Planet 9 again? Cosmic objects with strange orbits discovered beyond Neptune

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

Are they being tugged by Planet Nine?



A six-year search of space beyond the orbit of Neptune has netted 461 newly discovered objects.

These objects include four that are more than 230 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. (An astronomical unit is the distance from the Earth to the sun, about 93 million miles or 149.6 million kilometers). These extraordinarily distant objects might shed light on Planet Nine, a theoretical, never-observed body that might be hiding in deep space, its gravity affecting the orbits of some of the rocky objects at the solar system's edge.

Of the 461 objects described for the first time in the new paper, a few stand out. Nine are known as extreme trans-Neptunian objects, which have orbits that swing out at least 150 AUs from the sun. Four of those are extremely extreme, with orbital distances of 230 AUs.

At these distances, the objects are hardly affected by Neptune's gravity, but their strange orbits suggest an influence from outside the solar system. Some researchers think that influence might be a yet-undiscovered planet, dubbed Planet Nine.

(Others think that the combined gravity of lots of little objects, or, alternatively, nothing more than a statistical anomaly, explain the weird orbits.) The newly discovered objects could thus help researchers hone in on the possible Planet Nine — or disprove its existence.

https://www.livescience.com/461-trans-neptunian-objects-discovered.html



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As someone once said, fascinating

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

2. A space race with China to be the first to land on Planet 9? That would be drama

[brush]

3. What about Pluto? It's beyond Neptune and must have...

some influence on the objects as it rotates the Sun.

It's not even mentioned on the article. That seems strange.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

6. Pluto is smaller than Earth's moon, hardly enough gravity to move orbits of distant objects

[brush]

7. I don't know about that. It's got to be among the largest of...

these object beyond Neptune, and has gravity of it's own that could affect other objects.

And speaking of our moon, it's gravity affects our tides.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

9. No, the vast distances involved would need something 10X times heavier than earth

[First Speaker]

4. Hmmm...Planet Nine From Outer Space...

...maybe there's a film in there, somewhere...is Elvira still--ahem--walking amongst us?

[hatrack]

18. . . .

[madinmaryland]

5. I have a call into Agent Mike. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this.

[roamer65]

8. Duck Dodgers in the 24th and half century!

They will find it.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

10. Finally, the alien base is discovered, they arent from the stars, just our neighbors, lol

[Xolodno]

11. What if....

...its a really small black hole.

[Wounded Bear]

12. Anything that far out has to have an orbital period 300 years, at least...

Pluto is nearly 250 years. Not sure I'd trust the calculations of orbits that far out with only a few months data.

Cool story, though.

[myccrider]

16. They've been tracking the objects with the odd orbits for several years, I believe.

I saw a special about it 2 or 3 years ago, I think. There was a hypothesis that a planet sized object was disturbing the orbit of a couple of bodies in one odd orbit in the Kuiper Belt based on limited data (it may even have been early results of the survey mentioned in the article).

Brown didn’t believe it and set out to prove it wrong. He collaborated with another scientist (can’t remember his name, a high level math guy) and the other guy did the calculations/computer modeling for what should happen if there was such a planet. He brought his model back to Brown and said ‘you should find a number of objects with these particular half dozen or so different whacky orbits if this is true, so it must be false.’ Brown was flabbergasted because he was aware of several already mapped objects that fit almost perfectly into a few of those predicted orbits.

From what I understand, they’ve been searching for the proposed planet and for other objects which match the specific predictions of the model ever since that time.

Even the article linked in the OP says the Dark Energy Survey that unexpectedly found these objects started in 2013. Not sure where you got ‘only a few months data…’

Edited to add: There’s a link to a video of Brown talking about these discoveries in 2016 at post #9.

[Amishman]

14. Must it still be here, or could it have been something passing through?

I'd be curious if something like a brown dwarf passing through could have disturbed them into those erratic orbits as it passed through

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

15. I read where they have infrared scanned a sky survey and found nothing hot from anything like that

Brown dwarfs would still have a heat signature, so this might be a super-earth or maybe even a captured world from another solar system.

We were in a packed star nursery as our sun slowly moved away from its cradle, could have dragged along a stray.

[Amishman]

17. We wouldn't see it now if it passed through a billion years ago

What I was wondering is could something massive like that have passed through out solar system without being captured, and disturbed the orbits of these objects on the way through.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

19. Orbits are not random, a mass that affects planetoids orbits today, is still there, a gravity well

We need more probes! Launch the robots!

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. That idea would be that the brown dwarf passed by, arranged the planetoids in their unusual orbits

and left, all some time ago. The planetoids would remain in their unusual orbits.

Whether a passing brown dwarf could affect orbits like that, I don't know, though.