Planet X Hypothesis (from discovery of Neptune)

[JcX]

Original Article : http://sciencerealm.net/index.php?tid=41

 

Neptune, the 8th planet in our solar system was first seen by the famous Galileo Galilei on December 1612. Galileo wasn't confirm with his discovery because of the limited capability of the telescope at his time. He noted down the shining spot he observed next to Jupiter as a "fixed" star, rather than a planet revolving the Sun.

 

More than 2 centuries had passed, with the help of Newton's Gravitational Law or Law of Motion, scientist and astronomers begin their search of fantasies in heavenly space. From the observation of Uranus, astronomer noticed that there's a perturbation on its orbit. From the equations and observations, suggestion has been made that there should be a major planet yet to be discovered behind Uranus, that this planet exerts a gravitational force to pull Uranus back. Using equations from Newton's Law of Motion, astronomers predicted some hotspot for this major planet to be found. On September 23, 1846, Neptune was discovered by Johann Gottfried Galle at Berlin Observatory. This discovery has marked the first planet that is discovered and predicted using mathematics and observations on existing planets.

 

 

The trend has go off, and astronomers begin to observe the behaviour of Neptune. Surprisingly, they found similar perturbations on Neptune's orbit. Enthusiasm drives them to look for the 9th planet. Percival Lowell made his famous "Planet X Hypothesis" after his observation on Trans-Neptunian objects. After almost a century, on 1930, Pluto is discovered and seems to be able to explain Lowell's prediction, until 2006 where IAU (International Astronomical Union) has made the final judgement that Pluto should be categorized as dwarf planet. Pluto has been drop off from the title planet since then. Lowell's followers continues the search for Planet X where there's much discovery to be claimed as Planet X, but none of them has been approved so far. Recent observations shown that there're discrepancies on Neptune's mass and also its orbit. Recalculating, astronomers agreed that there's not a need for Planet X to exist to explain Neptune's orbital behaviour. However, the idea of Planet X still goes on....

 

Some claimed discovery of Planet X:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/29jul_planetx.htm - by Michael Brown, 2005

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gD2yjCVCevAgLFa_AXH9m51MrqCg - by Japan astronomers

 

Welcome to express your view on Planet X.

 

Original Article url deleted

Edited August 26, 2009 by swansont
delete external link

[insane_alien]

need to find planet IX first.

[CaptainPanic]

Planet X, if it exists is going to be only marginally larger than Pluto... it will be rocky. A large planet the size of Neptune is too easy to find, and would also gobble up a lot of the smaller debris that orbits the sun out there. Since the debris is still there, the planet probably isn't.

 

(Disclaimer - I'm no expert, and just spam the thread with some stuff that I hope makes sense).

 

What I find more amusing (and I kinda hope there's some truth in it), is the prediction that some small dwarf stars that are emitting nearly no light at all are in our vicinity... no inside the solar system, but relatively nearby anyway.

[insane_alien]

capn, if your counting pluto as a planet then we're up to plant XVI or so already.

 

infact, thanks to ceres it makes pluto planet X

[Arch2008]

I thought that the wieners at the IAU decided that there would be no more planets. Plutoids, trans Neptune objects, dwarf planets and perhaps even anet-plays, anything but planets. So X does not mark the spot.

[CaptainPanic]

Since some people decided that Pluto is not a planet, I count 8.

The rocketscience is in the decision whether Pluto is a planet or not. After that's decided, the rest is about as complicated as Sesamestreet.

 

And I think we're talking about "X" as in the letter X, not "X" as in number 10... (Since Pluto is not a planet anymore).

[swansont]

Whether you call it a planet or what number you assign it is semantics (X can mean "unknown" rather than "10").

 

 

Recent observations shown that there're discrepancies on Neptune's mass and also its orbit. Recalculating, astronomers agreed that there's not a need for Planet X to exist to explain Neptune's orbital behaviour. However, the idea of Planet X still goes on....

 

 

No need for it. End of (rational) discussion, pretty much. (Many Planet X enthusiasts are whackos; on the upside, it includes me in a huge conspiracy.)

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

Original Article : url deleted

 

Is this your work, or are you copying someone else's post?

[JcX]

It's my own work, originated from another forum.