CAPSLOCKSTUCK
Spaced Out Lunar Tick
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| System Name | Party On |
|---|---|
| Processor | Xeon w 3520 |
| Motherboard | DFI Lanparty |
| Cooling | Big tower thing |
| Memory | 6 gb Ballistix Tracer |
| Video Card(s) | HD 7970 |
| Case | a plank of wood |
| Audio Device(s) | seperate amp and 6 big speakers |
| Power Supply | Corsair |
| Mouse | cheap |
| Keyboard | under going restoration |
Scientists say they finally have 'solid evidence' for Planet X, a true ninth planet on the fringes of our solar system.
The gas giant is thought to be almost as big as Neptune and orbiting billions of miles beyond Neptune's path - distant enough to take 10,000 to 20,000 years to circle the sun.
This Planet 9, as the two Caltech researchers call it, hasn't been spotted yet,
They base their findings on mathematical and computer modeling, and anticipate its discovery via telescope within 5 years.
Researchers inferred Planet X's presence from the peculiar clustering of six previously known objects that orbit beyond Neptune.
They say there's only a 0.007% chance, or about one in 15,000, that the clustering could be a coincidence.
Instead, they say, a planet with the mass of 10 Earths has shepherded the six objects into their strange elliptical orbits, tilted out of the plane of the solar system.
The six most distant known objects in the solar system with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Such an orbital alignment can only be maintained by some outside force, Batygin and Brown say. Their paper argues that a planet with 10 times the mass of the earth in a distant eccentric orbit anti-aligned with the other six objects (orange) is required to maintain this configuration.
'We have found evidence that there's a giant planet in the outer solar system,' Brown told Popsci.
'By 'giant' we mean the size of Neptune, and when we say 'outer solar system' we mean 10 to 20 times farther away than Pluto.'
Brown and Konstantin Batygin, a theoretical astrophysicist at Caltech who specializes in solar system dynamics, think Planet X formed in the early stages of the solar system, some 4 billion years ago, when the large planets (including Planet X) were still rocky cores.
If Planet X's core had been able to stay in the inner solar system and carry out the rest of its formation, it could have accumulated enough gas or ice to become another giant like Jupiter or Neptune, the pair told Popsci.
But because the large cores of the other planets were packed so tightly in the inner solar system, there wasn't enough room for them all to develop, and Planet X was 'kicked out.
'There would have been a gas nebula around the solar system at the time that would have slowed it down as it plowed through the gas, putting it into this eccentric orbit,' Brown said.
'I could not imagine a bigger deal if—and of course that's a boldface 'if'—if it turns out to be right,' Gregory Laughlin, a planetary scientist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz told Science.
'What's thrilling about it is [the planet] is detectable.'
The team has time on the one large telescope in Hawaii that is suited for the search, and they hope other astronomers will join in the hunt.
Subaru, an 8-meter telescope in Hawaii that is owned by Japan. It has enough light-gathering area to detect such a faint object, coupled with a huge field of view—75 times larger than that of a Keck telescope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_Telescope
The gas giant is thought to be almost as big as Neptune and orbiting billions of miles beyond Neptune's path - distant enough to take 10,000 to 20,000 years to circle the sun.
This Planet 9, as the two Caltech researchers call it, hasn't been spotted yet,
They base their findings on mathematical and computer modeling, and anticipate its discovery via telescope within 5 years.
Researchers inferred Planet X's presence from the peculiar clustering of six previously known objects that orbit beyond Neptune.
They say there's only a 0.007% chance, or about one in 15,000, that the clustering could be a coincidence.
Instead, they say, a planet with the mass of 10 Earths has shepherded the six objects into their strange elliptical orbits, tilted out of the plane of the solar system.
The six most distant known objects in the solar system with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Such an orbital alignment can only be maintained by some outside force, Batygin and Brown say. Their paper argues that a planet with 10 times the mass of the earth in a distant eccentric orbit anti-aligned with the other six objects (orange) is required to maintain this configuration.
'We have found evidence that there's a giant planet in the outer solar system,' Brown told Popsci.
'By 'giant' we mean the size of Neptune, and when we say 'outer solar system' we mean 10 to 20 times farther away than Pluto.'
Brown and Konstantin Batygin, a theoretical astrophysicist at Caltech who specializes in solar system dynamics, think Planet X formed in the early stages of the solar system, some 4 billion years ago, when the large planets (including Planet X) were still rocky cores.
If Planet X's core had been able to stay in the inner solar system and carry out the rest of its formation, it could have accumulated enough gas or ice to become another giant like Jupiter or Neptune, the pair told Popsci.
But because the large cores of the other planets were packed so tightly in the inner solar system, there wasn't enough room for them all to develop, and Planet X was 'kicked out.
'There would have been a gas nebula around the solar system at the time that would have slowed it down as it plowed through the gas, putting it into this eccentric orbit,' Brown said.
'I could not imagine a bigger deal if—and of course that's a boldface 'if'—if it turns out to be right,' Gregory Laughlin, a planetary scientist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz told Science.
'What's thrilling about it is [the planet] is detectable.'
The team has time on the one large telescope in Hawaii that is suited for the search, and they hope other astronomers will join in the hunt.
Subaru, an 8-meter telescope in Hawaii that is owned by Japan. It has enough light-gathering area to detect such a faint object, coupled with a huge field of view—75 times larger than that of a Keck telescope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_Telescope
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