The newfound rogue planet 2MASS J1119–1137 belongs in the youngest group of stars in the solar neighborhood, known as the TW Hydrae association, which contains
about 2 dozen 10 million-year-old stars, all moving together through space. David Rodriguez, Jacqueline Faherty, Jonathan Gagne and Stanimir Metchev
April 25, 2016 - SPACE - A huge, newly discovered alien planet that zooms through space without a parent star is one of the closest such "rogue" worlds to Earth yet seen, astronomers say.
The exoplanet, known as 2MASS J1119–1137, is four to eight times more massive than Jupiter and lies about 95 light-years from Earth at the moment, a new study reports.
The newfound world is only slightly less bright than the giant rogue planet PSO J318.5−22, which was first spotted in 2013 and is located about 80 light-years from Earth's solar system, researchers said.
Kendra Kellogg, a graduate student at Western University in Ontario, Canada, and her colleagues detected, confirmed and characterized 2MASS J1119–1137 using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite and the Gemini South and Baade telescopes, both of which are in Chile.
WATCH: Astronomy team discovers free-floating, planet-like objects within relatively close proximity to the Sun.
The observations by these instruments allowed the researchers to determine that 2MASS J1119–1137, while flying freely, is associated with TW Hydrae, a group of about two dozen stars that are the youngest in the sun's neighborhood.
The TW Hydrae stars — and 2MASS J1119–1137 as well — are just 10 million years old, study team members said. (For perspective, Earth's sun is nearly 4.6 billion years old, and the Big Bang that created the universe occurred about 13.8 billion years ago.)
PSO J318.5−22 is just slightly older than 2MASS J1119–1137, having been born about 23 million years ago, researchers said.
Such rogue worlds may have formed around host stars, and then been booted out into space by gravitational interactions with neighboring planets in their natal systems, researchers say. Whatever their origins, they are ripe targets for further study; in our Milky Way galaxy, rogue planets actually may outnumber "normal" worlds bound to parent stars.
"Discovering free-floating planet analogs like 2MASS J1119–1137 and PSO J318.5−22 offers a great opportunity to study the nature of giant planets outside the solar system," Kellogg said in statement.
Rogues are "much easier to scrutinize than planets orbiting around other stars," she added. "Objects like 2MASS J1119–1137 are drifting in space all alone, and our observations are not overwhelmed by the brightness of a host star next door."
The new study will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
April 24, 2016 - SPACE - In 2011, astronomers reported our
galaxy is likely filled with roaming planets not attached to a host
star, and these worlds may in fact outnumber stars in the Milky Way.
Scientists have debated over whether these objects are true planets, or light stars known as brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs form just like stars but don't have the mass to spark nuclear fusion at their cores. In a new study published by The Astrophysical Journal, scientists identified one of these objects that may give answers to where these roaming objects came from.
Discovering objects throughout the galaxy
Scientists used information from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to identify the roaming, planetary-mass object inside a young star family, known as the TW Hydrae association. The newly found object, dubbed WISEA J114724.10-204021.3, or simply WISEA 1147, is believed to be between about 5 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter.
Since the object was discovered to be an affiliate the TW Hydrae group of very young stars, astronomers recognize that it is relatively young, around 10 million years old. Also, because planets need a minimum of 10 million years to develop, and even longer to get kicked out of a solar system, WISEA 1147 is probably a brown dwarf, the study team said.
"With continued monitoring, it may be possible to trace the history of WISEA 1147 to confirm whether or not it formed in isolation," study author Adam Schneider of the University of Toledo in Ohio, said in a NASA news release.
The study team said tracking the origins of free-floating objects and figuring out if they are planets or brown dwarfs is a struggle because they are so isolated.
A sky map taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE,
shows the location of the TW Hydrae family, or association, of stars,
which lies about
175 light-years from Earth and is centered in the Hydra
constellation. The stars are thought to have formed together around 10
million years ago.
NASA/JPL Caltech
"We are at the beginning of what will become a hot field – trying to determine the nature of the free-floating population and how many are planets versus brown dwarfs," said co-author Davy Kirkpatrick of NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at the CalTech.
One method to detect close roaming objects is movement in relation to other stars over time. The closer an object, the more it will seem to move against a background of more remote stars. By examining information from both sky surveys taken approximately 10 years apart, closer items jump out.
The brown dwarf WISEA 1147 was brilliantly red in survey pictures where the color red was assigned to longer infrared wavelengths, meaning that it's dusty and young.
"The features on this one screamed out, 'I'm a young brown dwarf,'" Schneider said.
After further evaluation, the astronomers discovered that this object is associated with the TW Hydrae group, which is around 150 light-years from Earth and just approximately 10 million years old. With an approximate mass between five and 10 times that of Jupiter, WISEA 1147 is one of the youngest and lightest brown dwarfs ever discovered. - Red Orbit.
Artist’s concept of “Planet Nine,” a hypothesized world about 10 times more massive than Earth that may orbit far from the sun. Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
April 6, 2016 - SPACE - The
hunt is on to find "Planet Nine" — a large undiscovered world, perhaps
10 times as massive as Earth and four times its size — that scientists
think could be lurking in the outer solar system. After Konstantin
Batygin and Mike Brown, two planetary scientists from the California
Institute of Technology, presented evidence for its existence
this January, other teams have searched for further proof by analyzing
archived images and proposing new observations to find it with the
world's largest telescopes.
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.
Researchers say an anomaly in the orbits of distant Kuiper Belt objects points to the existence of an unknown planet orbiting the sun. Credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics artist
Batygin
and Brown made the case for Planet Nine's existence based on its
gravitational effect on several Kuiper Belt objects — icy bodies that
circle the sun beyond Neptune's orbit. Theoretically, though, its
gravity should also tug slightly on the planets, moons and even any
orbiting spacecraft. With this in mind, Agnès Fienga at the Côte d'Azur
Observatory in France and her colleagues checked whether a theoretical
model (one that they have been perfecting for over a decade) with the
new addition of Planet Nine could better explain slight perturbations
seen in Cassini's orbit. Without it, the eight planets in the solar
system, 200 asteroids and five of the most massive Kuiper Belt objects
cannot perfectly account for it. The missing puzzle piece might just be a
ninth planet.
So
Fienga and her colleagues compared the updated model, which placed
Planet Nine at various points in its hypothetical orbit, with the data.
They found a sweet spot—with Planet Nine 600 astronomical units (about
90 billion kilometers) away toward the constellation Cetus — that can
explain Cassini's orbit quite well. Although Fienga is not yet convinced
that she has found the culprit for the probe's odd movements, most
outside experts are blown away. "It's a brilliant analysis," says Greg
Laughlin, an astronomer at Lick Observatory, who was not involved in the
study. "It's completely amazing that they were able to do that so
quickly." Gerdes agrees: "That's a beautiful paper."
The good news does not end there. If Planet Nine is located toward the constellation Cetus, then it could be picked up by the Dark Energy Survey,
a Southern Hemisphere observation project designed to probe the
acceleration of the universe. "It turns out fortuitously that the
favored region from Cassini is smack dab in the middle of our survey
footprint," says Gerdes, who is working on the cosmology survey. "We
could not have designed our survey any better." Although the survey was
not planned to search for solar system objects, Gerdes has discovered
some (including one of the icy objects that led Batygin and Brown to
conclude Planet Nine exists in the first place).
Laughlin thinks this survey has the best immediate chance of success.
He is also excited by the fact that Planet Nine could be so close.
Although 600 AUs—roughly 15 times the average distance to Pluto—does
sound far, Planet Nine could theoretically hide as far away as 1,200
AUs. "That makes it twice as easy to get to, twice as soon," Laughlin
says. "And not just twice as bright but 16 times as bright."
Mini-Neptunes like "Planet Nine" outnumber other types of planets found by astronomers. Credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics artist
And
the Dark Energy Survey is not the only chance to catch the faint world.
It should be possible to look for the millimeter-wavelength light the
planet radiates from its own internal heat. Such a search was proposed by
Nicolas Cowan, an exoplanet astronomer at McGill University in
Montreal, who thinks that Planet Nine might show up in surveys of the
cosmic microwave background (CMB), the pervasive afterglow of the big
bang. "CMB experiments have historically used solar system giant planets
to calibrate their instruments, so we know that current and planned CMB
experiments are sensitive enough to measure the flux from Planet Nine
if it is as bright as we think it is," Cowan says.
Already, cosmologists have started to comb through data from existing
experiments, and astronomers with many different specialties have also
joined in on the search. "I love that we can take this four-meter
telescope and find a rock 100 kilometers in diameter that is a billion
kilometers past Neptune with the same instrument that we are using to do
extragalactic stuff and understand the acceleration of the universe,"
Gerdes says.
In the meantime Batygin and Brown are proposing a dedicated survey of their own. In a recent study
they searched through various sky maps to determine where Planet Nine
cannot be. "We dumpster-dived into the existing observational data to
search for Planet Nine, and because we didn't find it we were able to
rule out parts of the orbit," Batygin says. The zone where the planet
makes its farthest swing from the sun as well as the small slice of sky
where Fienga thinks the planet could be now, for example, have not been
canvassed by previous observations. To search the unmapped zones,
Batygin and Brown have asked for roughly 20 observing nights on the
Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. "It's a pretty big request
compared to what other people generally get on the telescope," Brown
says. "We'll see if they bite." If they do, Brown is convinced he will
have his planet within a year.
"I really want to see what it looks like," says Batygin, who adds that
his aspiration drives him to search for the unseen world. But Laughlin
takes it a step further: "I think [the discovery] would provide amazing
inspiration for the next stage of planetary exploration," he says. We
now have another opportunity to see one of the worlds of our own solar
system for the first time. "If Planet Nine isn't out there, we won't
have that experience again." - SPACE.
NOTE: Thanks to Joann Mckeon-Chan for contributing to this post.
This artwork shows a rocky planet being bombarded by comets. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
April 3, 2016 - SPACE - Periodic mass extinctions on Earth, as indicated in the global fossil
record, could be linked to a suspected ninth planet, according to
research published by a faculty member of the University of Arkansas
Department of Mathematical Sciences.
Daniel Whitmire, a retired professor of astrophysics now working as a
math instructor, published findings in the January issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
that the as yet undiscovered “Planet X” triggers comet showers linked
to mass extinctions on Earth at intervals of approximately 27 million
years.
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.
Daniel Whitmire. Photo by Matt Reynolds
Whitmire and his colleague, John Matese, first published research on
the connection between Planet X and mass extinctions in the journal Nature in 1985 while working as astrophysicists at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Their work was featured in a 1985 Time magazine cover story titled, “Did Comets Kill the Dinosaurs? A Bold New Theory About Mass Extinctions.”
At the time there were three explanations proposed to explain the regular comet showers: Planet X, the existence of a sister star to the sun, and vertical oscillations of the sun as it orbits the galaxy. The last two ideas have subsequently been ruled out as inconsistent with the paleontological record. Only Planet X remained as a viable theory, and it is now gaining renewed attention.
Whitemire and Matese’s theory is that as Planet X orbits the sun, its tilted orbit slowly rotates and Planet X passes through the Kuiper belt of comets every 27 million years, knocking comets into the inner solar system. The dislodged comets not only smash into the Earth, they also disintegrate in the inner solar system as they get nearer to the sun, reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth.
In 1985, a look at the paleontological record supported the idea of regular comet showers dating back 250 million years. Newer research shows evidence of such events dating as far back as 500 million years.
Whitmire and Matese published their own estimate on the size and orbit of Planet X in their original study. They believed it would be between one and five times the mass of Earth, and about 100 times more distant from the sun, much smaller numbers than Caltech’s estimates.
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. “I’ve been part of this story for 30 years,” he said. “If there is ever a final answer I’d love to write a book about it.”
About the University of Arkansas: The University of
Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for
undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs.
The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic
and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service
to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation
classifies the University of Arkansas among only 2 percent of
universities in America that have the highest level of research
activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of
Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in
1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and
maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal
attention and close mentoring. - University of Arkansas.
There appears to be something very odd happening at the edge of our
solar system – and at least some scientists suggest that it is being
caused by a huge, mysterious planet.
This artistic rendering shows the distant view from Planet Nine back
towards the sun. The planet is thought to be gaseous, similar to Uranus
and Neptune.
Hypothetical lightning lights up the night side Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
March 27, 2016 - SPACE - New evidence strengthens the idea that there is a mysterious planet hiding at the far edge of our solar system.
Objects have been spotted moving around unusually at the edge of our solar system. And the best explanation for the strange orbits is the mysterious Planet Nine, according to one of the scientists who has argued that the hidden planet exists.
In January, a pair of scientists argued that they had found another planet, based on calculations using objects at the distant end of our solar system.
By studying the orbit of six objects in the Kuiper Belt – a mysterious area thought to be filled of asteroids and other icy objects – they argued that they were being affected by something large and previously unknown.
WATCH: Evidence of a Ninth Planet.
Now Mike Brown, who made those original claims, says that he has tracked another object in that Kuiper Belt that is also moving unusually.
And its strange movement is exactly how what would be expected if Planet Nine is real, he claimed.
Hey Planet Nine fans, a new eccentric KBO was discovered. And it is exactly where Planet Nine says it should be. pic.twitter.com/oZn0RDq8JF
None of the claims has yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal or checked by other scientists.
But the Canada France Hawaii Telescope is currently conducting the Outer Solar System Origins Survey, looking far into our solar system, and so will be able to check the claims as more Kuiper Belt objects are discovered. - Independent.
March 27, 2016 - SPACE - In one of the latest SECCHI beacon images, a large planet-sized object can be clearly seen in the 4 o'clock position of the Sun. The object was revealed following the departure of a coronal mass ejection from the stellar sphere.
The video of the dark object was posted by YouTube Contributor MrMBB333. It's unclear when the telescope captured the event, but the video was uploaded online on March 27, 2016.
WATCH: Large planet-size object behind the Sun.
In early February of this year, French scientists said that they were one step closer to locating "Planet X," a
mysterious ninth planet, that exist in the outer reaches of our solar
system.
Using
mathematical modeling after studying data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft orbit Saturn, researcher Jacques Laskar and his colleagues calculated what
influence "Planet Nine" or the ninth planet, would have on the movement of other planets
as it passed nearby. They studied the orbit postulated by the US
astronomers, on the assumption that the planet would circle the Sun in a
lop-sided, highly elongated, oval loop.
Called extreme Kuiper Belt Objects, the misbehaving bodies trace odd
circles around the sun that have puzzled scientists for years.
The findings were published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
WATCH: Evidence of Planet X.
"We have cut the work in half," Laskar said. The researchers believe
the search can be further narrowed if Cassini's mission, which is due to
end next year, is extended to 2020.
The
French team's conclusions come just one month after California
Institute of Technology scientists Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown
predicted the existence of "Planet X" or "Planet Nine," which is thought to have a mass
10 times the size of Earth. The two scientists used mathematical
modeling and computer simulations to predict its existence, which is
thought to explain the strange clumping behavior of a group of dwarf
planets in the Kuiper Belt, a field of icy objects and debris beyond Neptune.
It’s tantalizing evidence that a ninth large planet might live in the solar system, though the world hasn’t been detected yet.
Although
Planet Nine's existence has yet to be confirmed, the discovery of
Neptune took place in a similar way in 1845, when French mathematician
Urbain Le Verrier noticed that the orbit of Uranus didn’t exactly follow
the orbit predicted by Newton’s law of gravity. In short, this is
because the yet-to-be-discovered Neptune had a gravitational pull on
Uranus.
Although Pluto was previously considered the
ninth planet, it was demoted to “dwarf planet” status about a decade
ago, as it possesses different characteristics than the other major
planets of the solar system. The charge to demote Pluto was led by the
same scientists who announced the possibility of Planet Nine's
existence.
According to NASA, SECCHI is a suite of 5 scientific telescopes that observe the solar
corona and inner heliosphere from the surface of the Sun to the orbit of
Earth.
These unique observations are made in stereo for NASA's Solar Terrestial
Relations Observatory
STEREO.
The suite has three main parts. The
SCIP (Sun Centered Imaging Package - three telescopes), the
HI (Heliospheric Imager - two telescopes) and the SEB (Secchi Electronics box).
The STEREO mission is the third in the line of Solar-Terrestrial Probes (STP) and is a strategic
element of the Sun-Earth Connections Roadmap. STEREO is designed to view the three-dimensional (3D)
and temporally varying heliosphere by means of an unprecedented combination of imaging and in situ
experiments mounted on virtually identical spacecraft flanking the Earth in its orbit.
The primary goal of the STEREO mission is to advance the understanding of the three-dimensional
structure of the Sun's corona, especially regarding the origin of coronal mass ejections (CMEs),
their evolution in the interplanetary medium, and the dynamic coupling between CMEs and the Earth
environment. CMEs are the most energetic eruptions on the Sun, are the primary cause of major
geomagnetic storms, and are believed to be responsible for the largest solar energetic particle events.
A planet larger than Earth could be hiding in the cold, dark depths
of the solar system. The presence of the planet, which would lie far
beyond Pluto, is betrayed by the curious orbits of a handful of distant
icy worlds.
February 24, 2016 - SPACE - French scientists say they may be one step closer to locating a
mysterious ninth planet, after cutting their search area in half. US
astronomers earlier said the solar system’s 'Planet Nine' might exist,
but conceded they had no idea where it could be.
After studying data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn, French researcher Jacques Laskar of the Paris Observatory stated on Tuesday that a ninth planet may indeed exist in the outer reaches of our solar system, but “not just anywhere,” AFP reported.
Using mathematical modeling, Laskar and his colleagues calculated what influence the ninth planet would have on the movement of other planets as it passed nearby. They studied the orbit postulated by the US astronomers, on the assumption that the planet would circle the Sun in a lop-sided, highly elongated, oval loop.
Called extreme Kuiper Belt Objects, the misbehaving bodies trace odd
circles around the sun that have puzzled scientists for years.
The findings were published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
At its most distant position from the Sun, the planet would be too far away for any effect on other planets to be detectable, which limits astronomers to a searchable zone which represents only about half of the 10,000-20,000-year orbit.
The team has, however, managed to reduce the search area by 50 percent, by eliminating two zones in which they say the modeling does not match reality.
WATCH: Evidence of Planet X.
"We have cut the work in half," Laskar said. The researchers believe the search can be further narrowed if Cassini's mission, which is due to end next year, is extended to 2020. However, scientists believe it will take years to find Planet Nine, if it exists at all.
The French team's conclusions come just one month after California Institute of Technology scientists Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown predicted the existence of Planet Nine, which is thought to have a mass 10 times the size of Earth. The two scientists used mathematical modeling and computer simulations to predict its existence, which is thought to explain the strange clumping behavior of a group of dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt, a field of icy objects and debris beyond Neptune.
It’s tantalizing evidence that a ninth large planet might live in the solar system, though the world hasn’t been detected yet.
Although Planet Nine's existence has yet to be confirmed, the discovery of Neptune took place in a similar way in 1845, when French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier noticed that the orbit of Uranus didn’t exactly follow the orbit predicted by Newton’s law of gravity. In short, this is because the yet-to-be-discovered Neptune had a gravitational pull on Uranus.
Although Pluto was previously considered the ninth planet, it was demoted to “dwarf planet” status about a decade ago, as it possesses different characteristics than the other major planets of the solar system. The charge to demote Pluto was led by the same scientists who announced the possibility of Planet Nine's existence. - RT.
January 31, 2016 - SPACE - New clues suggest the moon resulted from a head-on collision
between Earth and another forming planet, according to scientists.
Researchers from a team lead by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) analyzed lunar and volcanic rocks before concluding the moon was formed during a violent head-on collision between an early Earth and another forming planet called Theia.
Scientists knew Earth had been involved in a high-speed crash almost 4.5 billion years ago, but they thought the crash with Theia had been a 45-degree angle sideswipe.
After studying seven lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo 12, 15 and 17 missions, as well as six volcanic rocks from the Earth’s mantle, they found that Theia and Earth had had a head-on collision, rather than just a fender-bender.
The scientists said the clue lay in the chemical signature of the rocks’ oxygen atoms. Oxygen makes up 90 percent of rocks’ volume and 50 percent of their weight.
More than 99.9 percent of Earth’s oxygen is 0-16, meaning each atom contains eight protons and eight neutrons. There are small quantities of heavier oxygen isotopes, such as 0-17, which has an extra neutron, and 0-18, which has two extra neutrons.
All of the planetary bodies in our solar system have a distinct “fingerprint” of 0-17 to 0-16 isotopes.
WATCH: The formation of the Moon.
A team of German scientists ventured in a 2014 issue of Science that the moon had its own unique ratio of oxygen isotopes, which is different from Earth’s, but UCLA scientists found “that is not the case.”
“We don’t see any difference between the Earth’s and the moon’s oxygen isotopes; they’re indistinguishable,” said Edward Young, lead author of the new study and a UCLA professor of geochemistry and cosmochemistry, in a statement.
Using UCLA’s new mass spectrometer, the team performed ultra-high precision oxygen isotope analyses of the lunar samples and were able to deduce that if Theia had sideswiped Earth, the moon would have been made mainly of Theia, and would have different isotypes than Earth.
The fact that the Earth and the moon share the same chemical signatures contradicted the theory.
“Theia was thoroughly mixed into both the Earth and the moon, and evenly dispersed between them,” Young said. “This explains why we don’t see a different signature of Theia in the moon versus the Earth.”
The crash with Theia happened approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, almost 4.5 billion years ago. The merging of the two planets also suggests why the moon is less dense than the Earth.
Young and other scientists think Theia was approximately the same size as the Earth, while others believe it was more similar in size to Mars.
This is not the first time the theory of a head-on collision has been proposed. In 2012, the theory was proposed by Matija Cuk, now a researcher with SETI Institute; Sarah Stewart, now a professor at UC Davis; and Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute.
The paper, called Oxygen isotopic evidence for vigorous mixing during the Moon-forming giant impact, by Edward Young, Issaku Kohl, and Paul Warren, was published in Friday’s edition of Science.
January 20, 2016 - SPACE - A planet larger than Earth could be hiding in the cold, dark depths
of the solar system. The presence of the planet, which would lie far
beyond Pluto, is betrayed by the curious orbits of a handful of distant
icy worlds.
As described Wednesday in the Astronomical Journal, the gravitational signature of a large, lurking planet is written into the peculiar orbits of these farflung worlds. Called extreme Kuiper Belt Objects, the misbehaving bodies trace odd circles around the sun that have puzzled scientists for years.
It’s tantalizing evidence that a ninth large planet might live in the solar system, though the world hasn’t been detected yet.
“If there’s going to be another planet in the solar system, I think this is it,” says Greg LaughlinoftheUniversityofCalifornia,SantaCruz. “It would be quite extraordinary if we had one. Fingers crossed. It would be amazing.”
The team calculated that the planet, if it’s there, would be about 10 times as massive as Earth, or roughly three times larger. That makes it a super-Earth or mini-Neptune—a type of planet the galaxy is incredibly efficient at assembling, but which has been conspicuously absent from our own neighborhood.
And it’s really far away. Simulations suggest that the planet’s closest approach to the sun would be roughly 200 to 300 times farther out than Earth’s. Its most distant point? That’s way out in the hinterlands, between 600 and 1,200 times farther than Earth.
“This thing is on an exceptionally frigid, long-period orbit, and probably takes on the order of 20,000 years to make one full revolution around the sun,” says Caltech’s Konstantin Batygin,whoisonehalfoftheplanet-sleuthingteam.. Predicting Planet Nine
Batygin and his Caltech colleague Mike Browndidn’tsetouttofindevidenceforanew planetary neighbor—thathappenedbyaccident. In 2014, a different team had discovered an object called 2012VP113. Known colloquially as “Biden,” the new world’s orbit was enigmatic and similar to that of Sedna, another world discovered beyond Pluto.
Both Sedna and Biden took somewhat cattywampus paths around the sun, suggesting to scientists that a distant object’s gravity might be sculpting their peculiar orbits, as well as those of a handful of other distant worlds.
Brown and Batygin took a close look at six of these worlds and determined that their orbits clustered in a way that could not occur simply by chance. (“That probability clocks in at a whopping 0.007 percent,” Batygin says.) Then they simulated the outer solar system and tried to figure out how to generate the observed patterns.
Soon, Batygin and Brown could rule out gravitational effects intrinsic to the Kuiper Belt itself, meaning that they were looking for a single, cosmic sculptor.
They added a ninth large planet to the fray, and tweaked its orbit and mass. A ten-Earth-mass planet on an egg-shaped orbit easily explained mysterious features of Sedna’s and Biden’s orbits, as well as the paths taken by other extreme Kuiper Belt worlds.
It also explained a bizarre population of worlds that orbit the sun perpendicularly to the plane of the solar system. "We sort of stopped laughing at our own calculations at that point," Batygin says.
He and Brown suspect the planet formed much closer to the sun and was launched outward when the solar system was very young. Back then, he says, the sun was still snuggled into its native stellar cluster, and the surrounding stars would have helped corral the flying planet and kept it from escaping the clutches of the sun’s gravity. It’s a compelling tale, but not everyone is convinced it’s likely.
“I tend to be very suspicious of claims of an extra planet in the solar system,” says Hal Levison of the Southwest Research Institute. “I have seen many, many such claims in my career and all of them have been wrong.”
Finding Planet Nine
If this ninth large planet is out there, it’s so distant and so dim
that it isn’t surprising the world hasn’t been detected yet. “This thing
will be faint. Like, crazy faint,” says Laughlin, who calculated that
Pluto could be as much as 10,000 times brighter than the new planet.
At such extreme distances, even a relatively large planet wouldn’t have a heat signature detectable by currentsurveys,
and it wouldn’t reflect much sunlight. That means astronomers searching
for it not only need to use incredibly powerful telescopes, they need
to know where to look. In other words, it’s like looking for a single,
moving speck of light in a vast and nearly impenetrable sea of stars.
“We don’t know exactly where it is, or else we’d just point the telescope at it tomorrow and it would be right there. But the sky is really big and this thing might be pretty faint, depending on how far out it is,” says Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, who discovered Biden.
But that doesn’t mean scientists won’t try. Among others, the Subaru telescope in Hawaii is up to the task, and Batygin and Brown are already on the hunt. Trujillo says he and his colleagues plan to begin searching along the predicted orbit next month.
The Original Planet X
It’s not the first time scientists have suggested the presence of a large, faraway planet. Indeed, such predictions stretch back more than a century, though none has ever turned out to be right.
Perhaps the best known was that of Percival Lowell, who insisted that a world he called Planet X was waiting to be discovered beyond the orbit of Neptune. Lowell’s convictions triggered a decades-long race to find Planet X, and resulted in the discovery of Pluto in 1930.
But Pluto was too small to explain what Lowell believed were telltale oddities in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune; those turned out to be the result of inaccurate measurements, rather than the invisible tugs of a ninth large world. In the intervening 86 years, many more such predictions have been made. And failed.
Perhaps this one won’t fade into the cosmos.
“I consider that the Batygin and Brown paper is the first to convincingly show the existence of this planet and constrain fairly well its orbit,” says Alessandro Morbidelli of the Observatoire de la Cote d’ Azur.
This artist's rendition depicts the dwarf planet Eris, a trans-Neptunian object discovered in 2003 that eventually unseated Pluto from its planetary status. Many astronomers
suspect other, even larger worlds may exist in the darkness at the far reaches of the solar system.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
December 10, 2015 - SPACE - Scientists and amateur astronomers have long been fascinated by the
possibility of a "Planet X" at the edge of the solar system that may
explain some apparent anomalies in the orbits of planets such as Neptune
and Uranus. However, in recent years, astronomers have largely ruled
out the possibility of a large, unseen planet far beyond the orbit of
Pluto.
Research groups from Sweden and Mexico have now submitted pre-prints of two research papers to arXiv (here and here) that claim to have discovered a massive object at the edge of the solar system. Using observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile during 2014 and 2015, the astronomers spied "a new blackbody point source" that appears to be moving in conjunction with the Alpha Centauri star system, about 4.3 light years from Earth.
The authors do not believe the new object is part of the Alpha Centuari system, however, because if it were that far away, such a star would have been bright enough to be seen before. Rather, they offer several explanations for the object, which one of the research teams named "Gna." Perhaps most notably, they suggest a "Super Earth" at a distance of about 300 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, or about six times further than Pluto is at its aphelion. Another explanation is a "super-cool" brown dwarf (too big to be a planet, too small to be a star) at about 20,000 AU from the Sun.
The ALMA Telescope’s antennas are seen under a starry night sky. Christoph Malin
The Giant Magellan Telescope is one of three large telescopes under development."Simple arguments convince us that this object cannot be an ordinary star. We argue that the object is most likely part of the solar system, in prograde motion, albeit at a distance too far to be detectable at other wavelengths," the authors of one paper, uploaded on December 8, 2015, to arXiv, conclude.
As word of the new research papers spread through the planetary science community on Wednesday, they were greeted largely with skepticism.
In a series of tweets, Mike Brown, a prominent planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology who specializes in the outer solar system, said, "Fun fact: if it is true that ALMA accidentally discovered a massive outer solar system object in its tiny tiny tiny field of view that would suggest that there are something like 200,000 Earth sized planets in the outer solar system. Which, um, no. Even better: I just realized that this many Earth-sized planets existing would destabilize the entire solar system and we would all die."
Other scientists noted that observations with NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which has expressly searched the outer solar system for large planets, have ruled out the possibility of a planet the size of Saturn or larger out to 10,000 AU, and a Jupiter-sized planet out to 26,000 AU.
As with all pre-prints, the new papers have yet to undergo scientific
peer review. The new data may be the result of some sort of image
artifacts in the ALMA data, or there may well be some other less
sensational explanation for what these scientists have seen. This is how
science at the frontier often proceeds. - Ars Technica.
November 11, 2015 - SPACE - Move aside, Sedna and 2012
VP113. There's a new most distant object in our solar system, and it
strengthens the hypothetical case for an unseen large planet at the
outer boundaries of our solar system.
The object, V774104, was announced today at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in National Harbor, Maryland. Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institute characterized the potential planet as between 300 and 600 miles in diameter, on par with a medium-sized moon.
This makes it a likely dwarf planet, as it's roughly the size of Ceres in the Asteroid Belt.
At 103 astronomical units out (or 103 times the distance of the sun to the Earth), this is the most distant object ever recorded, besting Eris, Sedna, and 2012 VP113.
It also adds on to a case built on the discovery of the latter, whose unusual orbit points to the tug of a distant planetary-mass object.
Though previous surveys have ruled out anything above the size of Saturn, there still could be a Neptune-sized world or a super-Earth (or even two) farther out, too dark and distant to detect. For now, though, this is just speculation that can't be ruled out.
There's also the possibility that the objects were tugged into their present orbits by a passing star around the time of the formation of the solar system.
V774104 may be part of the Inner Oort Cloud, a region farther out than the Kuiper Belt where Pluto and Eris live. It's where most long-period comets are believed to have originated.
A dozen smaller objects were discovered along with the new object, but little else is known of it, including its orbit. It could be oblong, like that of Sedna, another Inner Oort Cloud object. That one comes as close as 86 AU and goes as far out as 937 AU, giving it one of the strangest orbits in our solar system.
If this newly discovered object ends up being an Inner Oort Cloud object, it could prove valuable in helping astronomers understand the solar system.
Sheppard and co-author Chadwick Trujillo plan on studying the object in more detail to correctly determine its orbit.
Trujillo already has a few new objects under his belt, having co-discovered Eris and two other dwarf planets, Makemake and Haumea, as well as Sedna. - Popular Mechanics.
November 03, 2013 - SPACE - An international team of astronomers has discovered an exotic young
planet that is not orbiting a star. This free-floating planet, dubbed
PSO J318.5-22, is just 80 light-years away from Earth and has a mass
only six times that of Jupiter. The planet formed a mere 12 million
years ago—a newborn in planet lifetimes.
Artist's conception of PSO J318.5-22. Credit: MPIA/V. Ch. Quetz
It was identified from its faint and unique heat signature by the Pan-STARRS 1
(PS1) wide-field survey telescope on Haleakala, Maui. Follow-up
observations using other telescopes in Hawaii show that it has
properties similar to those of gas-giant planets found orbiting around
young stars. And yet PSO J318.5-22 is all by itself, without a host
star.
"We have never before seen an object
free-floating in space that that looks like this. It has all the
characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is
drifting out there all alone,” explained team leader Dr. Michael Liu
of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “I
had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they
do.”
During the past decade, extrasolar planets
have been discovered at an incredible pace, with about a thousand found
by indirect methods such as wobbling or dimming of their host stars
induced by the planet. However, only a handful of planets have been
directly imaged, all of which are around young stars (less than 200
million years old). PSO J318.5-22 is one of the lowest-mass
free-floating objects known, perhaps the very lowest. But its most
unique aspect is its similar mass, color, and energy output to directly
imaged planets.
“Planets found by direct imaging are
incredibly hard to study, since they are right next to their much
brighter host stars. PSO J318.5-22 is not orbiting a star so it will be
much easier for us to study. It is going to provide a wonderful view
into the inner workings of gas-giant planets like Jupiter shortly after
their birth,” said Dr. Niall Deacon of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and a co-author of the study.
Multicolor image from the Pan-STARRS1 telescope of
the free-floating planet PSO J318.5-22, in the constellation
of
Capricornus. The planet is extremely cold and faint, about 100 billion
times fainter in optical light than the
planet Venus. Most of its energy
is emitted at infrared wavelengths. The image is 125 arcseconds on a
side.
Credit: N. Metcalfe & Pan-STARRS 1 Science Consortium
PSO J318.5-22 was discovered during a search
for the failed stars known as brown dwarfs. Due to their relatively cool
temperatures, brown dwarfs are very faint and have very red colors. To
circumvent these difficulties, Liu and his colleagues have been mining
the data from the PS1 telescope. PS1 is scanning the sky every night
with a camera sensitive enough to detect the faint heat signatures of
brown dwarfs. PSO J318.5-22 stood out as an oddball, redder than even
the reddest known brown dwarfs.
“We often describe looking for rare celestial objects as akin to
searching for a needle in a haystack. So we decided to search the
biggest haystack that exists in astronomy, the dataset from PS1,” said
Dr. Eugene Magnier of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of
Hawaii at Manoa and a co-author of the study. Dr. Magnier leads the data
processing team for PS1, which produces the equivalent of 60,000 iPhone
photos every night. The total dataset to date is about 4,000 Terabytes,
bigger than the sum of the digital version of all the movies ever made,
all books ever published, and all the music albums ever released.
The team followed up the PS1 discovery with multiple telescopes on
the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. Infrared spectra taken
with the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and the Gemini North Telescope
showed that PSO J318.5-22 was not a brown dwarf, based on signatures in
its infrared light that are best explained by it being young and
low-mass.
By regularly monitoring the position of PSO
J318.5-22 over two years with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the
team directly measured its distance from Earth. Based on this distance,
about 80 light-years, and its motion through space, the team concluded
that PSO J318.5-22 belongs to a collection of young stars called the
Beta Pictoris moving group that formed about 12 million years ago. In
fact, the eponymous star of the group, Beta Pictoris, has a young
gas-giant planet in orbit around it. PSO J318.5-22 is even lower in mass
than the Beta Pictoris planet and probably formed in a different
fashion.
The discovery paper of PSO J318.5-22 is being published by Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.0457. The other key authors of the paper are Katelyn Allers (Bucknell University), Trent Dupuy (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), and Michael Kotson and Kimberly Aller (University of Hawaii at Manoa).
Founded in 1967, the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa
conducts
research into galaxies, cosmology, stars, planets, and the
sun. Its faculty and staff are also involved in astronomy
education,
deep space missions, and in the development and management
of the observatories on Haleakala and Mauna Kea. The
Institute operates facilities on the islands of Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii.
The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1)
have been made possible through contributions of the Institute for
Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the
Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck
Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for
Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham
University, the University of Edinburgh, Queen's University Belfast,
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres
Observatory Global Telescope Network Incorporated, the National Central
University of Taiwan, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. NNX08AR22G
issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science
Mission Directorate, the National Science Foundation under Grant No.
AST-1238877, the University of Maryland, and Eotvos Lorand University.
The Gemini Observatory
is an international collaboration with two identical 8-meter
telescopes. The Frederick C. Gillett Gemini Telescope is located on
Mauna Kea, Hawai'i (Gemini North) and the other telescope on Cerro
Pachón in central Chile (Gemini South); together the twin telescopes
provide full coverage over both hemispheres of the sky. The telescopes
incorporate technologies that allow large, relatively thin mirrors,
under active control, to collect and focus both visible and infrared
radiation from space.
The NASA Infrared Telescope Facility,
a 3.0-meter infrared telescope dedicated to planetary science, is
operated by the University of Hawaii under Cooperative Agreement no.
NNX-08AE38A with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
Science Mission Directorate, Planetary Astronomy Program.
Based on observations obtained with WIRCam, a joint project of CFHT, Taiwan, Korea, Canada, France, and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope
(CFHT) which is operated by the National Research Council (NRC) of
Canada, the Institute National des Sciences de l'Univers of the Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique of France, and the University of
Hawaii. - Institute of Astronomy.
September 15, 2013 - FUTURE - They are an improbable group of superheroes. But some of Britain's greatest minds have got together to focus their powers on saving humanity from itself.
The society, which is led by Lord Rees, will look at natural
catastrophes like an asteroid hitting the Earth (illustrated) extreme
weather events and pandemics, but he believes 'the main threats to
sustained human existence now come from people, not from nature'
Led by the Astronomer Royal and Cambridge don Martin Rees, famous
thinkers such as physicist Stephen Hawking and former Government chief
scientist Robert May have formed a society to draw up a doomsday list of
risks that could wipe out mankind.
From crippling
cyber-attacks by terrorists using the internet to cause havoc, to the
release of engineered diseases and killer computers, they warn the
future is far from rosy.
But the work being done by the
Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) should one
day help the world sleep a little easier at night.
Once the threats have been identified, the group intend to devise ways of 'ensuring our own species has a long-term future'.
Although
nuclear annihilation and a giant asteroid obliterating the planet
remain distinct, if unlikely possibilities, Lord Rees now believes 'the
main threats to sustained human existence now come from people, not from
nature.'
Led by the Astronomer Royal Lord Rees, famous thinkers such as physicist
Stephen Hawking (pictured) and former Government chief scientist Robert
May have formed the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
(CSER) to draw up a doomsday list of risks that could wipe out mankind
Other scenarios being considered by the 27-strong group, which also
involves academics from Oxford, Imperial, Harvard and Berkeley, include
extreme weather events, fast spreading pandemics, and war or sabotage
resulting in a shortage of food and resources.
Speaking
last night at the British Science Festival at the University of
Newcastle, Lord Rees said: 'In future decades, events with low
probability but catastrophic consequences may loom high on the political
agenda.
'That's why some of us in Cambridge - both
natural and social scientists - plan, with colleagues at Oxford and
elsewhere, to inaugurate a research programme to compile a more complete
register of these existential risks, and to assess how to enhance
resilience against the more credible ones.'
He added: 'The response we've had to our proposal has been remarkably wide and remarkably positive.
'The
project is still embryonic but we are seeking funds via various sources
and have strengthened our international advisory network.'
Society member David Spiegelhalter warned we use interconnected systems
for everything from power to food supply, which means there can be
trouble if things go wrong. If the supply of food is disrupted it would
take about 48-hours before it runs out and riots begin, he said
The other two co-founders of CSER are Jann Tallinn, one of the people behind internet phone service Skype, and Cambridge philosopher Professor Huw Price.
The group's manifesto is clear: 'Many scientists are concerned that developments in human technology may soon pose new, extinction-level risks to our species as a whole.
'Our goal is to steer a small fraction of Cambridge's great intellectual resources and of the reputation built on its past and present scientific pre-eminence, to the task of ensuring that our own species has a long-term future.
'In the process, we hope to make it a little more certain that we humans will be around to celebrate the University's own millennium, now less than two centuries hence.'
Cambridge statistician Professor David Spiegelhalter, who is also part of CSER, said: 'Asteroids crashing on earth are an existential threat, but there is not really a lot we can do about preventing such an event.
'The ones that we are not so well aware of are the technological threats.
Our reliance on technology leaves us vulnerable to it. We use interconnected systems for everything from power, to food supply and banking, which means there can be real trouble if things go wrong or they are sabotaged.
'In a modern, efficient world, we no longer stockpile food. If the supply is disrupted for any reason, it would take about 48-hours before it runs out and riots begin. So on a practical level, individuals should keep some non-perishable items at home.
'Energy security is also an issue, as we import much of our fuel from abroad, so a conflict over resources in the future is possible.'
THE END OF THE WORLD: RISKS, FROM EVIL COMPUTERS TO A VIRUS
The end of the world is nigh
• Intelligent technology: A network of computers could develop a mind of its own. Machines could direct resources towards their own goals at the expense of human needs such as food and threaten mankind.
• Cyber attacks: Power grids, air traffic control, banking and communications rely on interconnected computer systems. If these networks collapse due to action by enemy nations or terrorists, the paralysis could result in society breaking down.
• Engineered infection:A man-made super virus or bacteria with no antidote escapes the lab or is released by terrorists. Millions die.
• Food supply sabotage:Efficient distribution networks mean many Western nations have only 48 hours worth of food stockpiled. Any disruption would result in panic buying and riots.
• Extreme weather: As the Earth continues to warm a tipping point is reached and the process snowballs, resulting in irreversible and worsening natural disasters.
• Fast-spreading pandemic: International travel means a new killer virus, mutated from animals, could travel the globe in days, wiping out millions before a vaccine can be developed.
• War:Growing populations put a strain on water and food resources. Nations will go to war to protect or capture these precious supplies.
• Nuclear apocalypse: Nations with atom bombs launch targeted strikes leading to all-out warfare and global loss of life. Also fears nuclear warheads could fall into terrorist hands.
• Asteroid impact: A giant asteroid is believed to have killed off the dinosaurs. Some fear a similar impact could do the same for mankind.
July 22, 2013 - MARS - A “catastrophic” event destroyed the atmosphere of Mars four billion years ago, according to scientists. An analysis of data returned by the Curiosity rover, which landed on the
planet a year ago, suggests there was a major upheaval which could have been
caused by volcanic eruptions or a massive collision which stripped away the
atmosphere.
Rocks collected from the surface of the
Gusev crater by Nasa's Spirit rover were found to contain five times as
much nickel as Martian meteorites found on Earth. Photo: ALAMY
The rover has returned its first measurements of the makeup of gases,
including argon, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, in
the Martian atmosphere.
The results, published in two parallel studies in the journal Science, allow
scientists to better understand how the Martian climate changed, and
understand whether it ever had the right conditions for life.
Dr Chris Webster at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, lead author
on one of the studies, said the data enabled direct comparisons with the
Earth’s climate.
“As Mars became a planet and its magma solidified, catastrophic outgassing occurred while volatiles were delivered by impact of comets and other small bodies”, Dr Webster said.
“Our Curiosity measurements are – for the first time – accurate enough to make direct comparisons with measurements done on Earth on meteorites using sophisticated large instrumentation that gives high accuracy results.”
The team believe a major event destroying the atmosphere must have happened around four billion years ago.
The different ratio of two forms of the gas argon on Mars and Earth suggests some huge event changed their relative amounts, the scientists said.
Monica Grady, professor of planetary sciences at The Open University, who did not write the studies, told The Guardian: “It’s really great that two separate studies using different instruments and techniques have given the same composition.
WATCH: Bridge Collapses In Washington State.
“These findings reverse the results from the Phoenix mission and clear up some confusion over the composition of the Martian atmosphere.”
According to a study of rock samples published last month, Mars had an oxygen-rich atmosphere more than a billion years before Earth.
Rocks collected from the surface of the Gusev crater by Nasa's Spirit rover were found to contain five times as much nickel as Martian meteorites found on Earth.
This suggests that the surface rocks, which are at least 3.7 billion years old, formed in an oxygen-rich environment while the meteorites, aged between 180 million and 1.4 billion years, did not.
Dr Paul Mahaffy from Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, who was the lead author on the other paper, said further analysis needed to be done before humans could be put on Mars.
“From a practical standpoint we need to know the composition [of the atmosphere] today, and how it is changing, so that we can prepare for the eventual arrival of human explorers.” - Telegraph.
May 20, 2013 - HOLLYWOOD - The new "Star Trek" film warped into on Thursday (May 16) and space
enthusiasts may find something familiar in the opening scenes of the
fictional universe: a made-up planet named Nibiru.
In "Star Trek Into Darkness,"
the latest installment in the popular science fiction series, Nibiru is
the lush, volcanic jungle planet and was featured in the film's trailer
(so no spoilers there really), but before its turn in Hollywood, the
extraterrestrial name was attached to one of the most popular
end-of-world conspiracies last year.
When rumors that the world would end in 2012 became widely circulated
last year, one popular contender among doomsday theorists was a supposed
planet called Nibiru, which some claimed was set to catastrophically collide with Earth.
There was (and still is) no scientific evidence to support the existence
of Nibiru, and NASA even released a statement last year refuting the
claims, after the agency was accused of a conspiracy to cover up the
Nibiru threat to avoid mass panic.
WATCH: Star Trek Into Darkness - Official Trailer.
The doomsday theory began in 1976 when Zecharia Sitchin wrote a book
called "The Twelfth Planet," which was based on his own unique
translation of Sumerian cuneiform, one of the earliest systems of
writing. In the book, Sitchin identified a planet, Nibiru, that orbits
the sun every 3,600 years. Years later, a self-described psychic named
Nancy Lieder announced that aliens had warned her that Nibiru would
collide with Earth in 2003.
After 2003 came and went without incident, the Nibiru doomsday
projection was moved to 2012, to coincide with the ancient Mayan
long-count calendar.
Now, it appears Nibiru is set to make its Hollywood debut.
While the "Star Trek" filmmakers
did not say where they found inspiration for the film's volcanic planet
Nibiru, they shared their enjoyment in creating the fictional worlds
for the movie.
"Nothing could be more incredibly exciting and fun for filmmakers than
creating other worlds," production designer Scott Chambliss said in a
statement. "You get a rare chance to make the unimaginable real."
For Nibiru, Chambliss let his imagination run wild when it came to designing the jungle planet.
"One thing I love about 'Star Trek'
is working with so many contrasting environments," Chambliss said.
"Nibiru is the antithesis of the Klingon planet and both are completely
different from Earth."
Chambliss used his own real-world experiences to inspire the look and feel of Nibiru.
"Everyone wanted the island planet to have a seductive atmosphere, and
one thing that I remembered from my travels in Hawaii is what they call
'lipstick bamboo,' which is dark red and otherworldly, so that made me
think, what if this planet was all red?" he explained. "There was
something wonderful to that, combined with the deep turquoise blue water
and white sand. It was not only a striking color palette, but it had
that retro vibe which we embrace in our 'Star Trek' storytelling. And
then we developed a whole cultural atmosphere around that."
"Star Trek Into Darkness" is directed by J.J. Abrams and stars Chris
Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana and Benedict Cumberbatch. - SPACE.
