A Ninth Planet Might Be In Outer Solar System 5-10 times more massive than Earth

Discussion in 'Techforge' started by Dayton Kitchens, Jan 20, 2016.

  1. OmIsLife

    OmIsLife Fresh Meat

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    Watch it turn out to be a black hole instead of a planet.
  2. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    A black hole would be a strong x-ray source. We'd have detected it a long time ago.
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  3. Aurora

    Aurora Vincerò!

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    Astrologers everywhere will throw tantrums. Right before telling us how they knew all along :thecadre:
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  4. Will Power

    Will Power If you only knew the irony of my name.

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    One of the last reports I read about this said some astronomers speculate that if this planet exists way out there beyond Pluto, that it's revolution around the Sun could take 50,000 Earth years.
  5. Dan Leach

    Dan Leach Climbing Staff Member Moderator

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    IIRC, only if it was actively consuming matter, like gas.
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  6. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    True, but there's plenty of stuff out there for a black hole to eat.
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  7. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

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    I thought most of space was pretty much empty
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  8. Zombie

    Zombie dead and loving it

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    See!

    Trolling.
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  9. Zombie

    Zombie dead and loving it

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    In fact they will say, "This is why we've been wrong so often. We didn't know there was a tenth planet! Come, pay us for out new and more accurate readings!"
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  10. Aenea

    Aenea .

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    That's what they say. And I've seen multiple times that a black hole can go dormant and stop eating, when it runs out of nearby solar systems.
  11. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    We're talking about an object that would be within the Kuiper Belt, where there is a lot of dust and debris for a black hole to keep busy with.
  12. Aenea

    Aenea .

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    I don't think all is being said here. Or people are talking about different things.

    If we are hypothesizing that the new planet is a black hole and is "orbiting" (for lack of a better term) around the sun, (I'm thinking that is impossible as the BH would have more gravity than our sun), then yes it could go dormat in the emptiness that this thing has to swing outside of kuiper belt into. LINK Caltech says it will go 20 times further from the sun than Neptune. Neptune is 30AU from the sun and the kuiper belt only extends out to 55AU from the sun. LINK So technically if it was a black hole it could get far enough outside of system to stop eating. Since it takes anywhere from 10K to 20K years to orbit, I don't think we would have noticed if it was eating anything.

    However, if it was a BH than it would have eaten the solar system when it was closer.

    The Math shows this to be an orbiting object, only ten times the size of the Earth. I don't see how it could be a BH. As a BH would induce orbiting (as its mass has to be bigger than our sun, to even be a BH) not be orbiting our sun, and two if it did somehow orbit our sun than it would eat our solar system. (As it would need to have been a massive star to start out with to become a BH, which makes it a big BH. For if it was possible for our sun to become a BH, it would only suck in stuff about ten miles out from its center, see previous links.)

    So since it's size is only ten times that of the Earth, and it hasn't already sucked in the Solar System on a previous pass, it can't be a BH.
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  13. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    Not nearly massive enough to be a black hole.

    And if it's 10 times the mass of the Earth, its gravitational field will be far weaker than the larger planets in our solar system.
  14. Aenea

    Aenea .

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    That was kinda my point. But the numbers should theoretically speak for themselves so I didn't want to take the time to simplify it anymore. aka lazy
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  15. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Nah. They'll just ignore it like they did Pluto.
  16. Will Power

    Will Power If you only knew the irony of my name.

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    Be interesting if Planet IX (Planet X under the Old System) turned out to be a wandering planemo that our Sun caught in its sphere of gravitational attraction(?).

    Planet comes from the Ancient Greek word for wanderer.
  17. gul

    gul Revolting Beer Drinker Administrator Formerly Important

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    New model suggests Planet 9 orbits at about 600 AU.

    http://www.space.com/32478-is-mysterious-planet-nine-tugging-on-nasa-saturn-probe.html?cmpid=514648

    The really interesting thing is that the data was derived from the gravitational wobbling of Cassini. Models of the solar system without the 9th planet couldn't explain the probe's behavior, but dropping another planet in at 600 AU syncs with the observed data. The model does more than provide distance, it even presents a specific region of the sky toward which we should point the big telescopes. If they are right, visual confirmation of the planet should come within a year.

    This is very exciting!
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  18. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    We snatched that bitch!
  19. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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  20. Nono

    Nono Fresh Meat

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    After it was kicked out of some other planetary system.

    The strange stuff just never stops coming and, as someone said, the textbooks are in constant need of rewriting.

    Can anyone explain "hot Jupiters" to me? Jupiter is a gas giant --- it has to be cold, otherwise much of its constituent matter would float away. Or not?
    Wouldn't a "hot Jupiter" quickly evaporate?

    Or do they mean As Effing Big as Jupiter but Actually a Terrestrial Planet? So, like Mercury, it can be up close and solid?
  21. Nautica

    Nautica Probably a Dual

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    Nope, they mean close to a star, big, and gaseous. {insert Yo Mama joke here}

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Jupiter
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  22. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    A hot Jupiter is exactly what it says on the tin. A gas giant in a close orbit around its parent star, causing it to be very hot indeed. The current thought is that these planets form farther out and for various reasons to do with orbital perturbations wind up moving in close, where they heat up and, yes, boil off. Once all that enormous mass of atmosphere is gone, you're left with the small rocky/metallic core. But we're still talking about a Jupiter's worth of material, or even larger, and that boiling off process can take hundreds of thousands of years, even millions of years. The gases may be boiling, but the planet in question still has an awful lot of it, meaning it has a lot of gravity as well.
  23. Nono

    Nono Fresh Meat

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    OK, it says they can lose 5-7% of their mass. I'm surprised it's so little.

    If I think of any decent Yo Mama jokes on that score I'll be back.

    Sounds like a helluva place.
  24. Señor Hoint

    Señor Hoint Fresh Meat

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    There's quite a bit of gravity to overcome.
  25. Nono

    Nono Fresh Meat

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    Yes, I just thought that, massive as such a planet is, being less than half an astronomical unit from a freaking star might impart energy that would overcome gravitational force in the case of relatively light material.

    Apparently Mercury barely has any atmosphere at all because what little it has is constantly being stripped away by the solar wind. Indeed, apparently the same forces also constantly add gasified material to the atmosphere, such as it is.
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  26. Señor Hoint

    Señor Hoint Fresh Meat

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    The Oort Cloud though.
    Obviously, at 5-10 Earth masses it is far too small to be a black hole, at least given current understanding.
  27. Aenea

    Aenea .

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    They theorize that there are micro black holes. :shrug:
  28. Señor Hoint

    Señor Hoint Fresh Meat

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    5-10 earth masses is much too large for a micro black hole.
  29. Aenea

    Aenea .

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    Actually I take that back. I was reading only what you quoted instead of my whole post on that. I had to go back and reread the whole thread to even figure out what we were talking about.

    My post covered the fact that it isn't a black hole. :shrug: With nifty links and all. :nyer:
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  30. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    You can look for it yourself, now.
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