is at or near IRAS 1732+239
The force is falling because Pioneer 10 is getting farther and farther away from Vulcan.
It was in 1980 that John Anderson first wondered if something funny was going on with gravity. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory physicist was looking over data from two Pioneer spacecraft that had been speeding through the solar system for nearly a decade.
John D. Anderson, Eunice L. Lau And Slava G. Turyshev
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
The data from Pioneer 10 and 11 shows an anomalous, constant, Doppler frequency drift that can be interpreted as an acceleration directed towards the Sun of aP = (8.74 ?1.33) ?10-8 cm/s2. Although one can consider a new physical origin for the anomaly, one must first investigate the contributions of the prime candidates, which are systematics generated on board. Here we expand upon previous analyses of thermal systematics. We demonstrate that thermal models put forth so far are not supported by the analyzed data. Possible ways to further investigate the nature of the anomaly are proposed.
Ever since the Voyager 2 data confirmed the nonsymmetrical shape of the solar system scientists have pondered its cause (i). In summary, the edge of the heliosphere (the place where the solar wind slows to sub sonic speeds) appears to be 1.2 billion kilometers shorter on the south side of the solar system (and in the general direction of the winter solstice, the direction of Voyager 2), than it is on the edge of the planetary plane (where Voyager 1 exited approximately a year earlier). This indicates the heliosphere is not a sphere at all but a bullet shape.
See: IS IRAS OBJECT 1732+239 NEAR VULCAN? - CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
TABLE 3 - SPACE PROBES AND THE 'DEAD STAR'
(1) Mutual resonance effects between the planets
(2) The effects of a massive solar companion.
PLANET ORBITAL SPACING estimates that two planets may yet be orbiting Vulcan, one at 0.7 AU and the other at 0.34 AU. The former is analogous to the Sun's Venus, and the latter (if it still exists) is Vulcan's equivalent to the Sun's Mercury. If an Earth equivalent formed, it would be at 0.3 X 21.5 = 0.85 AU. The periods would be given by (r3/MVulcan)1/2 and be 18.5 years, 6.2 years and 24.7 years respectively. The first and last theoretical value are close to the Sun's magnet field reversal period.
or UNIDENTIFIED IRAS SOURCES: ULTRAHIGH-LUMINOSITY GALAXIES - March 1, 1985
Six IRAS sources previously exhibiting possible parallax, are believed to be associated with galaxies highly radiant in the infrared. These include object 1732+239 that may be a possible image of Vulcan. This object was not used to calculate the probability of Vulcan's existence in a nominal 5000-year orbit, but was used to refine its estimated orbital parameters.
So IRAS did not see Nibiru, Planet X, or anything of the sort, despite the claims of the doomcriers. Of course, they now claim that NASA is clamping down on the press for Planet X.
Well, Los Alamos is sure suppressing the Noah's Ark find.
Why a ~10 Mj Nibiru CANNOT exist out at 234-241 AU COMMENTS: (by rajasun) (This work is critical of a Vulcan or Nibiru like brown dwarf) ?The calculations were left out of this snippet but may be in Google Cached memory.
In the light of the above FINDINGS, it appears highly UNLIKELY that a Brown Dwarf can exist be it at the Predicted Distance of Andy's OR that of Sitchin's (i.e.Andy's Nibiru, P = 3756 Yrs, Semi Major Axis (a) = 241.62974 AU Sitchin's Nibiru, Period (P) = 3600 Yrs, Semi Major Axis (a) = 234.8920572 AU).
The BEST MATCH between MASS of Object and a Period of 3756 Yrs is that of a BODY with a size in between that of Pluto and the Moon and NOT that of a Brown Dwarf. As for Sitchin's Object, it has a MASS befitting the classification of a "sub- Brown Dwarf" i.e. a MASS of 10.48292334 Mj. The Deuterium Fusion threshold i.e. the demarcation cut-off LIMIT separating Brown Dwarfs from Super MASSIVE Jupiters is at around 13 Mj. An Object with a MASS above 10 Mj can be considered a Transition Object somewhat akin to an Object of MASS >0.07 Msun <0.075 Msun i.e. a "Transition Object". Vulcan's mass is about 0.5Mj, but we still consider it 'stellar' in nature.
The PROBLEM for Sitchin however, is one of Apparent Visual Magnitude of such an object i.e. a 10.48292334 Mj Nibiru at 234.8920572 AU will be 17.57573 and EVEN at its VERY FURTHEST i.e. at Aphelion it would be a RELATIVELY "BRIGHT" 24.25454. For Your Information, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has seen objects down to around magnitude 29 - 30. So 24.25454 is well WITHIN the observational limits of HST by SEVERAL orders.
This problem i.e. Apparent Visual Magnitude of Nibiru can LIKEWISE be applicable in Andy's instance. For at 241.62974 AU out, the Apparent Visual Magnitude of a Jupiter-like Brown Dwarf will ONLY be at 17.7700885 and Andy's Nibiru at Aphelion (i.e. 480.2584386 AU) is BUT a MERE 24.6536088! We estimate Vulcan magnitude to be about 21, similar to many of the IRAS objects investigated.
Apparent Visual Magnitude aside, there is also this OTHER challenge posed by an object with a MASS ~10 - 10.48 Mj (i.e. APPLICABLE to BOTH Andy's and Sitchin's Nibiru), go through EACH step of the following Calculation on this Object's Gravity:
GIVEN a Surface Gravity ALMOST that of the Sun's a 10 - 10.48292334 Mj Object at a MAXIMUM distance of a MERE 470 - 480 AU removed, SHOUlDN'T this planet's gravity be TOO SIGNIFICANT to have avoided detection till now? Vulcan is half the mass of Jupiter. It does have a small affect on some of the distant Kuiper belt objects.
For the reasons ABOVE, I thus have SERIOUS DOUBTS as to how such an Object could have eluded the astronomical/astrophysical community till now. Before one goes illogical and start some talk of conspiracy theory of a "cover-up" by government/s, OPEN your minds and think REAL OBJECTIVELY, EVEN IF government/s had tried to "cover- up" such a "discovery", wouldn't one of the tens/hundreds of PRIVATELY funded observatories NOT have picked the Object up by now? An all night exposure by a telescope the size of the 120 inch Lick Observatory's is required so most telescopes cannot see Vulcan. However, it were discovered, any astronomer skilled in Celestial Mechanics would quickly realize the possibilities of Earth threatening comets swarms in 3:2 resonate orbits with Vulcan.
Do NOT get me wrong, I'm NOT saying there is NO Nibiru, what I'm saying though is this: the region of space in between 200 - 500 AU is JUST Way TOO "NEAR". An Object that CLOSE in and that LARGE i.e. ~1 - 10 Mj in size would have measurable IR fluxes so PRONOUNCED, it SHOULD have been identified perhaps even as early on as the EARLY 1980s. We Agree!
Personally, I think at Andy's distance i.e. 241.62974 - 480.2584386 AU, we MAY in the next five years or so find a Planet X of sort albeit an intermediate sized Object in between Pluto and the Moon. Such a NEAR-Moon sized Object MAY be what Gladman and co. are searching for i.e. the Perturber of SuperComet CR105. This Moon sized Nibiru is REMARKABLY positioned to exercise JUST that kind of INFLUENCE to throw CR 105 into the INCLINED and ECCENTRIC orbit it has.## ## Ref: www.academicpress.com/ins...graphb.htm ## Ref: www.obs-nice.fr/gladman/cr105.html
There MAY yet be other Plutos, Moon EVEN Mars sized objects still awaiting us in what is an area of space, the community calls the Scattered Disk. BUT for LARGER i.e. >=Uranus objects, one MAY have to look FURTHER out i.e. > 560 AU i.e. somewhere in the vicinity of IRAS object 1732+239 and beyond. We think it is or is near IRAS object 1732+239!
Something in addition, the various accounts of the "MISSING MASS" in the Kuiper Belt and the Scattered Disk kept staring at me in the face i.e. some MAJOR event/s caused a SUDDEN and DRAMATIC truncation in NOT ONLY the Classical Kuiper Belt BUT swept out quite a LOT of MASS here. These MAJOR events MAY still occur i.e. hinting at a REMOTE Brown Dwarf Solar Companion with a HIGHLY elliptical and eccentric orbit (inferring from the wayward orbital inclinations and eccentricities of the Plutinos##). I suspect that in the coming years, we will find MORE "belts", "disks" and "gaps", the Latter MAY very well point to the "undue" influence and PRESENCE of LARGE as YET "UNDISCOVERED" bodies FAR out as we venture DEEPER BEYOND the orbit of Pluto. Vulcan did it!
CONCLUSION:
A 1 Mj let alone a ~10 Mj "sub-Brown Dwarf" with a Semi Major Axis at between 234 - 241 AU and a MAXIMUM distance of 480 AU is UNLIKELY because of:
1.) INCONGRUENT fit between Period (P) and suggested MASSES of Object (m) i.e. P = Orbital period = 365.256898326 * a**1.5/sqrt(1+m) days where m = the mass of the companion in solar masses
2.) The Apparent Visual Magnitude of an Object EVEN at a MAXIMUM distance of 480 AU out is a "BRIGHT" 24.25454 i.e. some 6 Magnitudes BRIGHTER than the DIMMEST Objects Hubble Space Telescope has observed. Why do you think the Hubble was launched? Just for the sake of good astronomy?,
3.) The Absence of necessarily PRONOUNCED and CONTINUING GRAVITATIONAL perturbation effect almost 3/4 that of the Sun's (i.e. Surface Gravity of Nibiru with MASSES in between 10 Mj - 10.48292334 Mj 218.772783287613297535850910865252 N - 229.243589170234991621082822269554 N) on Objects in the INNER Scattered Disk.
Thanks to the above critic, it appears that IRAS object 1732+239 is likely Vulcan.
One year later in 1983 the newly launched IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite) quickly found Planet X (the 10th). There have been attempts to cover-up this event and rewrite history.
Discovering Archaeology, July/August 1999,Page 70 shows a medieval picture with a large comet looking object as big as the sun streaking across the sky horizontally with a giant tail. Below is a town that is shaking apart with hysterical people in the streets. Its elliptical orbit takes it around two suns. The other sun it orbits is our suns dark twin. Nibiru's inbound approach is being closely monitored by our best telescopic equipment on and off earth. This is one of many reasons the orbiting Hubble telescope live feed is hidden from our view. The most accurate calculation for Planet X's next passage is now late May or June 2003. The Vulcan web site contends that the next approach of the comet (swarm) could be between 2006 and 2016. However, computations support a window of return to be within the next 110 - 150 years. Comet orbits are somewhat unpredictable as they outgas.
The Sumerians describe Planet X as being very far from Earth at times, (roughly 30,000,000,000 = 323 AU) miles away at it's farthest point from us in orbit. Vulcan's aphelion (farthest point) is estimated to be at 454 AU by this web site.
Far beyond the solar system's nine known planets, a body as massive as Mars may once have been part of our planetary system—and it might still be there. Although the proposed planet would lie too far away to be seen from Earth, its gravitational tug could account for the oddball orbit of a large comet spotted in the outer solar system a year ago.
If the proposed planet is as massive as Mars, it would have to lie some 200 AU from the sun—about 7 times Neptune's distance—Holman calculates. Were it closer, observers would have spotted it.
"Undoubtedly, something [massive] knocked the hell out of the belt," says Harold F. Levison of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "The question is whether it's there now."
Vulcan is far larger than Mars, but it is also farther away. Its average distance is about 290 AU away although now its elliptical orbit has carried it about 448 AU away.
Cruttenden argues that the precession is not caused by a wobble in the Earth's rotation, as is commonly taught, but may actually be caused by a companion star to our sun, one which currently is far away from the Earth but which would eventually rotate closer to the sun.
This binary companion would cause the sun's orbit to curve, and would explain the Precession of the Equinox by the way in which the Earth's rotation was affected by not one, but two stars.
In addition to this hypothesis, Cruttenden also compares the 24,000-year cycle of precession with ancient beliefs from many cultures regarding the cyclical pattern of existence, which begins and ends with a Golden Age.
2003 UB313
2002 TC302
1996 TL66
2000 CR105? (transitional object between the real Kuiper belt and the hypothetical Oort Cloud)
Something strange is tugging at America's oldest spacecraft. As the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes head towards distant stars, scientists have discovered that the craft - launched more than 30 years ago - appear to be in the grip of a mysterious force that is holding them back as they sweep out of the solar system.
Scientists have discovered a new object orbiting the Sun after a spaceprobe was mysteriously knocked off course. Earlier this year, scientists were puzzled by what was described as a mysterious force acting on the probe. It led to speculation that there was something wrong in our understanding of the force of gravity. Eventually the effect was tracked down to the probe itself, which was unexpectedly pushing itself in one particular direction May be just data processing errors, but not sure?
The puzzle is that Pioneer 10 is slowing more quickly than it should.
It was initially suggested that this might be due to the force from a tiny gas leak or that it was being pulled off course by the gravity of an unseen Solar System object.
The mystery deepened further when an analysis of the trajectory being followed by its sister spacecraft, Pioneer 11, launched in 1973, showed that it too was being subjected to the same mysterious effect.
But Pioneer 11 is on the opposite side of the Solar System from Pioneer 10, about 22 billion km (about 14 billion miles) away. This means the effect cannot be the gravitational effect of some unseen body.
But others have dismissed this as being too fanciful, arguing that if the Pioneer anomaly was really indicative of a change in our understanding of gravity, then it would be apparent in the orbits of the planets around the Sun - which it is not.
Which leaves open staggering possibilities that would force wholesale reprinting of all physics books:
- Invisible dark matter is tugging at the probes
- Other dimensions create small forces we don't understand
- Gravity works differently than we think
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Sept. 24, 1998 -- A team of planetary scientists and physicists has identified a tiny, unexplained sunward acceleration in the motions of the Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 and Ulysses spacecraft.
Pioneer 10 was officially tracked until March 1997, when it was some six billion miles away from the sun. (Pioneer 10 is still transmitting, and occasional additional radio Doppler data is provided to the research team.)
Pioneer 11, due to a radio failure, last sent useful radio Doppler transmissions in October 1990, when it was less than three billion miles from the sun. Ulysses has been tracked on its looping flight out of the ecliptic and around the sun's poles. Trusty and reliable
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., September 24, 1998 -- A team of planetary scientists and physicists has identified a tiny, unexplained sunward acceleration in the motions of the Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 and Ulysses spacecraft.
It began with the search for Planet X. By 1979, Pioneer 10 had accomplished its original mission to become the first Earth-born spacecraft to explore Jupiter and was on its way out of our solar system, flying toward the star Aldebaran - a destination it should reach some two million years from now.
On its way out, Pioneer 10 became a useful partner in an experiment of celestial mechanics. By closely monitoring its trajectory, scientists might detect an unexpected gravitational tug that could betray the existence of the long- hypothesized Planet X. Based largely on unexplained motions in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, several 20th-century astronomers had suggested the existence of an undiscovered world at the edge of our solar system.
John D. Anderson, a veteran JPL scientist, took on the task of studying the Pioneer 10 and 11 radio signal data for any sign of Planet X. His search had come up empty. For this reason, among others, John and his team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory became convinced that the chance of discovering a 10th planet was slim, as they reported in the May/June 1999 issue of The Planetary Report. But in early 1980, John and his team began to see signs of something else-something quite unexpected. While searching for Planet X, we noticed that the tracking data did not quite fit with the existing solar system model. They showed an anomalous acceleration-in this case, an acceleration backward. It did not match any expected Planet X force, and we couldn't immediately explain it. When theoretical models do not fit experimental data, standard scientific practice is to find a reason for the mismatch. Therefore, we embarked on a program to study the anomalous acceleration
A 'dark companion' could produce the unseen force that seems to tug at Uranus and Neptune, speeding them up at one point in their orbits and holding them back as they pass. …the best bet is a dark star orbiting at least 50 billion miles beyond Pluto? It is most likely either a brown dwarf, or a neutron star. Others suggest it is a tenth planet?since a companion star would tug at the other planets, not just Uranus and Neptune."
In 1992, Dr. Myles Standish used the updated mass in his calculations and determined the perturbations actually didn't exist. The recorded observations matched the predicted orbits when the correct values of mass were put into the equations.
Dr. Standish's calculations were the first to use an extremely accurate measurement of Neptune's mass made by Voyager 2 in 1989. His results were published in The Astronomical Journal in May of 1993.
Nasa's twin Voyager probes may have to close down in October to save money, the US space agency has said. Turn it off quick before any more of those gravitational anomalies are found.
The ground-breaking and richly illustrated new book, Lost Star of Myth and Time, marries modern astronomical theory with ancient star lore to make a compelling case for the profound influence on our planet of a companion star to the sun. Author and theorist, Walter Cruttenden, presents the evidence that this binary orbit relationship may be the cause of a vast cycle causing the Dark and Golden Ages common in the lore of ancient cultures.
This movement of the solar system occurs because the Sun has a companion star; both stars orbit a common center of gravity, as is typical of most double star systems. The grand cycle–the time it takes to complete one orbit?is called a "Great Year," a term coined by Plato.
Cruttenden explains the affect on earth with an analogy: "Just as the spinning motion of the earth causes the cycle of day and night, and just as the orbital motion of the earth around the sun causes the cycle of the seasons, so too does the binary motion cause a cycle of rising and falling ages over long periods of time, due to increasing and decreasing electromagnet effects generated by our sun and other nearby stars."
The data that once suggested the Sun is orbited by a distant dark companion now raises even more questions
Nemesis is dead, long live Vulcan.
No Nemesis?
However, far from helping to confirm the Nemesis hypothesis, Melott and Bambach argue their findings suggest Nemesis couldn't possibly exist.
"If Nemesis existed and had this kind of an orbit, its orbit would not be regular," Melott told SPACE.com. "Calculations indicate its orbit would change by 20 to 50 percent due to the gravitational attraction of stars as they pass by us, and the movement of the sun in the galaxy."
Thus, a celestial body like Nemesis couldn't explain such a long-standing, steady cycle, because its orbit itself would not be steady over such a long period of time.
Melott said his data basically puts the final nail in the coffin of the Nemesis idea. But others aren't so sure. Some in the field question whether the fossil record is really accurate enough to establish a cycle going back that far.
"To that I would say, yes we can, now that the accuracy has improved so much," Melott said. "And even if there were errors in the timing, that wouldn't cause something to appear so clockwork and regular, it would smear the signal out."
Melott and Bambach said it leaves the question of what's causing the extinction cycle totally open.
"For me, it's a complete head-scratcher," Melott said.
Vulcan exists, Nemesis does not.
Some scientists believe that something could be hidden beyond the edge of our solar system a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU (about 1-2 light years), somewhat beyond the Oort cloud. Named "Nemesis" or "The Death Star," this undetected object could be a red or brown dwarf star, or an even darker presence several times the mass of Jupiter. If our Sun were part of a binary system in which two gravitationally-bound stars orbit a common center of mass, their interaction could disturb the Oort Cloud on a periodic basis, sending comets whizzing towards us.
The stars are about 60 light-years away, and the shape of their disks have astronomers pondering the long-debated possibility that our own Sun might have an as-yet unfound companion dubbed Nemesis.
"Kalas and Graham speculate that stars also having sharp outer edges to their debris disks have a companion—a star or brown dwarf—that keeps the disk from spreading outward, similar to how Saturn's moons shape the edges of some of the planet's rings. "The story of how you make a ring around a planet could be the same as the story of making rings around a star," Kalas said. Perhaps a passing star ripped off the edges of the original planetary disk, but a star-sized companion, remaining in place, would be necessary to keep the remaining disk material from spreading outward, he figures. The scenario has Kalas and his colleagues thinking that the Sun might also have a companion that keeps the Kuiper Belt confined within a sharp boundary. U.C. Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller has proposed such a star, which he calls Nemesis, but no evidence has been found for one".
Like a thorn in the side of mainstream researchers, Muller's Nemesis theory - - that our Sun has a companion star responsible for recurring episodes of wholesale death and destruction here on Earth - seems to reemerge periodically like microbes after a mass extinction.
Kalas and Graham speculate that stars also having sharp outer edges to their debris disks have a companion - a star or brown dwarf, perhaps - that keeps the disk from spreading outward, similar to the way that Saturn's moons shape the edges of many of the planet's rings.
If true, that would mean that the sun also has a companion keeping the Kuiper Belt confined within a sharp boundary. Though a companion star has been proposed before - most recently by UC Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller, who dubbed the companion Nemesis - no evidence has been found for such a companion.
Probably the companion star lies within the invariable plane (the angular momentum plane of the solar system) inclined to the ecliptic by 1.5 degrees. We believe our binary counterpart may lay between 848.5 AU and 1515 AU depending on its mass (0.06 and 6 solar mass).
We are predicting that our binary companion will be found in an elliptical patch centered around 17hr 45 minutes and declination ?2 degrees.
The possible Vulcan related IRAS point is at 17 hr. 32 minutes 51.4 seconds, Declination 23 degrees 56 minutes 3 seconds.
Lost Star of Myth and Time examines this new theory of precession and the possibility our Earth may be subjected to a greater variety of stellar influences than heretofore imagined
Is There a New Mega-Massive Planet in the Outer Reaches of the Solar System?
When I used Bode's 240-year-old formula to calculate the Bode hypothetical distance from the sun to a possible planet located beyond Pluto, the Bode distance turned out to be 77.2AU, which is 7.2 billion miles and roughly near the center of the large void. A huge ultra-massive planet that has been orbiting there for millions or billions of years certainly could have gravitationally attracted all the KBOs that are missing from the enormous void.
The Binary Research Institute (BRI) has found that orbital characteristics of the recently discovered planetoid, "Sedna", demonstrate the possibility that our sun might be part of a binary star system. A binary star system consists of two stars gravitationally bound orbiting a common center of mass. Once thought to be highly unusual, such systems are now considered to be common in the Milky Way galaxy.
similar breakthrough was announced last year, when astronomers unveiled direct images of a single-planet and multiple-planet system. However, the host stars of such systems are stellar giants that are much more massive than the sun.
The images of this newly identified object were taken in May and August during early test runs of a new planet-hunting instrument on the Hawaii-based Subaru Telescope.
The object called GJ 758 B orbits a parent star that is comparable in mass and temperature to our own sun, said study team member Michael McElwain of Princeton University. The star lies 300 trillion miles (480 trillion km), or about 50 light-years, from Earth.
Scientists aren't sure if the object is a large planet or a brown dwarf, a cosmic misfit also known as a failed star. They estimate its mass to be 10 to 40 times that of Jupiter. Objects above 13 Jupiters (and below the mass needed to ignite nuclear reactions in stars) are considered to be brown dwarfs.
"Brown dwarf companions to solar-type stars are extremely rare," he told SPACE.com. "It's exciting to find something that is so cool and so low mass with a separation similar to our solar system around a nearby star."
The planet-like object is currently at least 29 times as far from its star as the Earth is from the sun, or about the distance between the sun and Neptune.
The scientists say telescope images have revealed a possible second companion to the star, which they are calling GJ 758 C, though more observations are needed to confirm whether it is actually nearby or just looks that way.
I put forth the proposition that we live in a binary system and that Sol's unborn twin is a brown dwarf. This proposition is based on current astronomical data, plus the ancient historical accounts and warnings contained in The Kolbrin Bible.
"[1] It is a dark star and hasn't been recognized (I believe he claims on his website that it was seen in the IRAS in 1983)."
It is either that IRAS object or within the specified number of degrees in RA and Dec. of it.
"[2] He has worked out orbital elements (available on the website, complete with RA and Dec.)"
The most recent estimations for Vulcan's mass, orbit elements and location are found in the Synopsis section, Earth's Bleak Future. The orbit elements have changed slightly since the first (1997) paper was put on the web.
"[3] It is 141-165 Earth masses and a magnitude 22 object." At different points in the "papers" that appear on his website, Warmkessel cites different figures for Vulcan's mass.
Just like Pluto's mass, Vulcan's mass has decreased precipitously based on new data. The most reliable Estimates for Vulcan's mass come from Crop Circle T367 and the Akkadian seal and have remained within a factor of two or less since the 1999 Paper. The mass based on Akkadian Seal's value is favored because slight variances in the comet swarm pass times (based on geo-climatological data) seems to more accurately reflect Vulcan's mass's influence on the comet swarms return periods when they are far from the Sun.
"[4] Geoclimatological data (ie, dendrochronology and Greenland ice cores) show prior comet strikes, (which is probably true anyway, but is it relevant to his particular claims?)."
Geo-climatological data offers a way to validate Vulcan's theoretical orbit (which has been deduced in a non standard way). Vulcan causes predicted comet swarms to occur in 3:2 resonate orbits. So once Vulcan's orbital period is specified, the period of the comet swarms can be deduced. When the comet swarms pass, one or more often impact Earth (or explode in its atmosphere). These usually cause weather changes. By examining the historical geo- climatological data, Vulcan's mass, orbital period and eccentricity can be verified.
"[5] It has a period of 4969 years which he states are corroborated by calculations done by astronomer George Forbes in 1880."
Forbe's predicted two planets (not comets) in solar orbit by using comet aphelion data computed from observed comets. One set of orbital parameters he found is very similar to Vulcan's.
I can only surmise that Vulcan is his idea of some sort of periodic cometary perturber, hasn't this idea been pretty much laid to rest?
This is a pretty fair assessment of Vulcan. Matese et. al. employed a similar technique to postulate the existence of Nemesis (Icarus; 19 May 1999).
(6) A 'scientist known' as 'leaping lizard' searched hard to find any reference to our Orbit Analyst However but failed. However they ignored the 30-60 Google references to the astronomical research works published by our Astronomical Support individual.
We present an updated dynamical and statistical analysis of outer Oort cloud cometary evidence suggesting the sun has a wide-binary Jovian mass companion. The results support a conjecture that there exists a companion of mass ~ 1-4 M_Jup orbiting in the innermost region of the outer Oort cloud. Our most restrictive prediction is that the orientation angles of the orbit normal in galactic coordinates are centered on the galactic longitude of the ascending node Omega = 319 degree and the galactic inclination i = 103 degree (or the opposite direction) with an uncertainty in the normal direction subtending ~ 2% of the sky.
AN invisible star may be circling the Sun and causing deadly comets to bombard the Earth, scientists said yesterday.
The brown dwarf - up to five times the size of Jupiter - could be to blame for mass extinctions that occur here every 26 million years.
The star - nicknamed Nemesis by NASA scientists - would be invisible as it only emits infrared light and is incredibly distant.
Nemesis is believed to orbit our solar system at 25,000 times the distance of the Earth to the Sun.
Scientists' first clue to the existence of Nemesis was the bizarre orbit of a dwarf planet called Sedna. Boffins believe its unusual, 12,000-year-long oval orbit could be explained by a massive celestial body
Mike Brown, who discovered Sedna in 2003, said: "Sedna is a very odd object - it shouldn't be there.
"The only way to get on an eccentric orbit is to have some giant body kick you - so what is out there?"
The 12,000 year orbital period of Sedena is no where near the anticipated 26,000,000 year revisit time of a threatening comet cluster.
After examining the orbits of more than 100 comets in the Minor Planet Center database, the researchers concluded that 80 percent of comets born in the Oort Cloud were pushed out by the galaxy's gravity. The left over 20 percent, but, needed a nudge from a distant object in this area 1.4 times the mass of Jupiter.
A dark object may be lurking near our solar system, occasionally kicking comets in our direction.
Nicknamed "Nemesis" or "The Death Star," this undetected object could be a red or brown dwarf star, or an even darker presence several times the mass of Jupiter.
Why do scientists think something could be hidden beyond the edge of our solar system? Originally, Nemesis was suggested as a way to explain a cycle of mass extinctions on Earth.
The paleontologists David Raup and Jack Sepkoski claim that, over the last 250 million years, life on Earth has faced extinction in a 26-million-year cycle. Astronomers proposed comet impacts as a possible cause for these catastrophes.
The Oort Cloud is thought to extend about 1 light year from the Sun. Matese estimates Nemesis is 25,000 AU away (or about one-third of a light year). The next-closest known star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, located 4.2 light years away.
- Brown dwarf could have caused mass extinctions
- Star is invisible and a long way away
- But heat-seeking telescope may find it Maybe the IRAS satellite already found it.
The brown dwarf - up to five times the size of Jupiter - could be to blame for mass extinctions that occur here every 26 million years,
The star - nicknamed Nemesis by NASA scientists - would be invisible as it only emits infrared light and is incredibly distant. Nemesis is believed to orbit our solar system at 25,000 times the distance of the Earth to the Sun.
As it spins through the galaxy, its gravitational pull drags icy bodies out of the Oort Cloud - a vast sphere of rock and dust twice as far away as Nemesis.
The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer - expected to find a thousand brown dwarf stars within 25 light years of the Sun - has already sent back a photo of a comet possibly dislodged from the Oort Cloud.
Scientists' first clue to the existence of Nemesis was the bizarre orbit of a dwarf planet called Sedna. Scientists believe its unusual, 12,000-year-long oval orbit could be explained by a massive celestial body.
Mike Brown, who discovered Sedna in 2003, said: "Sedna is a very odd object - it shouldn't be there.
"The only way to get on an eccentric orbit is to have some giant body kick you - so what is out there?"
Finding Earth threatening comets is the real mission of WISE.
NASA's WISE satellite has found a Y dwarf star, cool enough to touch, that is the hub of the seventh closest star system to us.
-
9TH PLANET DISCOVERED? RESEARCHERS FIND EVIDENCE OF 'LOST PLANET' IN THE SOLAR
SYSTEM - Nov 24, 2020
Experts believe an 'ice giant' was 'was kicked out ... of the solar system by unknown forces'
Though researchers continue to hunt for the mysterious Planet 9, experts have discovered evidence that another planet, residing between Uranus and Saturn, "escaped" billions of years ago. - *
MISSING 9TH PLANET EXISTED IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, BUT 'KICKED OUT' INTO DISTANT
SPACE, SAY ASTRONOMERS - November 7, 2020
A massive ice giant planet is believed to have existed between Uranus and Saturn, and was 'cast out' into the edges of the solar system -
'LOST' WORLD'S REDISCOVERY IS STEP TOWARD FINDING HABITABLE PLANETS - JULY
21, 2020
The rediscovery of a lost planet could pave the way for the detection of a world within the habitable "Goldilocks zone" in a distant solar system.
The planet, the size and mass of Saturn with an orbit of thirty-five days, is among hundreds of "lost" worlds that University of Warwick astronomers are pioneering a new method to track down and characterize in the hope of finding cooler planets like those in our solar system, and even potentially habitable planets. - * SOMETHING HUGE IS LURKING OUT THERE AT THE EDGE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM... IT’S WARPING GRAVITY FIELDS - July 9, 2017
- * GOODBYE PLANET NINE, HELLO PLANET TEN - ONE UNIVERSE AT A TIME - July 2, 2017
- * FORGET PLANET 9—THERE’S EVIDENCE OF A TENTH PLANET LURKING AT THE EDGE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM - 06/23/2017
- *
UNSEEN 'PLANETARY MASS OBJECT' SIGNALLED BY WARPED KUIPER BELT - June 22,
2017
In other words, the effect is most likely a real signal rather than a statistical fluke. According to the calculations, an object with the mass of Mars orbiting roughly 60 AU from the sun on an orbit tilted by about eight degrees (to the average plane of the known planets) has sufficient gravitational influence to warp the orbital plane of the distant KBOs within about 10 AU to either side.
"The observed distant KBOs are concentrated in a ring about 30 AU wide and would feel the gravity of such a planetary mass object over time," Volk said, "so hypothesizing one planetary mass to cause the observed warp is not unreasonable across that distance." - * UNSEEN 'PLANETARY MASS OBJECT' SIGNALLED BY WARPED KUIPER BELT - June 22, 2017
- *
FORGET PLANET 9—THERE’S EVIDENCE OF A TENTH PLANET LURKING AT THE EDGE OF THE
SOLAR SYSTEM - June 23, 2017
Another explanation for the weird KBO orbits could be that a star traveling passed our solar system at some point in the past knocked them out of alignment. “Once the star is gone, all the KBOs will go back to precessing around their previous plane,” Malhotra said. “That would have required an extremely close passage at about 100 AU, and the warp would be erased within 10 million years, so we don't consider this a likely scenario."
They said the launch of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a new telescope that will survey the sky, should help identify the planet—if it exists. - * PLANET 10? ANOTHER EARTH-SIZE WORLD MAY LURK IN THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM - June 22, 2017
- *
SCIENTISTS SAY THERE MAY BE YET ANOTHER UNSEEN PLANET AT SOLAR SYSTEM’S EDGE
- June 21, 2017
Kat Volk and Renu Malhotra of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory say their analysis points to an eight-degree tilt in the average planes of orbits for the most distant objects in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy mini-worlds that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune.
Volk and Malhotra say the gravitational influence of a Mars-size object at a distance of 60 astronomical units, or 60 AU, could explain the orbital warp. - ORBITAL DATA FOR THE PLANETS & DWARF PLANETS
-
NEW DWARF PLANET IN THE OORT CLOUD CHANGES PICTURE OF SOLAR SYSTEM. . . -
March 26 2014
!!! PIN THIS SHIT !!!
it's the first step to PX
the orbit of the new planet & the orbit of sedna show clearly, that PLANET X EXISTS !!!
why is'nt this pinned???????????? -
DWARF PLANET STRETCHES SOLAR SYSTEM'S EDGE - 26 March 2014
This orbit diagram shows the paths of Oort cloud objects 2012 VP113 (red) and Sedna (orange), which circle the Kuiper belt (blue) at the Solar System's edge. -
NEW WORLD FOUND AT SOLAR SYSTEM'S EDGE - 27 March 2014
"That's the closest it ever comes, it's a very elongated orbit which goes all the way out to 450AU, which is very distant," says Sheppard.
"We know that it's pinkish red in colour, which suggests that it's probably dominated by water ice and frozen methane on its surface."
Vulcan's aphelion is 448 AU -
DWARF PLANETS IN THE EXTREME OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM - March 26, 2014
Anomalies in the orbits of Sedna and 2012 VP113 tantalizingly suggest that one or more giant planets 10 times the mass of Earth could orbit in the dark, frozen outer fringe of our solar system, 250 A.U.s or more from the Sun.
2501.5 = 3953 year period. The admitted period goes up to 4590 years 2761.5 = 4585 years. -
NEW OBJECT OFFERS HINT OF "PLANET X" - March 26, 2014
The discovery of 2012 VP113, a sizable object roughly twice Pluto's distance from the Sun, has dynamicists wondering whether a super-Earth-size perturber lies undiscovered even farther out.
This isn't due to some kind of observational bias, note Trujillo and Sheppard, and it's statistically unlikely to be mere coincidence. Importantly, this kind of orbital alignment means there was no close-passing star at the dawn of solar- system history, because the orbits' orientations would have become randomized in the eons since by gravitational nudges from the outer planets.
Instead, the observers suggest, this might be the handiwork of a super-Earth-size planet roughly 250 A.U. from the Sun, in what's considered the inner Oort Cloud of comets. This rogue world would have enough mass to perturb objects like 2012 VP113 and Sedna inward. -
THE DISCOVERY OF A DWARF PLANET LEADS TO SPECULATION THAT ANOTHER ROGUE
PLANET
EXISTS BEYOND IT. - March 27, 2014
Orbital analysis of 2012 VP-113, a tiny planetoid beyond Pluto, and other bodies indicates an undetected planet, a giant "super-Earth," lurking on the outer edge of our solar system. How 2012 VP-113 and "Super Earth" compare with some of their neighbors
Excluding its rings, the mean diameter of planet Saturn is approximately 120,000 km (74,500 miles), more than 8 times the diameter of Earth
Notice that the diameters of Earth and super Earth are compared and range from two to ten Earth's diameter implying the mass (going as the cube) varies from eight to a thousand. -
A SEDNA-LIKE BODY WITH A PERIHELION OF 80 ASTRONOMICAL UNITS - 27 March
2014
Here we report the presence of a second Sedna-like object, 2012?VP113, whose perihelion is 80?AU. The detection of 2012?VP113 confirms that Sedna is not an isolated object; instead, both bodies may be members of the inner Oort cloud, whose objects could outnumber all other dynamically stable populations in the Solar System. -
DOES OUR SOLAR SYSTEM HAVE A SUPER EARTH? Cluster Of Rock At Its Edge Hints
At
Existence Of An Enormous Planet - 26 March 2014
- Researchers have discovered a dwarf planet called 2012 VP113
- It was spotted orbiting in a similar formation with up to 900 other objects
- Discoveries were made on the edge of our solar system in the Oort cloud
- The similar orbits suggest a larger planet, dubbed a Super Earth because of its size, may be creating a shepherding effect on these objects
-
NEW OORT CLOUD DISCOVERY RENEWS TALK OF PLANET X? - 26 March 2014
Both Sedna and 2012 VP113 were found near their closest approach to the Sun, but they both have orbits that go out to hundreds of AU, at which point they would be too faint to discover. In fact, the similarity in the orbits found for Sedna, 2012 VP113 and a few other objects near the edge of the Kuiper belt suggests that an unknown massive perturbing body may be shepherding these objects into these similar orbital configurations. Sheppard and Trujillo suggest a super Earth or an even larger object at hundreds of AU could create the shepherding effect seen in the orbits of these objects, which are too distant to be perturbed significantly by any of the known planets. -
DISCOVERY OF NEW DWARF PLANET HINTS AT OTHER OBJECTS IN SOLAR SYSTEM -
March
26, 2014
The scientists noticed something else that seemed too odd to be a coincidence: Both Sedna and 2012 VP113 seemed to be making their closest approach to the sun at similar angles. That could mean that there's a giant planet out there, tugging at both of their orbits in the same way. If so, this ghost planet could have a size of anywhere from 1 to 20 Earth masses, Sheppard said.
Future telescopes should be able to help settle whether a super-Earth exists by finding more dwarf planets like Sedna and 2012 VP113, scientists said. -
NEW DWARF PLANET HINTS AT GIANT WORLD FAR BEYOND PLUTO - 26 March
2014
"Sedna was unique for about 10 years but it's now clear that Sedna and 2012 VP113 are just the tip of the iceberg."
Intriguingly, Sheppard's team also found a strange alignment when they looked at the orbits of 2012 VP113, Sedna and 10 other objects that lie closer to the sun. "It was a big surprise to us," he says.
One explanation for the alignment could be the tug of a rocky planet that is 10 times the mass of Earth that orbits the sun at 250 AU, the team calculate. That world would be cold and faint – and would push and pull at the closer objects like a distant but powerful puppeteer.
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) scoured this region of space in 2010 and 2011 searching for a so-called Planet X and came up empty.
However, WISE was looking for the tell-tale warmth of gas giants – a rocky "super-Earth", like the one Sheppard's team suggest, would be too cold for the telescope to pick up. "This is too faint for WISE," says Ned Wright, the space telescope's principal investigator. Even if the planet has a small internal heat source – and absorbs some sunlight, it would still not generate enough heat to register, he adds.
But instruments such as NASA's Kepler space telescope, which has had particular success in finding such exoplanets, would have no chance of spotting a planet like this one. -
NEW DWARF PLANET 'BIDEN' MAY OFFER COSMIC SECRETS - DISCOVERY AT SOLAR
SYSTEM'S
EDGE HINTS AT MORE TO COME? - Mar 26, 2014
- 2012 VP113
-
WHY THE SECRET ABOUT THE 'NEW PLANET'?
It is already known that the body was discovered in October 21 2003 by the designation 2003 UB313.
Why is it now stated it was spotted in "January", inferring that the discovery occurs in 2005?
"Xena was first spotted in January. Since then scientists have been checking its position and size before making their announcement. They had hoped to hold back for longer, but a secure website containing details of the discovery was recently hacked and the hacker threatened to release the information." - WHERE ARE YOU HIDING PLANET X, DR. BROWN? - Nov 4, 2009
- ASTRONOMERS AT PALOMAR OBSERVATORY DISCOVER A 10TH PLANET BEYOND PLUTO
- CONSTANT COMET THREAT
Most scientists have presumed that these star crossings will lead to a shower of comets raining down on the Earth and the rest of the inner solar system. Some have even claimed to find evidence of periodic mass extinctions that might be explained by a single (as-yet-unidentified) star in an elliptical orbit around the sun.ORBITAL PARAMETERS OF
VULCAN AND SOME(?) OF ITS RELATED OBJECTSParameter VULCAN 2012
VP113
Biden2000*
CR105Sedna
2003*
VB122003**
UB313
Eris1996
TL662003
EL61PLUTO Period (years) 4969.0 +30/-24 4590 3366 11249 557 755 ? 248.09 Eccentricity 0.537 +0.09/-0.04 0.7106887 0.804 0.849 0.442 0.589 0.1888 0.2485 Inclination 48.44o +3o/- 9o 24.01461o 22.758o 11.932o 44.18o 23.9o 28.19o 17.14o Asc. Node 189.0o +/-1.3o 90.89192o 128.28o 144.54o 35 .88o 217.8o 121.90o 110.303 o Perihelion Arg. 257.8o +6o/- 13.5o 291.14923o 316.6o 311.47o 151.3o 184.7o 239.51o 113.8o Aphelion (AU) 448 472.16 (450) 405 928 97.6 135 51.524 49.305 Perihelion (AU) 135 79.85 44 76 37.8 35 35.155 29.658 * Astronomers are already postulating that these objects are captured extrasolar planetesimals from low-mass stars or brown dwarfs encountering the Sun.
** Kenyon and Bromley say that only the detection of objects with orbits inclined 40 degrees or more from the plane of the ecliptic will prove the existence of 'alien' planetoids. This may be why the existence of 2003 UB313 was kept secret. In other words, it associated these bodies with a brown dwarf star, i. e. Vulcan. - Details:
-
A CONVERSATION WITH PLUTO'S KILLER: Q & A WITH ASTRONOMER MIKE BROWN - :
24
August 2011
SPACE.com: What do you think is going on with Sedna? Where did it come from, and why is its orbit so weirdly
elliptical?
Brown: We have some very precise information [about Sedna]. We have its very precise orbit, and it's telling you something incredible. It never comes close to a giant planet, which means it did not get placed in that orbit by a giant planet. And yet it had to have been placed in that orbit by something. So the zeroth-order piece of information is that, somewhere out there, something perturbed Sedna, and that thing is no longer there. Now, that thing could've been another planet; it could have been a star that came close to the sun; it could have been a lot of stars, if the sun was born in a cluster. -
'TENTH PLANET' HUNTED IN WRONG PART OF THE SKY
It turns out that astronomers failed to aim NASA's infrared telescope at 2003 UB313 correctly, so the object could be even bigger than their estimates suggest.
Sure it was an accident. -
ROGUE BROWN DWARF LURKS IN OUR COSMIC NEIGHBORHOOD - Apr 7, 2010
UGPSJ0722-05 is all by itself, floating through interstellar space, possibly having formed there on its lonesome, or kicked out of its host star system by an ancient gravitational game of stellar pinball.
Oddly, when looking at the spectrum from UGPSJ0722-05, there is an anomalous absorption line (i.e. a particular wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum that is missing) that cannot be explained by our current understanding of brown dwarfs. Perhaps the UKIRT has discovered a new breed of brown dwarf; a very cool object with some chemical in its atmosphere that absorbs infrared radiation at a wavelength of 1.25 micrometers. -
2003 UB313 Orbit
2003 UB313 has an orbital period of about 560 years, and currently lies at almost its maximum possible distance from the Sun (aphelion), about 97 astronomical units away from the Earth. Like Pluto, its orbit is highly eccentric, and brings it to within 35 AU of the Sun at its perihelion
Unlike the terrestrial planets and gas giants, whose orbits all lie roughly in the same plane as the Earth's, 2003 UB313's orbit is inclined at an angle of about 44 degrees to the ecliptic. The reason it had not been noticed until now is because of its steep orbital inclination: most searches for large outer solar system objects concentrate on the ecliptic plane, in which most solar system material is found.
2003 UB313 albedo must be relatively high (greater than 0.5), making it more Pluto-like than any other Kuiper belt object so far discovered. -
OBJECT BIGGER THAN PLUTO DISCOVERED, CALLED 10TH PLANET
Brown said 2003 UB 313 appears to be surfaced with methane ice, as is Pluto. That's not the case with other large Kuiper Belt objects,
His best estimate is that it is 2,100 miles wide, about 1-1/2 times the diameter of Pluto.
The object is inclined by a whopping 45 degrees to the main plane of the solar system, where most of the other planets orbit. That's why it eluded discovery: nobody was looking there until now, Brown said.
The team had hoped to analyze the data further before announcing the planet but were forced to do so Friday evening because word had leaked out, Brown said. "Somebody hacked our website," he said, and "they were planning to make [the data] public." -
DISTANT WORLD TOPS PLUTO FOR SIZE
New observations of the object, which goes by the designation 2003 UB313, show it to have a diameter of some 3,000km - about 700km more than Pluto. - MICHAEL E. BROWN Small Planets
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TENTH PLANET DISCOVERED IN OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM
Calculations showed it was near the most distant point of its 560-year orbit - in 280 years it will be only 36 times as far from the sun as the Earth is. (A graphic of its orbit can be viewed here.)
Its orbit is unusual in being tilted 44?from the orbital plane of the Earth and most other planets. Brown suspects the planet's orbit was warped by a series of encounters with Neptune. Neptune would tug it back into the ecliptic plane! - FOMALHAUT B : Fomalhaut (sounds like "foam-a-lot") is a bright, young, star, a short 25 light-years from planet Earth in the direction of the constellation Piscis Austrinus. In this sharp composite from the Hubble Space Telescope, Fomalhaut's surrounding ring of dusty debris is imaged in detail, with overwhelming glare from the star masked by an occulting disk in the camera's coronagraph. Astronomers now identify, the tiny point of light in the small box at the right as a planet about 3 times the mass of Jupiter orbiting 10.7 billion miles from the star (almost 23 times the Sun-Jupiter distance). Designated Fomalhaut b, the massive planet probably shapes and maintains the ring's relatively sharp inner edge, while the ring itself is likely a larger, younger analog of our own Kuiper Belt - the solar system's outer reservoir of icy bodies. The Hubble data represent the first visible-light image of a planet circling another star.
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HR 8799: DISCOVERY OF A MULTI-PLANET STAR SYSTEM
How common are planetary systems like our own Solar System? In the twelve years previous to 2008, over 300 candidate planetary systems have been found orbiting nearby stars. None, however, were directly imaged, few showed evidence for multiple planets, and many had a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting inside the orbit of Mercury. Last week, however, together with recent images of Fomalhaut b, the above picture was released showing one of first confirmed images of planets orbiting a distant Sun-like star. HR 8799 has a mass about 1.5 times that of our own Sun, and lies about 130 light years from the Sun -- a distance similar to many stars easily visible in the night sky. Pictured above, a 10-meter Keck telescope in Hawaii captured in infrared light three planets orbiting an artificially obscured central star. The 8-meter Gemini North telescope captured a similar image. Each planet likely contains several times the mass of Jupiter, but even the innermost planet, labelled d, has an orbital radius near the equivalent of the Sun- Neptune distance. Although the HR 8799 planetary system has significant differences with our Solar System, it is a clear demonstration that complex planetary systems exist, systems that could conceivable contain an Earth-like planet. -
Gravity Probe B 'Results to Date' Does It Show Solar System Motion?
It was recently reported by NewScientist that Gravity Probe B received an “F?from the U.S. Government and the project would receive no more funding.
But after netting out the spacecraft and earth orbit motions the remaining signal was far larger than anyone expected. In fact, it is so large it either means there is some unforeseen problem with the gyros or that our sun is part of a binary star system.
Yes, that’s right, if the data is correct our solar system is curving through space (carrying the earth and spacecraft with it of course) so rapidly that the only way to explain it is if our sun is gravitationally bound to another nearby star. When I met with the GP-B team at Stanford last fall they were still in the early process of analyzing the data but openly discussed the idea of an unknown companion to our sun, including the possibility of a not too distant blackhole. -
Solar system a bit squashed, not nicely round
The solar system may not be a nice round shape, but rather a bit squashed and oblong, according to data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft exploring the solar system's outer limits, scientists said on Wednesday. -
Asymmetrical Shape of Heliosphere Raises Questions - July 7, 2008
Ever since the Voyager 2 data confirmed the nonsymmetrical shape of the solar system scientists have pondered its cause (i). In summary, the edge of the heliosphere (the place where the solar wind slows to sub sonic speeds) appears to be 1.2 billion kilometers shorter on the south side of the solar system (and in the general direction of the winter solstice, the direction of Voyager 2), than it is on the edge of the planetary plane (where Voyager 1 exited approximately a year earlier). This indicates the heliosphere is not a sphere at all but a bullet shape.
See: IS IRAS OBJECT 1732+239 NEAR VULCAN? - CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
TABLE 3 - SPACE PROBES AND THE 'DEAD STAR' -
Bridging Heaven & Earth Show # 215 w/ Walter Cruttenden & "The Great Year
The Great Year = Vulcan's period, about 4969 years, not 24,000 years. - NEMESIS: DOES THE SUN HAVE A 'COMPANION'?
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NEMESIS: DOES THE SUN HAVE A 'COMPANION'?
Note references to two Vulcan web pages. -
PLANET X AND THE POLE SHIFT
A look at the Science behind Planet X - IS THERE A PLANET X? - 31 January 2009
That is by no means a general consensus. An early, slow outward migration of the giant planets (see "How was the solar system built?") could also explain some of these strange KBO orbits - although it has difficulty explaining all of the belt's observed properties.
The discovery of a further planet would be thrilling, he says. The only explanation for its presence there would be that large bodies coalesced very early in the solar system's history, only to be ejected by the gravity of the giant planets later on. That would firm up our ideas about how the solar system must have developed, and perhaps be a stepping stone towards its even more distant recesses.
It takes two stellar bodies to form a solar system (or two Kerr holes to form the seeds for a star’s planets. -
THE LOCATION OF PLANET X - by Harrington, R. S.
Astronomical Journal (ISSN 0004-6256), vol. 96, Oct. 1988, p. 1476-1478
Sounds like one of Forbes planets (see Table 4A). This also implies Forbes' Vulcan like planet was taken seriously. Note that a following search for Planet X was conducted, but results were negative or not reported. Note also the depiction of Planet X at about 50 AU in a picture from the 1987 New Science and Invention Encyclopedia illustrated above. NOTE ALSO THAT PLANET X IS NOT A COMPANION TO THE SUN AS IS THE DEAD STAR DEPICTED IN THE ABOVE ILLUSTRATION.ORBITAL PARAMETERS OF
HARRINGTON'S NEW AND FORBES OLD PLANET XParameter HARRINGTON'S PLANET FORBES' PLANET Period (years) 1019 1076 Eccentricity 0.411 0.167 Inclination 32.4o 52o Asc. Node 275.4o 247o Perihelion Arg. 208.5o 115o Perihelion Epoch 6 Aug. 1789 1702 Aphelion (AU) 142.8 122 Perihelion (AU) 59.6 87 -
SEARCH FOR PLANET X - Harrington, Robert S.
The observation of the region of the sky in which it is believed Planet X should now be, based on perturbations observed in the motions of Uranus and Neptune, was determined, and there was no reason to update that determination. A limited area of that region was photographed, and that will be continued. . . . Blinking will be done as soon as the plates are received in Washington.
Was blinking done for the IRAS objects in question? I have no evidence that it was. -
Planet Projected at Solar System's Edge
"But it would be the first time to discover a celestial body of this size, which is much larger than Pluto," Mukai said. -
Japanese scientists eye new planet
This illustration released by Kobe University shows a planet -- half the size of Earth -- which is believed to be in the outer reaches of the solar system. The researchers at Kobe University have said that their theoretical calculations using computer simulations lead them to conclude it was only a matter of time before the long-awaited "Planet X" was found.
Planet X -- so called by scientists as it is yet unfound -- would have an oblong elliptical solar orbit and circle the sun every thousand years, the team said, estimating its radius was 15 to 26 billion kilometres. -
(13) MOON OR CAPTURED ASTEROID?
The orbit of the escaped Neptunian moon often resembled that of Pluto's present-day orbit, even with its roughly 3:2 resonance of orbital periods, which turns out to be moderately insensitive to initial conditions. Interestingly, in these trials it was easily possible to get two Neptunian moons to escape. When that happened, the escapes were in the same general direction and with similar velocities. But once Pluto recedes far from Neptune, its own gravitational sphere of influence (within which it can hold moons of its own) expands to about 10 million kilometers. This means that any body closer than that to Pluto and roughly co-moving with it will become permanently trapped as a moon of Pluto. Tidal forces would then circularize the orbit of such a moon, bringing it closer to Pluto, and melting and increasing the density of Pluto and its moon in the process.
The final state would be just like what we observe: Charon is just such an unusually large moon of Pluto with quite high angular energy, as if its orbit around Pluto were once quite a bit larger than it is today. Our scenario predicts that both bodies were former, independent moons of Neptune, stripped away by Planet X; and that Charon passed from Neptune's sphere of influence directly into Pluto's, without ever being in a solar orbit of its own.
This 5 Earth mass planet is what this site considers to be Septimus. -
A POSSIBLE ORBIT OF A 10TH PLANET
The solar system may have a tenth planet lurking beyond the orbit of Pluto, calculations by astronomers in Britain and Argentina indicate. "Planet X" could lie 60 times further from the Sun than the Earth, The new planet, thought to be the same size as Earth, would lie on the inside edge of the Kuiper Belt, a distant region of the solar system principally composed of small pieces of rock and interstellar leftovers from the creation of the solar system. Dr Melita, and Dr Adrian Brunini, of the University of La Plata in Argentina, suggested the sharp edge of the Kuiper Belt was caused by a similar sweeping, and that had, over time, created a planet-sized object, whose orbit of the sun would be almost circular, but angled by 20 degrees to that of the inner planets. A 60 AU orbit suggests a 464-year period assuming that it is not very eccentric. This is similar to Forbe's anticipated planet with a 1,076 year period that could be the infamous Septimus. -
SIGNS OF A HIDDEN PLANET? 30 March 2001
The most exciting possibility is that a mid-sized planet at some 10 billion kilometers (58 AU) from the sun caused 2000 CR105's orbit. And because such a planet would not be very vulnerable to orbit disruptions, it could still be there, the team says. Possibly Septimus? -
A HISTORY OF GREAT DEATHS
Two ideas for how to perturb the Oort Cloud have been proposed:
1. A dark sister sun called Nemesis: Our sun formed as a binary, with a secondary star that never began to shine (too small for fusion). Interaction of the orbit of the two stars could regularly cause gravitational perturbation of the Oort Cloud. Systematic search for Nemesis has not yet revealed such a dark star.
2. Galactic Plane Oscillation: Our solar system is not static within the galaxy, but oscillates up and down through the main symmetry plane of the Galaxy with about a 60 million year periodicity. Each passage through the plane could lead to the surrounding Oort cloud being perturbed by increased interstellar mass in the galactic plane. This would release a hail of comets, some of which would strike the Earth. The timing is not quite perfect, but it is on the right scale. We are now pretty much in the middle of a cycle, so would not expect another mass extinction for millions of years. - A MYSTERY REVOLVES AROUND THE SUN Astronomers postulate a distant massive planet may draw comets from the Oort cloud.
- A MYSTERY
REVOLVES
AROUND THE SUN - link down?
Another paper Matese et. al. postulate a 1.5 to 6 Jupiter mass object, possibly dark star or our Sun's binary companion exists in the Oort cloud at about 25,000 +/- 5,000 AU. A normal to its orbital plane is within 90 +/- 5 degrees of the North Galactic Pole. - COMETARY EVIDENCE OF A MASSIVE BODY IN THE OUTER OORT CLOUD - J. J. Matese, P. G. Whitman, and D. P. Whitman. Accepted for publication in Icarus as of 19 May 1999.
- DOES THE SUN HAVE A DOOMSDAY TWIN?
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(2) THE EFFECTS ON THE EKB OF A LARGE DISTANT TENTH PLANET
We investigate the orbital evolution of both real and hypothetical Edgeworth-Kuiper Objects in order to determine whether any conclusions can be drawn regarding the existence, or otherwise, of the tenth planet postulated by Murray (1999). We find no qualitative difference in the orbital evolution, and so conclude that the hypothetical planet has been placed on an orbit at such a large heliocentric distance that no evidence for the existence, or non-existence, can be found from a study of the known Edgeworth-Kuiper Objects. - THE THEORIZED COMPANION STAR
Through its gravitational pull, unleashes a Furious storm of comets in the inner solar system lasting from 100,000 to two Million years. "Several of these comets strike the earth. Heavy snows are driven and fall from the world's four corners; the murder frost prevails. The Sun is darkened at noon; it sheds no gladness; devouring tempests bellow and never end. In vain do men await the coming of summer. Thrice winter follows winter over a world which is snow-smitten, frost-fettered, and chained in ice." -"Fimbul Winter" from Norse saga, Twilight of the Gods -
BRITON FINDS CLUES TO ROGUE PLANET
Tim Radford, Science Editor Guardian Unlimited Friday October 8, 1999 -
ASTRONOMERS CAPTURE PHOTO OF EXTRASOLAR PLANET
The system is young, so the planet is rather warm, like a bun fresh out of the oven. That warmth made it comparatively easier to see in the glare of its host star compared with more mature planets. Also, the planet is very far from the star -- about 100 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, another factor in helping to separate the light between the two objects.
The planet is about 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit (2000 Kelvin) -- not the sort of place that would be expected to support life. Neuhaeuser's team has also detected water in the planet's atmosphere. The world is expected to be gaseous, like Jupiter. It is about twice the diameter of Jupiter. The mass estimate one to two times that of Jupiter - is "somewhat uncertain," Neuhaeuser said.
The planet is three times farther from GQ Lupi than Neptune is from our Sun. "We should expect that the planet orbits around the star, but at its large separation one orbital period [a year] is roughly 1,200 years, so that orbital motion is not yet detected."
It seems rather Vulcan like, but its orbit elements are not known. -
CHANGING ORBIT IS SIMPLE, REALLY
But somewhere out there, at around 30,000 AUs, along the outer band of a massive cosmic debris field called the Oort Cloud, something very big and very weird is going on. -
THE SHIVA HYPOTHESIS - PERIODIC MASS EXTINCTIONS
One hypothesis is that this corresponds the the solar system oscillating through the galactic plane as it orbits the Milky Way. Rampino notes that the last crossing of the galactic plane occurred a few million years ago and it has been suggested that this led to a disturbance of comets in the Oort Cloud, some of which could now be approaching the inner solar system. This implies that solar system oscillations are respibsible for the comets sugesting Matase's planet. - TERRESTRIAL RECORD OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM'S OSCILLATION ABOUT THE GALACTIC PLANE
- (2) SUN'S HIDDEN TWIN STALKS PLANET EARTH
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(3) GALACTIC OSCILLATIONS AS A SOURCE OF PERIODIC IMPACTS
The Rampino theory is not viable, since the oscillations of the sun in the Galaxy are quite small, and the variations in density experienced by the solar system are too small to affect impacts..." -
(10) COMETS, ASTEROIDS & THE GALACTIC PLANE 15 March 2001
What if these extinction collisions are caused by asteroids on the one hand, and by comets on the other? Is it possible that the gravitational consequnces of the passage through the galactic plane have altered the orbits of both classes of objects on a roughly 26 million year basis?"
Chances of major orbital disturbances will vary according to the velocity with which our Solar System crosses the plane... First the Oort Cloud Comets in the forefront, then Kuiper Belt Objects, followed by planets, moons, and in time asteroids, will switch from accelerating with the Sun to decelerating relative to it - while all those coming along behind, including the Sun, are still accelerating. Once the Sun itself crosses, then it is decelerating upwards with the forward objects, but the rearward objects are still accelerating downwards towards it from behind.
The velocity change from acceleration to deceleration may not amount to much, but it is the fact that there is a change that will cause a resulting mishmash of movement that in turn will almost certainly cause gravitational events that again in turn may well result in some of those bodies ... of all types diving into the inner Solar System. Collisions would not be inevitable, but certainly much more likely. -
A GENOCIDAL ORBIT? -THE SOLAR SYSTEM'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE MILKY WAY -
May
07, 2009
Many of the ricocheted rocks collide with planets on their way through our system, including Earth. Impact craters recorded worldwide show correlations with the ~37 million year-cycle of these journeys through the galactic plane - including the vast impact craters thought to have put an end to the dinosaurs two cycles ago. - VARIABLE OORT CLOUD FLUX DUE TO THE GALACTIC TIDE Matese et al. The last crossing at around 1.5 Myr ago and the next 1 Myr in the future based on crater flux peaks. The perigalactic period is estimated to be 180 Myr
- DYNAMICS IN DISK GALAXIES Our period about the galactic center is 2.2 x 108 Yr or 220 Myr.
- COMETS/ASTEROIDS/BROWN DWARFS
- ASTRONOMY AND SPACE SITES
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THE DINOSAUR KILLING ASTEROID HIT EARTH AT DEADLIEST POSSIBLE ANGLE - May
27, 2020
"Our simulations provide compelling evidence that the asteroid struck at a steep angle, perhaps 60 degrees above the horizon, and approached its target from the north-east. We know that this was among the worst-case scenarios for the lethality on impact, because it put more hazardous debris into the upper atmosphere and scattered it everywhere - the very thing that led to a nuclear winter."
The results are published in Nature Communications. The simulations, which used a 17-km diameter asteroid with a density of 2630 kgm3 and a speed of 12 km/s, were performed on the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) DiRAC High Performance Computing Facility. - *
ALL COMETS IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM MIGHT COME FROM THE SAME PLACE - Sep 9,
2019
All comets might share their place of birth, new research says. For the first time ever, astronomer Christian Eistrup applied chemical models to fourteen well-known comets, surprisingly finding a clear pattern. His publication has been accepted in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Cometary Compositions Compared With Protoplanetary Disk Midplane Chemical Evolution. An Emerging Chemical Evolution Taxonomy For Comets - 25 Jul 2019
With a growing number of molecules observed in many comets, and an improved understanding of chemical evolution in protoplanetary disk midplanes, comparisons can be made between models and observations that could potentially constrain the formation histories of comets. A X- NIBIRU DETAILS LEAKED BY INSIDER! JUST RELEASED, A MUST WATCH... - Mar. 17, 2019
Interesting Files on Nibiru - Planet X - Mar 15, 2019
Mentions infrared binary twin star has (@05:25) seven planets and two debris trails with (@05:50) rock and icy bodies in it. The seventh planet earliest pass-by Earth around (@07:26) at 0.015 AU on 2023 to 2024.- * ASTRONOMY AND SPACE NEWS - ASTRO WATCH: HEAVY STELLAR TRAFFIC, DEFLECTED COMETS, AND A CLOSER LOOK AT THE TRIGGERS OF COSMIC DISASTER - September 1, 2017
- * EXPLORING THE TRIGGERS OF COSMIC DISASTER - August 31, 2017
- SCIENTIST: TONS OF DANGEROUS COMETS EXIST July 29, 2017
The final reason researchers think LPCs are dangerous is their relative stealthiness compared to other space rocks. Detecting an LPC on a collusion course with Earth would be more difficult that spotting a more conventional near-Earth asteroid.
"The larger distance of comets, and the long orbital periods affect the warning time more than higher velocities: the generally larger distance of comets make the tracking observations less effective (since they are angular measurements), and the longer orbital periods mean that we don’t have multiple opportunities to see these objects at closer ranges," Chodas said. "The distance at which a comet is discovered depends largely on the activity level of the comet."- CIVILIZATION-DESTROYING COMETS ARE MORE COMMON THAN WE THOUGHT - July 26, 2017
Comets are a different story. Some comets have orbits that take them billions of miles away, out to the very edges of the solar system. Some of these comets only venture near the Earth once every few centuries as they come in close to loop around the sun before slingshotting back out. These long-period orbits make the comets nearly impossible to detect.
According to data from WISE, there may be seven times as many large, long-period comets than we thought. These are rocks measuring at least 1 kilometer, large enough to cause a cataclysmic loss of life if they strike. WISE used its infrared detector to map the number of comets out there, and it found that they were both larger and more numerous scientists previously believed. This translates into a greater risk of a comet impact.- OUR SOLAR SYSTEM IS FULL OF HUGE, RECENTLY DISCOVERED COMETS - July 25, 2017
“Our results mean there’s an evolutionary difference between Jupiter family and long-period comets,” Bauer said.
If there really are a lot of long-period comets, there probably have been many that are already gone after crashing into planets. Those collisions would have brought some material to the planets’ surfaces — which could be exciting for the scientists who theorize that comets delivered the necessary ingredients for life on Earth, including water, atmospheric gases and organic material.
And whether comets brought life to Earth or not, further understanding them could help keep life here in the future.
"Comets travel much faster than asteroids, and some of them are very big," study co-author Amy Mainzer said in the NASA statement. "Studies like this will help us define what kind of hazard long-period comets may pose."- NEW COMET: C/2017 O1 - , 25 Jul 2017
CBET nr. 4414, issued on 2017, July 24, announces the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~15.3) in the course of the "All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae" (ASASSN) program, from images taken with the 14-cm "Cassius" survey telescope at Cerro Tololo on July 19.32 UT. The new comet has been designated C/2017 O1.
Visual estimates have the comet at mag. ~10 on July 24, 2017. Syuichi Nakano, Sumoto, Japan, notes on CBET 4414 that this comet could reach total visual magnitude 7 during September-November.- RED STAR KACHINA APPEARS IN THE SKY OVER EAST WENATCHEE, WASHINGTON (Video) - June 21, 2017
According to the Hopi Elders – The red katchina will bring the day of purification. On this day the Earth, her creatures and all life as we know it will change forever. There will be messengers that will precede this coming of the purifier. They will leave messages to those on Earth who remember the old ways.- * NASA INFRARED TELESCOPE SHOWS PLANET X, NIBIRU VERY CLEARLY - June 18, 2017
WISE scanned the entire sky between 2010 and 2011, producing the most comprehensive survey at mid-infrared wavelengths currently available. With the completion of its primary mission, WISE was shut down in 2011. It was then reactivated in 2013 and given a new mission assisting NASA’s efforts to identify potentially hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are asteroids and comets on orbits that bring them into the vicinity of Earth’s orbit. The mission was renamed the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE).
NASA seems worried about NEO, and justifiably so.- * THE SUN MAY HAVE HAD AN 'EVIL TWIN' THAT WIPED OUT THE DINOSAURS - June 15, 2017
It's likely that the sun's twin could have been significantly far apart from its sibling, perhaps as much as 46.5 billion miles away, or 17 times the distance between the sun and Neptune.- THE KUIPER CLIFF MYSTERY - WHY DOES THE KUIPER BELT SUDDENLY END? - June 12, 2017
Supporters of this theory state this is evidence of the mythical Planet X or Planet 9 that astronomers are still trying to find. Some years ago, astronomers ran several simulations, and discovered that a small planet, around half the size of the Earth could have formed inside Neptune’s orbit. It could have been tossed into a bigger orbit by Neptune, and then knocked around the orbits of the ice balls, distorting their orbits and creating the Kuiper Cliff.
The birth of this hypothetical planet could have occurred during a time when there was plenty of material in the early solar system.- MYSTERY OF DISAPPEARING ASTEROIDS SOLVED - 22-Feb-2016
Ever since it was realized that asteroid and comet impacts are a real and present danger to the survival of life on Earth, it was thought that most of those objects end their existence in a dramatic final plunge into the Sun. A new study published on Thursday in the journal Nature finds instead that most of those objects are destroyed in a drawn out, long hot fizzle, much farther from the Sun than previously thought. This surprising new discovery explains several puzzling observations that have been reported in recent years.- SURPRISE METEOR SHOWER ON NEW YEAR'S EVE - February 24, 2016
A new network of video surveillance cameras in New Zealand has detected a surprise meteor shower on New Year's Eve. The shower is called the Volantids, named after the constellation Volans, the flying fish, from which the meteoroids appear to stream towards us.
"The parent body of this stream still eludes us," says Soja. "It may not be active now and the high inclination may make it difficult to spot."- 10 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT THE NEW NINTH Planet - February 18, 2016
4) Conspiracy Theorists Are Claiming It Could Spell Doom . . .
3} . . . And There’s A Very Small Chance They’re Right
The more intelligent doomsayers claim that Planet Nine’s gravity well might slingshot asteroids toward the Earth, resulting in potentially devastating meteor strikes. Scientifically, this theory carries more weight: the gravitational effects of Planet Nine (or whatever’s out there) are documented. After all, Fatty was hypothesized in the first place because of the apparent effects of its gravity well on small, rocky objects. So it’s within the realm of possibility that one or two of those objects could slingshot their way toward Earth. But it’s still not all that likely—remember that space is still very, very big. Even after an object was thrown back toward our neighborhood, it would still have to actually hit Earth, instead of just continuing on into the vast, surrounding emptiness. It’s possible, but it’s far from likely. Astronomer Scott Sheppard has said that Planet Nine could "throw a few small objects into the inner solar system every so often, but [won’t] significantly increase the odds for a mass extinction event."- PASSING STARS MAY SEND COMETS SMASHING INTO EARTH – EVENTUALLY - Jan 07, 2015
- WANDERING DEATH STARS DANGEROUSLY APPROACHING EARTH - Jan 06, 2015
"For any slice of time over the past 500 million years, you'd expect there to be mostly the same number of close encounters, and there's still life on Earth," he explained to NBC. "So however bad this is, generally, it doesn't look lethal."
"There have been a lot of mass extinctions, and some fraction of them could have been due to comet impacts...but it wasn't the end of the world," he added.- COMET DUST FOUND ON EARTH'S SURFACE FOR FIRST TIME: MICROSCOPIC PARTICLES DISCOVERED 58 FEET UNDER ANCIENT ANTARCTIC ICE - 8 December 2014
- Japanese scientists discovered comet particles at Tottuki Point, Antarctica
- They found more than 40 spherical fragments which contained glass-like material, iron, magnesium, potassium, sulphur, calcium and nickel
- Dust is similar to comet fragments collected by Nasa's Stardust mission
- Comet particles were not thought to be able to survive on Earth's surface
- FIRST OBSERVATIONS OF THE SURFACES OF OBJECTS FROM THE OORT CLOUD - November 10, 2014
When the object was observable again in the spring, the team used the Gemini North telescope to obtain a spectrum of the surface, which showed that it was very red, completely different from comet or asteroid surfaces, and more like the surface of an ultra-red Kuiper belt object.
“We had never seen a naked (inactive) Oort cloud comet, but Jan Oort hypothesized their existence back in 1950 when he inferred the existence of what we now call the Oort cloud. Oort suggested that these bodies might have a layer of “volatile frosting” left over from 4.5 billion years of space radiation that disappears after their first pass through the inner solar system.- COMET SIDING SPRING INTERACTION WITH MARS EXPLAINED!! Update fast moving clouds causes effect, claims astronomer, who took the pictures!
- DID SIDING SPRING DISCHARGE WITH MARS? MASSIVE EXPLOSION ON MARS AS COMET COMET SIDING SPRING PASSES BY MARS (Video) - October 20, 2014
- COMET ISON FELL APART EARLIER THAN REALIZED - JULY 21, 2014
- COMET ISON WAS DESTROYED IN ONE FINAL VIOLENT OUTBURST - 20 July, 2014
- COMET ISON OUTBURST! ISON WITH 3 TAILS & SECONDARY OBJECT NEAR COMA! - Nov 13, 2013
The newest findings show that Comet ISON Has formed 3 tails , has had an outburst that shows brightening and a Secondary Object Found Near the Coma of ISON!- ISON, ENCKE AND LOVEJOY/SOLAR UPDATE - Nov 13, 2013
- BIZARRE SIX-TAILED ASTEROID LOOKS LIKE A COMET, OBJECT ORBIT SURPRISES ASTRONOMERS - November 7, 2013
- RUSSIAN METEOR BLAST A WARNING FOR EARTH ACCORDING TO EXPERTS - November 6, 2013
- RUSSIA METEOR STRIKE WAS 'WAKE-UP CALL' - NOVEMBER 07, 2013
A METEOR that exploded over Russia in February was 20 metres in diameter and caused a blast equivalent to 600,000 tons of TNT, according to scientists studying the event.
Professor Qing-Zhu Yin, from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California at Davis, US, said the meteor strike was a "wake-up call".
Three quarters of the rock evaporated in the explosion, said the researchers, whose findings are reported in the journal Science.
Most of the rest of the object became a glowing orange dust cloud and only a small fraction - still weighing 4000 to 6000kg - fell to the ground.
The largest single fragment, weighing about 650kg, was recovered from the bed of Lake Chebarkul in October.
The object may have come from the Flora asteroid family in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. But the chunk that exploded over Chelyabinsk is not thought to have originated in the asteroid belt itself, the experts believe.- NEW SUPER HI VISION FOOTAGE OF COMET ISON! - November 6, 2013
It’s expected to reach its closest approach to the sun on Thanksgiving Day on Nov. 28. This will be Comet ISON’s first trip around the sun.
Scientists say it could be broken apart by the sun’s gravity and baked by its heat, or there could be a bright and beautiful sky-show.- NEW ISON CLOSE UPS/MULTIPLE OBJECTS - November 4, 2013
- RED ALERT! COMET ISON ENTERS DANGER ZONE - November 4, 2013
- ISON/MULTIPLE OBJECTS IN COMA, "PECULIAR STRUCTURE IN INNER TAIL"
This big, dirty snowball is outgassing from the side that is facing the Sun !
And there's also something peculiar!
And it was copyrighted peculiar!
That's peculiar too!- NEW HUBBLE IMAGE OF ISON. MULTIPLE OBJECTS. - Oct 17, 2013
- ANOTHER EXPERT AGREES WITH DARK COMET THEORY - February 21, 2013
- ORBIT FIT AND ASTROMETRIC RECORD FOR 00CR105 - Aug 11 02:19:17 2005
Epoch: 2451580.5000 = 2000/02/06
Mean Anomaly: 3.72869 +/- 0.022
Argument of Peri: 316.58338 +/- 0.047
Long of Asc Node: 128.27893 +/- 0.000
Inclination: 22.75794 +/- 0.001
Eccentricity: 0.80380591 +/- 0.0008
Semi-Major Axis: 224.62610637 +/- 0.8689
Time of Perihelion: 2438844.2316 +/- 4.0
Perihelion: 44.07031413 +/- 0.2557
Aphelion: 405.18189861 +/- 1.5788
Period (y) 3366.6545 +/- 19.53- KUIPER BELT:
- NEW HORIZONS GETS FIRST GLIMPSE OF PLUTO
- (82158) 2001 FP185 - ORBITAL ELEMENTS
- METEOR SHOWER REVEALS NEW COMET NEO, OCTOBER CAMELOPARDALIDS and BREAKING COMET NEWS
- COMET'S COURSE HINTS AT MYSTERY PLANET
The giant comet, known as 2000 CR105, measures some 400 kilometers across.
Current wisdom holds that they have been scattered into their eccentric trajectories by the gravitational pull of a giant planet, probably Neptune. If so, basic orbital mechanics dictates that these "scattered disk objects" should swing nearest the sun at perihelion points close to Neptune's orbit, some 4.5 billion kilometers from the sun. But comet 2000 CR105, first discovered in February 2000, doesn't follow this script.
The most exciting possibility is that a planet-sized body still hides in the outer solar system. "A Mars-sized body [at an average distance of some 15 billion kilometers] could scatter a body like 2000 CR105 to its present orbit," Gladman and his colleagues write in their Icarus paper. Unlike Mars, the planet would consist mainly of ice. Because its high mass would protect it from orbital disruptions, the astronomers say, it could still be around.
Vulcan is about 150 earth masses, but currently about 41 billion miles away, and comet swarms passing through the inner solar system with some hitting the earth indicate that it is still around.
"Large or small, astronomers agree that whatever nudged 2000 CR105 into its large, distant orbit is bound to have done the same to other TNOs. "Finding more would give us a better idea of how they got there," Levison says.- A COMET'S ODD ORBIT HINTS AT HIDDEN PLANET
Such an oblong orbit is usually a sign that an object has come under the gravitational influence of a massive body.- IS THERE A LARGE PLANET ORBITING BEYOND NEPTUNE?
The team also suggests that the perturbation of 2000 CR105 could be caused by a "resident planet" of a size somewhere between our Moon and Mars that formed in these outer regions well beyond the orbit of Pluto a distance of 10 billion kilometers from the sun.- WHEN COMETS BREAK APART
The unexpected breakup of comets, some at considerable distances from the Sun, has long baffled comet researchers. Marsden wrote: "Although most of the comets observed to split have done so for no obvious reason, one really does require an explanation when the velocity of separation is some 20% of the velocity of the comet itself! A collision with some asteroidal object at 200 A.U. from the sun, and 100 A.U. above the ecliptic plane, even though it would only have to happen once, is scarcely worthy of serious consideration".
Vulcan's semi-major axis is about 200 A.U. and is inclined about 48 degrees to the ecliptic.- SCENARIOS FOR THE ORIGIN OF THE ORBITS OF THE TRANS-NEPTUNIAN OBJECTS 2000 CR105 AND 2003 VB12 - 15 Mar 2004
In this paper we explore four seemingly promising mechanisms for explaining the origin of the orbit of this peculiar object: (i) the passage of Neptune through a high-eccentricity phase, (ii) the past existence of massive planetary embryos in the Kuiper belt or the scattered disk, (iii) the presence of a massive trans- Neptunian disk at early epochs which exerted tides on scattered disk objects, and (iv) encounters with other stars. Of all these mechanisms, the only one giving satisfactory results is the passage of a star. Indeed, our simulations show that the passage of a solar mass star at about 800 AU only perturbs objects with semi-major axes larger than roughly 200 AU to large perihelion distances.- 2000 CR105 Comet Like Orbit
The comet known as 2000 CR105 is the second most distant known object in the solar system and circles the sun in a highly eccentric orbit every 3175 years at an average distance of 224 AU. One theory states that they were pulled from their original positions by a passing star or a very distant and undiscovered giant planet.
This comet tends to verify Vulcan's existence. Vulcan's aphelion is close to 448 AU, and the comet swarms are believed to form at a nominal aphelion of 444 AU with a therotical 3314.7 +/- 18.3 -year period (from impact data 3332.6 +/- 119 -year period).- PERIHELION 76 AU, APHELION 990 AU, PERIOD 12300 YEARS: THE FIRST BODY RESIDING IN THE OORT CLOUD?
2003 VB12 stays way outside the Kuiper Belt at all times / Red color, high albedo, diameter 1300 to 1800 km / Could be the first of many such objects at the inner edge of the Oort cloud- OORT CLOUD & SOL b?
Although inclined by only around 11.9 degrees from the ecliptic where the eight major planets orbit, Sedna's distant orbit is extremely elliptical indicating that its formation and orbit may have been influenced by by a passing nearby star during the early years of the Solar System, when Sol formed out of a molecular cloud with many other close by stars around 4.6 billion years ago. Like 2000 CR105, Sedna may have been perturbed by a Solar-mass star at around 800 AUs from Sol more than 100 million years after its birth, given today's observed numbers of Oort Cloud comets. Hence, 2000 CR105 and Sedna are less likely to be members of the scattered disk that had their perihelion distances "increased by chaotic diffusion" or the result of other hypotheses- THE DARK STAR: Could the reason why we are finding more and more evidence for its existence be that it really does exist
"The researchers thought up another improbable scenario that managed to explain Sedna´s orbit remarkably well. Sedna could have been born around a brown dwarf about 20 times less massive than the Sun and captured by our Solar System when the brown dwarf approached. "What´s striking about this idea is how efficient it is," says Levison, whose calculations suggest about half of the material orbiting the dwarf would have gone into orbit around the Sun.- THE DEEP ECLIPTIC SURVEY
Exploring the outer solar system in search of trans-Neptunian objects- NATURAL CATASTROPHES DURING BRONZE AGE CIVILISATIONS
The final paper in the section on archaeology, geology and climatology is by Euan MacKie, who begins by warning that astronomers will have to produce clear evidence of comet swarms or the likelihood of large impacts at specific dates before most archaeologists will be willing to re-examine their data with this in mind.- NEW 'MOON' FOUND AROUND EARTH
It was soon realized, however, that far from passing us, it was in fact in a 50- day orbit around the Earth. The American Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, says it must have just arrived or it would have been easily detected long ago.- MAJOR NEWS ABOUT MINOR OBJECTS
- LIST OF TRANSNEPTUNIAN OBJECTS
- KUIPER BELT
- HUGE ROCK-ICE BODY CIRCLES SUN
It is in a so-called resonance orbit with Neptune. This means that it completes two orbits of the Sun for every three completed by the eighth planet. Such orbits are stable as they allow the object to approach Neptune's orbit without any possibility of collision. Pluto, currently the most distant true planet, is in such an orbit. Since the first Kuiper Belt Object was discovered in 1992, several hundred have been found, and many of them are in the Neptune resonance condition, too.- PLUTINOS
A surprising fraction - 40 % - of Kuiper Belt objects have orbital periods close to Pluto's. 246 years is 3/2 of Neptune's period of 164 years and is a stable resonance that allows the object to avoid being perturbed by Neptune. In the asteroid belt, similarly, there are gaps where Jupiter would have 2, 5/2, or 3 times the asteroid's period but a cluster of asteroids where Jupiter has 3/2 the asteroid's period.- CASSINI PICTURES SPONGY HYPERION
Much of the interior of Hyperion is empty space, suggesting it is little more than a pile of space rubble. Like a Kuiper Belt object.- THE KUIPER BELT AND THE OORT CLOUD
Several Kuiper Belt objects have been discovered recently including 1992 QB1 and 1993 SC (above). They appear to be small icy bodies similar to Pluto and Triton (but smaller). There are more than 300 known trans-Neptunian objects (as of mid 2000); see the MPC's list. Many orbit in 3:2 resonance with Neptune (as does Pluto). Color measurements of some of the brightest have shown that they are unusually red.- LIST OF CENTAURS AND SCATTERED-DISK OBJECTS
- RECENT RESEARCH - Kuiper Belt Objects
- SCIENTISTS FIND NEW PLANET BEYOND ORBIT OF NEPTUNE - 5 June 1997
Astronomers have discovered a mini-planet at the edge of the solar system which may change our thinking on how the planets evolved. More than 300 miles in diameter, the planetesimal is the brightest object to be found beyond the orbit of Neptune since the discovery of Pluto in 1930. Given the designation 1996TL66, the new object is probably one of many, according to its discoverers.- ASTRONOMERS FIND DISTANT 'DOUBLE PLANET' - 19 April 2001
In January, astronomers attempted to find a specific object among this ring of comet-like objects. This body, designated 1998 WW 31, was first seen a few years ago.- (5) PLUTO HAS BIG SHINY COLLEAGUE - 29 May 2001
Varuna has a diameter of 900 km, Jewitt's team also calculates. This makes it the third largest known KBO, after Pluto (2,200 km) and Charon (1,200 km).- TWO NEW MOONS FOUND AROUND PLUTO If confirmed, it would bring Pluto's tally of satellites to three; Charon, the only known moon of Pluto, was discovered by astronomers in 1978.
Confirmation of two new moons would shed light on the evolution of the Kuiper Belt, the vast region containing icy objects beyond Neptune's orbit.
All the candidate moons seem to orbit Pluto in an anti-clockwise direction.- PLUTO GETS MORE COMPETITION- 28 August 2001
In this schematic diagram the relative sizes of the largest Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO) are illustrated. The newly discovered object, 2001 KX76 (diameter about 1200 km), is the largest known KBO and is even larger than Pluto's moon, Charon. For comparison Pluto's diameter is about 2300 km. (INCLUDES 1996TO66 which could be) 1996 TL66- LARGE WORLD FOUND NEAR PLUTO - 30 July 2001
Only planets are larger than this new object, dubbed 2001 KX76. The icy, reddish world is over a thousand kilometres across and astronomers say there may be even larger objects, bigger than planet Pluto itself, awaiting discovery. 2001 KX76 could be as large as 1,270 km (788 miles) across, bigger than Ceres, the largest known asteroid (an object that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter). It is even larger than Pluto's moon Charon, which has an estimated diameter of 1,200 km (744 miles).- (1) DID PLUTO TAKE A PUNCH? LARGE IMPACT ONLY 100 YEARS AGO?
- (8) RE: DID PLUTO TAKE A PUNCH?
- STRANGE EVENTS ON DISTANT PLUTO
Although it is receding from the Sun, its atmosphere is getting thicker, puzzling astronomers who expect it to "freeze-out" and contract in about 10 years. Earth and the other planets are warming from the inside after Vulcan passed aphelion.- ANOTHER CANDIDATE FOR "PLANET X" SPOTTED - 4 December 2000
As of 2000 December 1, the MPC's orbit suggests that this object is 43 times farther from the Sun than the Earth is, and is presently 42 times farther from Earth than the Earth is from the Sun. With an apparent magnitude of 20 at those distances, the object would be the brightest of all 346 known Trans-Neptunian Objects other than Pluto.
If it has a reflectivity comparable to other minor planets, its diameter would be between 330 and 750 miles. This can be compared to the diameters of the largest known asteroid (1) Ceres of 570 miles or (4) Vesta of 320 miles. Pluto is at a distance comparable to that of 2000 WR106, and is 1,470 miles in diameter.- ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER 'NEW PLANET'
Observations show it is about 2,000 km across and it may even be larger than Pluto, which is 2,250 km across.- UNIVERSITY TEAM'S THEORY CAUSES STIR
"The answer I think is that it's blacker than black and the only object it could be is a comet, which makes up some of the darkest objects in the solar system."
"And if Sedna has captured such an object, there must be hundreds of other large comet objects in the vicinity."- DISTANT SEDNA RAISES POSSIBILITY OF ANOTHER EARTH-SIZED PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM
Marsden favors an object closer in, a "planetary object," he told SPACE.com , perhaps at between 400 and 1,000 AU. Vulcan's aphelion is at about 448 AU.- 90377 SEDNA
Eccentricity 0.849
Semi-major axis 502.040 AU
Perihelion 76.032 AU
Aphelion 928.048 AU
Orbital period 11249.05 years
Inclination 11.932o
Longitude of the ascending node 144.544o
Argument of Perihelion 311.468o
Mean anomaly 357.713o- SEDNA (2003 VB12)
The coldest most distant place known in the solar system; possibly the first object in the long-hypothesized Oort cloud- WEIRD OBJECT BEYOND PLUTO GETS STRANGER
- DISTANT PLANETOID SEDNA GIVES UP MORE SECRETS or
DISTANT PLANETOID SEDNA GIVES UP MORE SECRETS The distant planetoid Sedna appears to be covered in a tar-like sludge that gives it a distinctly red hue, a new study reveals. The findings suggests the dark crust was baked-on by the Sun and has been untouched by other objects for millions of years. A similar "space weathering" process occurs on a 200- kilometre-wide object called Pholus, which lies near Saturn and is also very red.
Astronomers have struggled to explain such an extreme orbit, but many believe a star passing by the Sun about 4 billion years ago yanked the planetoid off its original, circular course.
This is typical of Kuiper Belt objects and Vulcan may also be covered with the same material making it hard to see.- MPEC 2004-E45 : 2003 VB12
- IT'S ANOTHER WORLD . . . BUT IS IT OUR 10TH PLANET?
The discovery of Sedna ?10 billion kilometres from Earth ?is a testament to the new generation of high-powered telescopes.- 'NEW PLANET' MAY HAVE A MOON
At its most distant, Sedna is 130 billion km (84 billion miles) from the Sun, which is 900 times Earth's solar distance (149 million km or 93 million miles).- NEW SOLAR SYSTEM WORLD HAS A MOON
More importantly, observations of the satellite's 49-day orbit allowed Brown to precisely calculate the masses of both 2003 EL61 and its moon.
Pluto and 2003 EL61 both have satellites- MYSTERIOUS SEDNA
The elliptical orbit of Sedna is unlike anything previously seen by astronomers. It resembles the orbits of objects predicted to lie in the hypothetical Oort cloud - a distant reservoir of comets. But Sedna is 10 times closer than the predicted distance of the Oort cloud. Brown speculated that this "inner Oort cloud" might have been formed billions of years ago when a rogue star passed by the sun, nudging some of the comet-like bodies inward. Other notable features of Sedna include its size and reddish color. After Mars, it is the second reddest object in the solar system.- SEDNA: A CLUE TO NIBIRU
- LARGE WORLD (QUAOAR) FOUND BEYOND PLUTO
The object is about one-tenth the diameter of Earth and circles the Sun every 288 years.- COMETS AND ASTEROIDS
- APL: FRAGMENTING COMET REVEALS INNER SELF
Scientists were able to observe the telltale chemical signatures of water. They also find a large amount of hydrogen cyanide, a simple compound containing a single molecule each of hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen.- COMET PARTICLES CONFOUND SCIENTISTS
Particles from any icy comet that were collected and returned to Earth aboard a Nasa science satellite show dozens of minerals that form only in extreme heat - a finding that complicates theories about how the solar system formed, scientists say.
Prevailing theories about the solar system's formation cannot explain how this high-temperature material ended up in the frigid regions beyond Neptune's orbit, the so-called Kuiper Belt where comets formed.- COMETS: THE LOOSE THREAD
The facts are apt to be more stubborn than the theoreticians: Deep Impact kicked up ten times more dust than expected and stimulated the comet's activity a magnitude less than expected. The dust was not a conglomeration of sizes as expected but was consistently powder-fine. The nucleus of the comet was covered with sharply delineated features, two of which were circular enough to be called impact craters. This was not expected for a dirty snowball or a snowy dirtball or even a powdery fluffball.
The craters, of course, weren't actually called impact craters. They must have been caused by subsurface explosions, because they had flat floors and terraced walls, despite the myriad of other craters on rocky planets and moons with flat floors and terraced walls that are called impact craters. All the other circular depressions with flat floors and terraced walls weren't craters because they had "unusual shapes."
The hard times began with Comet Halley. Theory expected more or less uniform sublimation of the surface as the nucleus rotated in the sun, much as you would expect of a scoop of ice cream on a rotisserie. But Halley had jets. Less than 15% of the surface was sublimating, and the ejecta was shooting away in thin beams.
The theory was adjusted to introduce hot spots, chambers below the surface in which pressure could build up and erupt through small holes to produce the jets. It went unmentioned that the holes must have been finely machined, like the nozzle of a rocket engine, in order to produce the collimation of the jets: Just any rough hole would result in a wide spray of gases. Borrelly made the hard times harder. It was dry. And black. Theoreticians tinkered with the dirty snowball theory until they got the dirt to cover the outside and to hide the snow inside. Somehow they got the dirt, which ordinarily is an insulator, to conduct heat preferentially into the rocket chambers to keep the jets going.Wild 2 defied them. Its jets were not just around the sub-solar point, where the Sun's heat would be greatest. This comet sported jets on the night side. The rocket chambers now had to store heat for half a "comet day". And something was needed to keep the jets coherent over great distances and to gather their emissions into a stream of clumps: Clusters of particles repeatedly struck the spacecraft.
If you pull one electrified comet out of the well-knit structure of accepted theories, the entire garment will become unacceptable. Either the universe is an agglomeration of isolated, gravitating, non-electrical bodies, or else it is a network of bodies connected by and interacting through electrical circuits. Either the universe is a gravity universe or it is an Electric Universe. And comets are the loose thread.- WHERE DO COMETS COME FROM? - 28 January 2009
Few cosmic apparitions have inspired such awe and fear as comets.
Vulcan draws them in from the Kuiper Belt.- 'DARK' COMETS COULD HIT EARTH WITHOUT WARNING - February 13, 2009
"There is a case to be made that dark, dormant comets are a significant but largely unseen hazard," said Bill Napier at Cardiff University.- 'DARK' COMETS MAY POSE THREAT TO EARTH - 11 February 2009
In previous work, Napier and Janaki Wickramasinghe, also at Cardiff, have suggested that when the solar system periodically passes through the galactic plane, it nudges comets in our direction (New Scientist, 19 April 2008, p 10).
These periodic comet showers appear to correlate with the dates of ancient impact craters found on Earth, which would suggest that most impactors in the past were comets, not asteroids.
Now Napier and Asher warn that some of these comets may still be zipping around the solar system. Other observations support their case. The rate that bright comets enter the solar system implies there should be around 3000 of them buzzing around, and yet only 25 are known.- COMETS 'ARE BORN OF FIRE AND ICE'
Comets are born of fire as well as ice, the first results from the US space agency's (Nasa) Stardust mission show.
The high-temperature minerals found in the Stardust samples may have formed in the inner part, where temperatures exceeded 1,000C.
"When these grains formed, they were incandescent - they were red or white hot."
One of these minerals known as forsterite, which melts at 2,000C and condenses at 1,127C, has been detected in a comet before.- NASA SCIENTISTS HAVE NEW MYSTERY TO SOLVE
Some of the material brought back by Stardust probe 'kind of a shock'
The samples include minerals such as anorthite, which is made up of calcium, sodium, aluminum and silicate; and diopside, made of calcium magnesium and silicate. Such minerals only form in very high temperatures.
"That's a big surprise. People thought comets would just be cold stuff that formed out ... where things are very cold," said NASA curator Michael Zolensky. "It was kind of a shock to not just find one but several of these, which implies they are pretty common in the comet."
The discovery raises questions about where the materials in comets form, he added.
Comets may be debris left over from Vulcan's tiny exploded planets, according to the ASTRO-METRIC concept of how our OUR SOLAR SYSTEM was formed. Posted 03/16/2006.Distant planets, seeded by PBHs ejected from Vulcan's PBH, may have experienced detonations of these tiny PBHs because they were so very small. These detonations may have produced many fragments of primordial heavy element matter which became hydrogenated as the Sun grew to its present size. These primordial fragments are the likely source of cometary bodies found in both the inner and outer Oort cloud. Thus, cometary material constitute the remains of the crust or mantels of these primordial planets. Such material may often show evidence of prior melting such as that found in the Murchison meteorite Therefore, comets are representative of the early universe, especially as far as the originally formed prototype solar system is concerned. This concept is consistent with many of the current theories concerning comets, which describes their genesis as primordial.
- WHAT IS A COMET MADE OF?
- 'LAZARUS COMETS' EXPLAIN SOLAR SYSTEM MYSTERY - 02 Aug. 2013
Not so, says the new study, which describes it as containing "an enormous graveyard of ancient dormant and extinct rocky comets" whose surface ice has been stripped away by years of exposure to solar rays. The comets can get reactivated when they pass relatively close to Jupiter, the biggest planet of the Solar System, and the shape of their orbits is tugged. This can decrease the distance between the comet and the Sun, resulting in a tiny rise in average temperature which in turn warms the subsurface ice and the gases it contains.- ASTEROID OR COMET - SAME BLOKE, DIFFERENT HAIRCUT!
Brownlee wrote, "Bodies in the Kuiper belt are not comets, because they do not exhibit cometary activity, but they would become comets if perturbed closer to the Sun." Additionally, in the plasma concept, Kuiper belt objects do not become comets necessarily just from heating by the sun, but from a change in electrical properties of their environment.
The results from recent missions suggest that comets are constructed of low- temperature and high-temperature materials that formed in totally disparate environments. The frozen volatiles were formed at the edge of the solar system or in presolar environments, but most of the rocky materials were white hot at the time of their formation and appear to have formed by violent processes in the hot regions of the solar system.
Kuiper belt objects may be from detonated planetoids according to the ASTRO-METRIC theory.- THE CREATION OF THE ASTEROID BELT: A REMOTE-VIEWING STUDY - Jul 2, 2011
Drawing data from a remote-viewing project conducted at The Farsight Institute, Courtney Brown, Ph.D., presents CRV and HRVG remote-viewing data that investigates the origin of the Asteroid Belt. The project tests two hypotheses as the origin of the Asteroid Belt: (1) the solar nebula hypothesis and (2) the exploding planet hypothesis. The exploding planet hypothesis was supported by the now late astronomer, Dr. Tom Van Flandern, former head of his department at the U.S. Naval Observatory, while the solar nebula hypothesis is currently supported by virtually all other mainstream astronomers. The remote-viewing data strongly support the exploding planet hypothesis as the origin of the Asteroid Belt. Dr. Brown explains why leaders in the mainstream science community need to come forward now to acknowledge the reality of the remote-viewing phenomenon. Dr. Brown presented these data on 11 June 2011 at the annual meeting for the Society for Scientific Exploration in Boulder, Colorado, and also on 18 June 2011 at the annual meeting of the International Remote Viewers Association in Las Vegas, Nevada.- STRANGE METAL ASTEROID TARGETED IN FAR-OUT NASA MISSION CONCEPT - January 15, 2014 Scientists think the object is the nearly naked core of a protoplanet whose overlying rock layers were blasted off by massive collisions long ago.
- FLOATING PILE OF RUBBLE A PRISTINE RECORD OF SOLAR SYSTEM'S HISTORY
A small, near-Earth asteroid named Itokawa is just a pile of floating rubble, probably created from the breakup of an ancient planet, according to a University of Michigan researcher was part of the Japanese space mission Hayabusa.
The existence of very large boulders and pillars suggests that an earlier "parent" asteroid was shattered by a collision and then re-formed into a rubble pile, the researchers conclude in the paper.
It's likely that most asteroids have a similar past, Scheeres said. "Analysis of the asteroid samples will give us a snapshot of the early solar system, and provide valuable clues on how the planets were formed."
Also, knowing if an asteroid is a single, big rock or a pile of rubble will have a major influence on how to nudge it off course, Scheeres said, should its orbit be aimed at Earth. An asteroid collision with Earth, while unlikely, could have disastrous consequences. It's widely thought that an asteroid collision caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, so some have discussed ways to demolish or steer an approaching asteroid, should we see one coming.
Another striking finding, Scheeres said, is that regions of Itokawa's surface are smooth, "almost like a sea of desert sand" and others are very rugged. This indicates that the surfaces of asteroids are, in some sense, active, with material being moved from one region to another. Gravity holds the mass of rubble together.- LARGEST ASTEROID MIGHT CONTAIN MORE FRESH WATER THAN EARTH
Ceres has long been considered one of the tens of thousands of asteroids that make up the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. At 580 miles (930 km) in diameter ?about the size of Texas ?it's the largest asteroid in the belt, accounting for about 25 percent of the belt's total mass.
"The most likely scenario from the knowledge we have on how other objects form, it probably has a rocky core and a mantle. That mantle is probably some watery, icy mix, with other dirt and constituents. That mantle could be as much as ?of the whole object," study coauthor Joel Parker of the Southwest Research Institute told SPACE.com. "Even though it's a small object compared to Earth, there could be a lot of water."- ASTEROID PROBE ON CLOSE APPROACH
- THREE TROJAN ASTEROIDS SHARE NEPTUNE ORBIT
- COMET COLLISION 'ARMAGEDDON' UNLIKELY
- THEY SING THE COMET ELECTRIC
- 'ELECTRIC COMET' COULD BURN THE HOUSE OF SCIENCE
- COMETS, GRAVITY, AND ELECTRICITY
- DEEP IMPACT SPACE COLLISION REVEALS COMETS TO BE FLUFFY BALLS OF POWDER Most striking is that the comet is not made up of very much at all. "It's mostly empty," said Prof A'Hearn. The fine particles of dust and ice are held together extremely loosely, with pores thought to run throughout. "We have deduced that around 75% to 80% of the nucleus is empty and that tells me there is probably no solid nucleus. That is a significant advance in our understanding," said Prof A'Hearn.
Comment from Signs Of The Times 09/08/2005: There are two problems with this report. The first is that one cannot immediately assume that all comets have the same composition. Certainly the new data is interesting, but shouldn't the new theory be verified? The second problem is that scientists involved in Deep Impact previously claimed that there was little chance the comet would disrupt the orbit of Tempel 1. Now they say there were quite interested in learning if the impact would disrupt the orbit so that a similar experiment could intentionally alter the orbit of a comet headed for Earth in the future.- COMET SHAKES CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Researchers analyzing the data were intrigued to find the comet is mostly made up of loose powder-like particles, laced with carbon. Spectrometers, cameras and other instruments revealed that the comet in fact has the consistency of a snowdrift. "The comet is mostly empty, mostly porous," said Dr A'Hearne. "Probably all the way in, there is no bulk of ice. The ice is all in the form of tiny grains. "The material is unbelievably fragile."
Some experts say such molecules could have kick-started life on Earth. Under the "pan-spermia" idea, comets pounded the early Earth billions of years ago, bringing organic molecules that reacted with the Sun's light and heat, creating a rich chemical soup within which life began. The theory, which was initially slammed as "outlandish" by some scientists, is slowly gaining ground.
Comets were once believed to be of either the stony or metal core variety. Perhaps there is a third kind, the 'snow drift' variety. These may explode should they impact Earth's atmosphere, causing it to rain 'for forty days'.- ICE LAYERS RECORD COMET CREATION
As the cometesimals hit the surface of a growing comet nucleus, they "flowed" on to the surface, researchers believe.
But temperature data from Tempel 1's nucleus suggests the material must be lost from only a few centimetres below the surface.- MINI-COMETS APPROACHING EARTH - 03.24.2006
A cometary "string-of-pearls" will fly past Earth in May closer than any comet has come in almost 80 years.- 'STARDUST' SHATTERS COMET THEORY - Part 1
- ALIEN PARTICLES FOUND IN 'COMET RAIN' PUT UNDER MICROSCOPE AT WELSH UNIVERSITY
WELSH scientists have been spearheading the hunt for alien life that may have fallen to Earth in a shower of "red rain".
Astrobiologists will today continue to examine traces of matter that poured its blood-red deluge over the Indian state of Kerala for two whole months in 2001.
Chandra Wickramasinghe, of Cardiff University, is investigating claims made by one Indian researcher that the phenomenon may have been caused by a passing comet depositing extraterrestrial organisms over our planet.- CELESTIAL FIREWORKS IN THE ANCIENT SKY
Plasma scientists are now comparing electrical discharge formations in the laboratory to rock art images around the world. Results in 2005 should confirm that immense and terrifying plasma configurations were seen in the sky of our ancestors. Add to this the results posted in "THE ULTIMATE TIME MACHINE"; Joseph McMoneagle; pg. 216.Sometime in the year 2016, an asteroid will bypass Earth, missing our globe by less than 1.3 million miles. It will be large enough to cause a measurable electromagnetic effect on the Earth's surface. This will be the first of four that will visit our neighborhood over the next hundred years, The second will pass around 2030, the third in 2044, and the fourth in 2071. none of these rocks will strike our planet."
These dates also appear in the analysis of the Bible Code data.- CELESTIAL FIREWORKS IN THE ANCIENT SKY - Part 1
- CELESTIAL FIREWORKS IN THE ANCIENT SKY - Part 2
- MYSTERY OF THE COSMIC THUNDERBOLT(1)
How did the story of a heaven-altering contest find its way into so many cultures? In the ritual of the Babylonian Akitu Festival, the enemy is the dragon Tiamat, subdued by the god Marduk. For the Egyptians it was the dragon Apep, defeated by Ra or his agent Horus. For the Greeks it was the fiery serpents Typhon or Python, vanquished respectively by Zeus and Apollo. Hindu accounts similarly recalled the attack of the sky-darkening serpent Vritra, felled by Indra. But these are only a few of hundreds of such accounts preserved around the world.- ARMAGEDDON - Antimatter Comets Thesis - Will be a living rain of fire and terror from the sky
- ARMAGEDDON - Antimatter Comets Thesis - Billions of people will parish.
- SUN APPROACHING COMETS
- POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS ASTEROIDS
- ASTEROID 3200 PHAETHON (1983 TB)
- VULCAN FIRES UP Vulcanoids would need to be in near-circular orbits, each avoiding the others, if they were to have survived the billions of years since the solar system formed. If they exist, how could they be found, perennially in the solar glare?
- ASTEROID 4179 TOUTATIS (1989 AC) 73P/SCHWASSMANN-WACHMANN 3
The next predicted perihelion date is 2006 June 7 and the comet will pass 0.0735 AU from Earth on May 13- ASTRONOMERS TAKE SEARCH FOR EARTH-THREATENING SPACE ROCKS TO SOUTHERN SKIES
- SEARCH TO FIND DANGEROUS ASTEROIDS NEARLY COMPLETE
- WHAT IS A COMET?
- COMETS
- COMETS
- NEAR EARTH OBJECTS - A pretty quiet topic on Asteroids, Comets, Meteorites and Near-Earth Objects (NEOs)
- COMETS AND ASTEROIDS
- HUBBLE SPIES COMET TEMPEL 1 BELCHING DUST
- COMETS IN ANCIENT CULTURES
- COMET BORRELLY PUZZLE: DARKEST OBJECT IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM
Comet Borrelly reflects less than 3 percent of all the sunlight that hits it. It was assumed that Vulcan reflected about 10%. But if it is as dark as comets, Vulcan's estimated to be a 21 magnitude object could be three times dimmer.- 73P/SCHWASSMANN-WACHMANN 3
The next predicted perihelion date is 2006 June 7 and the comet will pass 0.0735 AU from Earth on May 13, being only slightly farther away than during the original discovery apparition of 1930.- STRANGE COMET UNLIKE ANYTHING KNOWN
Brownlee is also intrigued by the utter lack of similarities between Wild 2 and Phoebe, a fairly small moon of Saturn recently imaged up close by the Cassini spacecraft. Phoebe is thought to be a captured object, having originated -- like Wild 2 -- beyond Neptune. But Phoebe's gently sloping craters, which are riddled with boulders, resemble those seen on asteroids. And Phoebe has many small craters embedded in larger, older craters.
"It's fascinating that they're so different," Brownlee said in a telephone interview.- COMET 'DIRTY SNOWBALL' THEORY IS DEAD Comet 'Wild 2' Looks Like An Asteroid
- Electric Comets
- NASA SPACECRAFT REVEALS SURPRISING ANATOMY OF A COMET
Stardust gathered the images on Jan. 2, 2004, when it flew 236 kilometers (about 147 miles) from Wild 2. The flyby yielded the most detailed, high-resolution comet images ever.
Another big surprise was the abundance and behavior of jets of particles shooting up from the comet's surface. We expected a couple of jets, but saw more than two dozen in the brief flyby,
The violent jets may form when the Sun shines on icy areas near or just below the comet's surface. The solid ice becomes a gas without going through a liquid phase. Escaping into the vacuum of space, the jets blast out at hundreds of kilometers per hour.- COMET WILD 2 SURFACE NOT SATELLITE OR ASTEROID SURFACE
- STARDUST MISSION PHOTOS
- STARDUST TARGETS LIGHTNING RETURN
- STRANGE COMET UNLIKE ANYTHING KNOWN
Among the bizarre features are two depressions with flat floors and nearly vertical walls that resemble giant footprints. They aren't structured like typical impact craters. The features have been named Left Foot and Right Foot in a new map of the comet, which is roughly 3 miles (5 kilometers) wide.
Comet Wild 2 probably gathered itself together 4.5 billion years ago, just after the Sun was born, in a region beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt.- CICLOPS Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory Operatios Phoebe Pictures And Analysis
- PHOEBE'S SURFACE REVEALS CLUES TO ITS ORIGIN
"Based on our images, some of us are leaning towards the view that has been promoted recently, that Phoebe is probably ice-rich and may be an object originating in the outer solar system, more related to comets and Kuiper Belt objects than to asteroids."- PHOEBE'S SURPRISE (see crater images)
- SATURN'S MYSTERY MOON (PHOEBE) SHOWS EXPOSED WATER ICE, SAYS CORNELL RESEARCHER
Phoebe is likely a primordial mixture of ice, rock and carbon-containing compounds similar in to material seen on Pluto and Neptune's moon Triton.
Buratti told today's press conference that both carbon dioxide and a simple hydrocarbon have been detectred on Phoebe. The water ice, she said, seems to be associated with a very bright material and there are bright craters and areas that seem to be rich with ice. "There seem to be minerals found with the water, and also an unidentified mystery material tied up with dark material,"
Phoebe's mass was determined from precise tracking of the spacecraft and optical navigation, combined with an accurate volume estimate from images. The measurements yield a density of about 1.6 grams per cubic centimeter (100 pounds per cubic foot), much lighter than most rocks, but heavier than pure ice at approximately 0.93 grams per cubic centimeter (58 pounds per cubic foot).
Torrence Johnson, a Cassini imaging team member from JPL, said that this density "tells us automatically this is not a pure iceball with a thin dark layer. You would never get a density of 1.6 from something like that. Inside, Phoebe has to be fairly complex and has to include some processes to produce these clean layers underneath the surface, which is a deep carbonaceous and rock-rich surface."- SATURN'S ODD MOON OUT
Many have long suspected that Phoebe originated in the outer solar system and was somehow captured by Saturn's gravitational pull. But until recently, the only evidence they had was the fact that the moon reflected less light than the planet's other moons, and that it orbited Saturn in the opposite direction. The new studies, which appear in the May 5 issue of Nature, show the link even more clearly.
In the density study, Lunine and Jet Propulsion Laboratory imaging specialist Torrence Johnson reveal that Phoebe has more rocks and less ice than the rest of Saturn's moons. In fact, its density matches that of Neptune's moon Triton and the planet Pluto. The former is thought to have been captured from a region of the outer solar system known as the Kuiper Belt, a disk of icy debris left over from the formation of the planets. Pluto still orbits there.
In the second study, U.S. Geological Survey astrophysicist Roger Clark and a dozen colleagues show how some of the materials detected on Phoebe's surface, like various cyanide compounds, resemble those found on a comet -- again pointing to an origin in the outer solar system. Perhaps more importantly, the researchers found that Phoebe's surface is more diverse in composition than any solar system body ever studied, with the exception of Earth. If Phoebe was indeed formed in the Kuiper Belt, then this material could be some of the most primitive in the solar system, according to Clark.- PHOEBE MOON MAY BE CAPTURED COMET
"Phoebe has a long journey behind it. It comes from the outer Solar System and probably rounded the Sun a few times before it was captured by Saturn's orbit. But we really don't know." Notice Phoebe's unusual craters. Wonder if they were made by the impact of a small antimatter beam causing water explosions to move Phoebe into its current orbit?
- SECRETS OF REMOTE ICY WORLDS REVEALED - March 28th, 2012
- VILLAIN IN DISGUISE: JUPITER’S ROLE IN IMPACTS ON EARTH - 03/12/12
Jupiter is often credited for shielding Earth from catastrophic asteroid and comet impacts. But new simulations of the influence of gas giant planets in solar systems casts doubt on Jupiter's reputation as Earth's protector.- ASTEROIDS NEAR JUPITER ARE REALLY COMETS
Observations indicate two orbiting bodies are mostly water ice- AVOIDING AN ASTEROID COLLISION - September 13, 2010
Or
PAIRS OF 'RUBBLE PILE' ASTEROIDS EXIST - September 13, 2010
Instead of a solid mountain colliding with earth's surface, says Dr. Brosch, the planet would be pelted with the innumerable pebbles and rocks that comprise it, like a shotgun blast instead of a single cannonball
As a result, asteroid pairs are formed, characterized by the trajectory of their rotation around the sun. Though they may be millions of miles apart, the two asteroids share the same orbit. Dr. Brosch says this demonstrates that they come from the same original asteroid source. UFO-CONTACT FROM PLANET IARGA- Q: "Why do they have to be so streamlined, since space is surely empty?"
- A: "We wish that were true! For spaceships that travel at relative speeds, space is not empty enough and not only streamlining but armor plating is also necessary. You have seen our ship and can see that armor is not a useless luxury. They have no windows; they are heavy, armored projectiles, whose strength comes from the discus form. (
- A: "When our radar warns us of dust or material, we make the banking maneuver that you have just seen. This then presents the smallest possible surface area to the danger. Nevertheless, each particle of dust makes burn marks on the plating. For this reason we always fly in line formation. The command consists of five ships and the lead ship is always unmanned, because this one runs the greatest risk.
- Q: "Yes, fine, thank you - ,but didn't you say something about a protective weapon which you could use if material threatened to cross the path of the spacecraft?"
- A: "The antimatter ray, Stef, is a defense against larger blocks of material which only rarely occur in space. The use of this ray demands not only enormous quantities of energy, but it is controlled by strong restrictions to prevent disturbing the natural balance. We are only justified in its use when no other methods are possible. This weapon cannot replace the armor plating of our ships."
- ORBIT ANALYST COMMENT ONE
- ORBIT ANALYST COMMENT TWO
- NIBIRU DETAILS LEAKED BY INSIDER! JUST RELEASED, A MUST WATCH... - Mar. 17, 2019
