Astronomers gather additional evidence suggesting Planet Nine is real

His last name is Batygin, time to Find/Replace.

The Talking Tech said:

Before Pluto got the unjustified demotion we used to refer to that "hidden planet" as Planet X...now Planet 9 sounds more like something we already discovered centuries ago.

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Pluto's demotion was entirely justified: it's merely one of dozens, potentially hundreds of similar-sized KBOs. We can't classify one a planet without doing so far all.

I always love when Shawn tries to write science articles. It's not 250 times the distance of earth from the sun. The unit name is called an AU, or astronomical unit. Also, this can't be a planet because planets have 3 requirements. 1)they have to be massive enough to make themselves round under gravity created from their own mass. 2) they need to be massive enough to clear all other objects from their orbit and 3) they must have a circular orbit around their host star.

The math from planet nine suggests it has an eleptical orbit that ranges from 20AU to over 250AU with a full orbit taking approximately 52,000 years.

But there is also an issue with planet nine that I hear very few people talk about. This is all based on theoretical mathematics. We have 9 massive objects, well, more than that. There are moons and dwarf planets in our solar system with more mass than some planets. My point being is that we cannot solve the 3 body problem with math so the idea that we can accurately predict the existence of a ninth planet with math is little more than just a fun intellectual exercise.

yRaz said:

I always love when Shawn tries to write science articles.

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Your point might have been more valid if your 'rebuttal' not been so inaccurate.

yRaz said:

It's not 250 times the distance of earth from the sun.

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It is. The fact he used the definition of the unit rather than its name doesn't constitute a factual error.

yRaz said:

Also, this can't be a planet because planets have 3 requirements.

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Oops again! This hypothetical planet meets all the criteria: it is, in fact, estimated at 5,000 times the mass of Pluto:

“This would be a real ninth planet,” says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy. ... Unlike the class of smaller objects now known as dwarf planets, Planet Nine gravitationally dominates its neighborhood of the solar system. In fact, it dominates a region larger than any of the other known planets—a fact that Brown says makes it “the most planet-y of the planets in the whole solar system.”

yRaz said:

My point being is that we cannot solve the 3 body problem with math so the idea that we can accurately predict the existence of a ninth planet with math is little more than just a fun intellectual exercise.

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This is the most off-target of all. Despite what you read on sites like Wikipedia, the 3-Body problem has no general analytical solution, but it has many specific analytic solutions. And even when it doesn't, you can determine a numerical solution based on the degree of accuracy of your initial conditions.

With all the overblown space exploration, we cannot get even this one right?

Why bother with all that infinitely remote crap like black holes, super-novas etc, if we cannot determine definitively what is in our own backyard? It's kind of f-d up.

Endymio said:

Your point might have been more valid if your 'rebuttal' not been so inaccurate.


It is. The fact he used the definition of the unit rather than its name doesn't constitute a factual error.


Oops again! This hypothetical planet meets all the criteria: it is, in fact, estimated at 5,000 times the mass of Pluto:

“This would be a real ninth planet,” says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy. ... Unlike the class of smaller objects now known as dwarf planets, Planet Nine gravitationally dominates its neighborhood of the solar system. In fact, it dominates a region larger than any of the other known planets—a fact that Brown says makes it “the most planet-y of the planets in the whole solar system.”


This is the most off-target of all. Despite what you read on sites like Wikipedia, the 3-Body problem has no general analytical solution, but it has many specific analytic solutions. And even when it doesn't, you can determine a numerical solution based on the degree of accuracy of your initial conditions.

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Well, it was point number 3 where planet nine fails the definition of what makes a planet. I figured someone smart enough to analyze my post wouldn't have to be told that. O'well, I'll take the fact that you didn't rebutt that point as evidence that you knew that.

But I actually love reading Shawn articles about science. I remember having to correct his reporting on the laniakea supercluster where he kept calling it a super galaxy.

But I do believe it is important that the uncertainty in the maths involved in this prediction make it barely worth paying attention to. Even if the prediction is accurate, planet nine is so far away and faint that we can't see it.

There is yet another story about this guy. He's barely relevant and he is desperately seeking funding for his research. He releases 1 or 2 things a year to keep the talk about planet 9 up. It's almost like clock work, you can search Google trends for planet nine and all his "discoveries" just happen to coincided when people stop search Google for planet 9

yRaz said:

Well, it was point number 3 where planet nine fails the definition of what makes a planet. I figured someone smart enough to analyze my post wouldn't have to be told that. O'well, I'll take the fact that you didn't rebutt that point as evidence that you knew that.

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The IAU definition of planet -- even the updated 2006 definition 2006 -- doesn't require circular orbits. In fact, all existing planets have orbits that are actually elliptical (though *nearly* circular).

VitalyT said:

With all the overblown space exploration, we cannot get even this one right?

Why bother with all that infinitely remote crap like black holes, super-novas etc, if we cannot determine definitively what is in our own backyard? It's kind of f-d up.

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If you think that's bad, we know even less about the ocean floor

From the story:

"Konstantin Bogytin and his team of astronomers...."

This is in error. This is actually Konstatin Batygin from Caltech. I realize the source article linked above also has the same typo, but error it is nonetheless.

Endymio said:

Pluto's demotion was entirely justified: it's merely one of dozens, potentially hundreds of similar-sized KBOs. We can't classify one a planet without doing so far all.

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Therefore it was entirely arbitrary, and not scientific. That's so justified!

I thought the reason for Pluto not being a planet was that it wasn't fully developed as a planet based on some barely supported theory that planets form by bombarding into everything in their path. Ironically if something large enough hit another object close enough to Earth's orbit, we would no longer be living on a planet, regardless of any impact to Earth itself.

Plutoisaplanet said:

Therefore it was entirely arbitrary, and not scientific. That's so justified!

I thought the reason for Pluto not being a planet was that it wasn't fully developed as a planet based on some barely supported theory that planets form by bombarding into everything in their path. Ironically if something large enough hit another object close enough to Earth's orbit, we would no longer be living on a planet, regardless of any impact to Earth itself.

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All designations are arbitrary and the pre- and post-2006 classifications are both equally so.

Pluto is one of a class of objects with overlapping orbits, like Ceres, so they decided to reclassify it. Whatever. It's still Pluto before and after, and if you classify a planet as the biggest thing by a bunch (highly technical) in it's orbit around a star then we got 8 planets and these guys are looking for a 9th.

yRaz said:

Also, this can't be a planet because planets have 3 requirements. 1)they have to be massive enough to make themselves round under gravity created from their own mass. 2) they need to be massive enough to clear all other objects from their orbit and 3) they must have a circular orbit around their host star.

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You're certainly wrong on 3). In fact, no planet has a circular orbit. If they had, we wouldn't have the terms perihelion and aphelion in the first place. They're elliptical, and not even perfectly elliptical in fact. That'd require the Sun to be a perfect sphere (which it isn't, either) and the solar system not to have any other planet.

bviktor said:

You're certainly wrong on 3). In fact, no planet has a circular orbit. If they had, we wouldn't have the terms perihelion and aphelion in the first place. They're elliptical, and not even perfectly elliptical in fact.

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They size of the ellipse is so small that it's difficult measure. It's like how the earth has mountains but if it was the size of beach ball it would be so smooth that it would be imperceptible.

The models that they show in school are so exaggerated to express these concepts it gives people the wrong idea of the size and shape of the universe.