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 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.
2003 SD220 is one of the biggest near Earth asteroids to pass this year. Getty
December 4, 2015 - SPACE - The 1.5-miles wide mega space rock known as 2003 SD220 is on a NASA
list of "high priority" asteroids for close observation because of the
potential threat to the planet.
A direct hit from the gigantic asteroid would be enough to destroy a whole continent or worse.
NASA and other astronomers have a list of 17 high-priority near-Earth asteroids which have been or will be monitored by radar as they get close to the planet in 2015.
Of these, a group of ten, including 2003 SD220, could be even bigger than astronomers have already calculated as so little is known about them.
A smaller group of six, also including 2003 SD220, are also considered potentially hazardous to Earth due to their sizes and orbits.
This is because they could be darker than initially thought and could therefore have some of their bulk obscured by the darkness of space.
News of the close pass comes after it was reported yesterday that conspiracy theories believe a mysterious planet called Planet X or Nibiru, said to be four times the size of Jupiter will pass the Earth this month, but wipe out life due to its immense gravitational force ripping up continents and showering us with comets.
There is no science to back any of that up.
But news of 2003 SD220's approach is likely to fuel this conspiracy.
According to the Idea Girl Severe Storm Predictions Warnings website 2003 SD220 could have enough gravitational pull on Earth to trigger earthquakes or volcanoes.
And conspiracy site Godlikeproductions.com published a list of five asteroids of 0.6miles across or above, that are passing from now until Janauray 2 with the remark: "Look at these big Asteroids all of them are coming this Christmas.
If an asteroid of 1.5 miles struck it could destroy a whole continent. Getty
"Something is pushing them towards earth."
But there is no scientific support for either of these theories.
A team made up of NASA and staff from the Arecibo observatory in Peurto Rico are preparing to carry out specialist radar observations of 2003 SD220 as it nears us from mid December.
A NASA report seen by Express.co.uk explained the importance of carrying out radar observations on the celestial object.
It said: "We propose radar imaging, physical characterisation, and orbit refinement of our 17 highest-priority NEAs for the calendar year 2015 using 294 hours.
"Radar is arguably the most powerful Earth-based technique for post-discovery physical and dynamical characterisation of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs).
"Over the long term, our observations will help answer fundamental questions regarding the origin of the diversity in asteroid morphologies, the importance of spin-up mechanisms and collisional influences, the interior structure and thermal properties of asteroids, and the variety of dynamical states."
Previous radar observations have "led to numerous important discoveries", including multiple-asteroid systems and the "change in spin rate of asteroids due to thermal torques".
The report added: "Radar is particularly effective at detecting satellites around near earth asteroids having discovered two-thirds of all known binaries and all the known or suspected triple systems."
A NASA map showing 2003 SD220's path and that of Earth. NASA
Radar observations allow scientists to get much more accurate measurements and creates 3D models of them and their trajectories.
Although 2003 SD220 is expected to pass at a cosmically close 6.7 million miles, one of the biggest concerns with these largely unknown asteroids is the potential for Yarkovsky drift.
This is a radiative effect that subtly changes the orbits of asteroids, which could potentially make them come closer or even hit Earth.
The report added: "Radar-derived shape models enable us to obtain astrometry with superb accuracy on the order of a few tens of meters.
"This level of precision over multiple apparitions has led to two detections.
of Yarkovsky drift, and indirect mass measurements for those asteroids.
"In general, radar astrometry allows substantial improvement in the knowledge of asteroid trajectories, which is of particular interest for mission planning, resource exploitation, and impact assessment of potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), owing to its precision and its orthogonality to optical astrometry.
"Little is known about the remaining 10 high-priority targets other than the absolute magnitudes and their heliocentric orbits that make six of them potentially hazardous to Earth.
"Radar will provide the first detailed physical characterisations of these objects including sizes, shapes, surface features, spin-state estimates, reflective properties, and near-surface roughnesses."
An artist impression of the mythical Nibiru planet. Getty
In 2018 2003 SD220 will make another close pass.
The report said: "Many are not re-observable at the same strength for several decades meaning this is our best chance to characterise them, while, on the other hand, observing 2010 NY65 and 2003 SD220 now will help us prepare for their close approaches in the next few years."
According to NASA a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) has a such an orbit it "has the potential to make close approaches to the Earth and a size large enough to cause significant regional damage in the event of impact."
The PHA section of NASA's website said: "These objects are monitored by NASA with contributions from others including amateurs.
"The reason they can become hazardous is that their trajectory can variate due to gravitational fields from Planets or Stars, or other objects."
So there are genuine scientific concerns about this asteroid.
However, NASA says "the chance of a potentially hazardous event due to these objects is about once in 10,000 years."
Following widespread, and inaccurate conspiracy theories that a major asteroid would hit Earth this September, NASA put out a statement saying it knows of no large asteroid that is on collision course with us for several hundred years. - Express.
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.
April 12, 2015 - SPACE - Where did the Moon come from? That
question has long intrigued scientists.
Various hypotheses hold that
Earth, which formed some 4.5 billion years ago, either captured its
lunar companion, expelled it from its ancient, quickly spinning mass, or
that the Moon formed, along with Earth, from a primordial accretion
disk. Since the 1970s, however, the predominant theory has been what is
known as the ‘Giant ImpactHypothesis.’
According to the Giant Impact Hypothesis, a Mars-sized space rock
dubbed ‘Theia’ slammed into Earth, creating an enormous ring of debris
around the planet that eventually accreted to become the Moon. The main
problem with this notion, however, is that the Moon’s composition is
remarkably similar to Earth’s when, according to some models, it should
be much more similar to Theia’s.
“In terms of composition, the Earth and moon are almost twins, their
compositions differing by at most a few parts per million,” said
Alesseandra Matstrobuono-Battisti, an astrophysicist at the Israel
Institute of Technology in Haifa, in a report by Space.com. “This contradiction has cast a long shadow on the giant-impact model.”
But now, lead author
Matstrobuono-Battisti and her colleagues say they have identified
significant differences in the isotopes of oxygen present on the Earth
and the Moon—a finding that lends weight to the Giant Impact Hypothesis.
Their research is detailed in the April 9 issue of the journal Nature.
Symbolic Echoes Of Past Planetary Upheavals: Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro is known to construct enormous spheres with layers of complexities. One of his monumental orbs was commissioned by the Priest Class and stands tall as the centerpiece of the Courtyard of the Pinecone at the Vatican Museum. The structure titled Sfera con Sfera, translated as Sphere within a Sphere, is a bronze statue that appears golden as the sun shines down on it. It is 4 meters (a little over 13 feet) in diameter.
After conducting a series of simulations, the scientists found that
collisions occurring in a disk pattern like the one from which Earth
emerged tended to produce three to four rocky planets, with the largest
having a mass similar to Earth’s, according to a report by The Christian Science Monitor.
Often these primordial worlds had differing compositions—except that
20 to 40 percent of the time, the composition of one planet was nearly
identical to the last space body it had collided with. This calculation
finds the probability of this scenario is 10 times greater than prior
estimates, the report said.
“The most exciting and surprising thing was to find out that we can
shed new light on a 30-year-old mystery,” said co-author Hagai Perets,
also an astrophysicist at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa,
in remarks to Space.com. “Compositionally similar planet-impactor pairs
are not rare at all.”
WATCH: Earth’s moon formed after planetary collision with large protoplanet – researchers.
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a world where two suns set over the
horizon instead of just one. The planet, called Kepler-16b (illustrated
here),
is the most 'Tatooine-like' planet yet found in our galaxy.
April 5, 2015 - SPACE -Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine, may exist only in the
make-believe world of Star Wars, but astronomers have long known that
planets with two suns exist in the real world too.
"Tatooine sunsets may be common after all," study co-author Dr. Ben Bromley, an astrophysicist at the University of Utah,
said in a written statement. “For over a decade, astrophysicists
believed that planets like Earth could not form around most binary
stars, at least not close enough to support life."
Kepler 16b has been dubbed Tatooine, due to the double sunset on the Star Wars planet.
“Planets
form like dust bunnies under your bed, glomming together to make larger
and larger objects,” study co-author Dr. Scott Kenyon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
said in the statement. “When planets form around a binary, the binary
scrambles up the dust bunnies unless they are on just the right orbit.”
The
researchers used computer simulations and mathematical models to show
that Earth-like planets could indeed form in a binary star system --
that is, if the planet-forming material orbits its host stars in a
concentric, oval-shaped orbit. And the resulting rocky planets may be able to survive for tens of thousands of years, The Telegraph reported.
In this acrylic painting, Bromley illustrates the view of a double sunset from an uninhabited Earth-like planet orbiting a pair of stars.
Ben Bromley, University of Utah
The
takeaway, according to Bromley, is that it's just as easy for an
Earth-like planet to form around a binary star as it is to form around a
single star like our sun.
April 2, 2015 - SPACE -
Towards the centre of our galaxy there is a strange object known as G2
that is drifting around the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole. The
origins of this 'cloud' have remained somewhat a mystery and now a new
theory has been proposed - the cloud is actually a star. New
observations suggest it is too compact to be a clump of gas, and instead
its more likely to be a stellar object.
The new theory was proposed by scientists from the University of Cologne in Germany and published in the Astrophysical Journal.
G2 has fascinated astronomers since it was first found in 2002 because it is not obvious where it has come from.
University of Cologne scientists say G2 cloud is actually a star. The object was found orbiting the Milky Way's core in 2002. This composite image shows the motion of the dusty cloud G2 as it closes in on, and then passes, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way - and it remains compact, like a star
Studying it could help scientists understand how supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies draw in material and ‘feed’.
Observations had suggested G2 was stretched, like a cloud - and may even have a companion, dubbed G1.
But
according to the team, the latest observations show that G2 remained
intact as it made a recent close pass to the black hole.
If it had been a cloud, it would have been spread apart by the black hole’s intense gravity.
‘For us, everything points at it being a young star,’ Dr Andreas Eckart, a co-author on the paper, told Space.com.
Before
2014, the cloud was moving away from us, but now it is moving towards
Earth - increasing in speed from 6.2 million to 7.4 million mph (10
million to 12 million km/h).
WHY IS G2 SO IMPORTANT TO ASTRONOMERS?
Sagittarius A* lurks 26,000 light years away in the Milky Way's innermost region.
For
a black hole, it is very dim - about a billion times fainter than
others of its supermassive types - making it something of a mystery.
Black
holes eat matter from their surroundings and blow matter back. The way
they do that influences the evolution of the entire galaxy.
Its
interaction with the gas clouds G1 and G2 will give astronomers a
unique opportunity to see how faint supermassive black holes 'feed'.
They hope to understand these black holes don't consume matter in the same way as their brighter counterparts in other galaxies.
The findings could shed light on how stars are formed, how the galaxy grows and how it interacts with other galaxies.
G2 has fascinated astronomers since it was first found in 2002 because it is not obvious where it has come from. Studying it could help scientists understand how supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies (illustrated) draw in material and ‘feed’
‘We don't see any stretching of the cloud that was claimed previously,’ Dr Eckart said.
‘We get a much more coherent picture of a single object.’
Other experts, though, have suggested the team is not observing the whole object, and thus is missing some of its features.
'Our
basic idea is that G1 and G2 might be clumps of the same gas streamer,’
Dr Oliver Pfuhl of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial
Physics said in December.
Now debate will rage on whether G2 is a cloud of gas (illustrated left) or a star (illustrated right). Observations had suggested G2 was stretched, like a cloud. But according to the team, the latest observations show that G2 remained intact as it made a recent close pass to the black hole - suggesting it is a star
'In this case, we should be able to
simultaneously fit both data sets and, indeed, our model captures the G1
and G2 orbits remarkably well.'
If they are clouds, the likely
source for both G1 and G2 could be clumps in the wind of one of the
massive disk stars, which could have been ejected some 100 years ago.
Whatever
they turn out to be, the answer could reveal a fascinating insight into
some of the goings on near the black hole at the Milky Way's core. - Daily Mail.
February 24, 2015 - SPACE - Astronomers
have identified the closest known flyby of a star to our solar system: A
dim star that passed through the Oort Cloud 70,000 years ago. A group
of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa have
determined that 70,000 years ago a recently discovered dim star is
likely to have passed through the solar system's distant cloud of
comets, the Oort Cloud (image above). No other star is known to have
ever approached our solar system this close - five times closer than the
current closest star, Proxima Centauri.
In
a paper published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, lead author Eric
Mamajek from the University of Rochester and his collaborators analyzed
the velocity and trajectory of a low-mass star system nicknamed
"Scholz's star."
The star's trajectory suggests that 70,000 years ago
it passed roughly 52,000 astronomical units away (or about 0.8 light
years, which equals 8 trillion kilometers, or 5 trillion miles). This is
astronomically close; our closest neighbor star Proxima Centauri is 4.2
light years distant. In fact, the astronomers explain in the paper that
they are 98% certain that it went through what is known as the "outer
Oort Cloud" - a region at the edge of the solar system filled with
trillions of comets a mile or more across that are thought to give rise
to long-term comets orbiting the Sun after their orbits are perturbed.
The star originally caught Mamajek's attention during a discussion with co-author Valentin D. Ivanov, from the European Southern Observatory.
Scholz's star had an unusual mix of characteristics: despite being
fairly close ("only" 20 light years away), it showed very slow
tangential motion, that is, motion across the sky. The radial velocity
measurements taken by Ivanov and collaborators, however, showed the star
moving almost directly away from the solar system at considerable
speed.
"Most stars this nearby show much larger tangential
motion," says Mamajek, associate professor of physics and astronomy at
the University of Rochester. "The small tangential motion and proximity
initially indicated that the star was most likely either moving towards a
future close encounter with the solar system, or it had 'recently' come
close to the solar system and was moving away. Sure enough, the radial
velocity measurements were consistent with it running away from the
Sun's vicinity - and we realized it must have had a close flyby in the
past."
To work out its trajectory the astronomers needed both
pieces of data, the tangential velocity and the radial velocity. Ivanov
and collaborators had characterized the recently discovered star through
measuring its spectrum and radial velocity via Doppler shift. These
measurements were carried out using spectrographs on large telescopes in
both South Africa and Chile: the Southern African Large Telescope
(SALT) and the Magellan telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, respectively.
Once
the researchers pieced together all the information they figured out
that Scholz's star was moving away from our solar system and traced it
back in time to its position 70,000 years ago, when their models
indicated it came closest to our Sun.
Until now, the top candidate
for the closest known flyby of a star to the solar system was the
so-called "rogue star" HIP 85605, which was predicted to come close to
our solar system in 240,000 to 470,000 years from now. However, Mamajek
and his collaborators have also demonstrated that the original distance
to HIP 85605 was likely underestimated by a factor of ten. At its more
likely distance - about 200 light years - HIP 85605's newly calculated
trajectory would not bring it within the Oort Cloud.
Mamajek
worked with former University of Rochester undergraduate Scott Barenfeld
(now a graduate student at Caltech) to simulate 10,000 orbits for the
star, taking into account the star's position, distance, and velocity,
the Milky Way galaxy's gravitational field, and the statistical
uncertainties in all of these measurements. Of those 10,000 simulations,
98% of the simulations showed the star passing through the outer Oort
cloud, but fortunately only one of the simulations brought the star
within the inner Oort cloud, which could trigger so-called "comet showers."
While
the close flyby of Scholz's star likely had little impact on the Oort
Cloud, Mamajek points out that "other dynamically important Oort Cloud
perturbers may be lurking among nearby stars." The recently launched
European Space Agency Gaia satellite
is expected to map out the distances and measure the velocities of a
billion stars. With the Gaia data, astronomers will be able to tell
which other stars may have had a close encounter with us in the past or
will in the distant future.
Currently, Scholz's star is a small,
dim red dwarf in the constellation of Monoceros, about 20 light years
away. However, at the closest point in its flyby of the solar system,
Scholz's star would have been a 10th magnitude star - about 50 times
fainter than can normally be seen with the naked eye at night. It is
magnetically active, however, which can cause stars to "flare" and
briefly become thousands of times brighter. So it is possible that
Scholz's star may have been visible to the naked eye by our ancestors
70,000 years ago for minutes or hours at a time during rare flaring
events. The star is part of a binary star system: a low-mass red dwarf
star (with mass about 8% that of the Sun) and a "brown dwarf" companion
(with mass about 6% that of the Sun). Brown dwarfs are considered
"failed stars;" their masses are too low to fuse hydrogen in their cores
like a "star," but they are still much more massive than gas giant
planets like Jupiter.
The formal designation of the star is "WISE
J072003.20-084651.2," however it has been nicknamed "Scholz's star" to
honor its discoverer - astronomer Ralf-Dieter Scholz of the
Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP) in Germany - who first
reported the discovery of the dim nearby star in late 2013. The "WISE"
part of the designation refers to NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
mission, which mapped the entire sky in infrared light in 2010 and
2011, and the "J-number" part of the designation refers to the star's
celestial coordinates. - Daily Galaxy.
