Far beyond Pluto, a possible 10th planet is found By Kenneth Chang and Dennis Overbye Published: Monday, August 1, 2005
Add a 10th planet to the solar system - or possibly subtract one. Astronomers announced Friday that they had found a lump of rock and ice that is larger than Pluto and the farthest known object in the solar system. The discovery will probably rekindle debate over the definition of what is a planet and whether Pluto still merits the designation. The new object - as yet unnamed, but temporarily known as 2003 UB313 - is now 9 billion miles, or almost 14.5 billion kilometers, away from the Sun, or 97 times as far away as the Earth and about three times Pluto's current distance from the Sun. Its 560-year elliptical orbit brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles. Pluto's orbit ranges between 2.7 billion and 4.6 billion miles. The astronomers do not have an exact size for the new planet, but its brightness and distance tell them that it is larger than Pluto, the smallest of the nine known planets. "It is guaranteed bigger than Pluto," said Michael Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and a member of the team that made the discovery. "Even if it were 100 percent reflective, it would be larger than Pluto. It can't be more than 100 percent reflective." The discovery was made Jan. 8 at Palomar Observatory in California. Brown and the other members of the team - Chadwick Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and David Rabinowitz of Yale University - then found that they had, unknowingly, taken images of the planet with the observatory's telescope as far back as 2003. Last year, the same team members announced the discovery of a distant body they named Sedna, which, until the latest discovery, had held the title of farthest known object in the solar system. However, Sedna, smaller than Pluto, is on a far stranger, 10,500-year orbit that takes it as far out as 84 billion miles. Brown said they had a name they had proposed for the planet, but did not want to disclose it publicly until it had been approved by the International Astronomical Union.Informally, the astronomers have been calling it "Xena" after the television series about a Greek warrior princess that was popular when they began their sweep of the sky in 2000. The astronomers were not able to see 2003 UB313 using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, looking for infrared heat emitted by its minus-405-degree Fahrenheit, or minus-207-degree Celsius, surface. That means the planet is less than 1,800 miles in diameter. What is most surprising is that the orbit of the planet is sharply skewed to most of the rest of the solar system. The orbits of most of the planets lie close to the same plane as Earth's, known as the ecliptic plane. The orbit of 2003 UB313 is tilted by 44 degrees. "That blows my mind," said Harold Levison of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who was not involved in the discovery. "Getting something up that high is very hard." The object is also the third-brightest in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy bodies that circle beyond the orbit of Neptune. The new planet could have been easily discovered much sooner if anyone had looked at that part of the sky. Astronomers suddenly have three large bodies at the solar system's outskirts, and with one of them larger than Pluto, they will probably revive their debate over what constitutes a planet. Astronomers do not have a formal definition of what a planet is, and many have said that if Pluto had been discovered today, it would not have been called a planet. The first of the smaller Kuiper Belt objects was discovered in 1992, more than half a century after Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto. The Minor Planet Center proposed in 1999 that Pluto, while maintaining its position among the major planets, also be given an official designation among the Kuiper Belt objects. The center dropped the proposal after outcry from those who saw "dual status" as a demotion. Gareth Williams, associate director of the Minor Planet Center, said he still supported bestowing dual status on Pluto, but did not think that 2003 UB313 should be added to the registry of major planets. He said astronomers should "leave it as a minor planet permanently."
admin Admin
Posts : 5879 Join date : 2008-11-28
Subject: Re: Stewart Swerdlow ~ Blue Blood True Blood - FULL Fri Sep 06, 2013 6:05 pm
Planet X The articles below, detailing a search for a Planet X, or the 10th planet in our solar system, are speaking of the same planet Sitchin calls the 12th Planet. In his book, The 12th Planet, Sitchin explains that the ancient Sumerians counted the Sun and the Earth's moon as planets, and thus the Sun, Earth, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto added up to 11 planets. Modern astronomy excludes the Sun and the Earth's Moon, counting only 9 planets in our known solar system. Astronomy Search for the Tenth Planet Dec 1981
Quote :
Astronomers are readying telescopes to probe the outer reaches of our solar system for an elusive planet much larger than Earth. Its existence would explain a 160-year-old mystery. ... The pull exerted by its gravity would account for a wobble in Uranus' orbit that was first detected in 1821 by a French astronomer, Alexis Bouvard. Beyond Pluto, in the cold, dark regions of space, may lie an undiscovered tenth planet two to five times the size of Earth. Astronomers at the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) are using a powerful computer to identify the best target zones, and a telescopic search will follow soon after. ... Van Flandern thinks the tenth planet may have between two and five Earth masses and lie 50 to 100 astronomical units from the Sun. (An astronomical unit is the mean distance between Earth and the Sun.) His team also presumes that, like Pluto's, the plane of the undiscovered body's orbit is tilted with respect to that of most other planets, and that its path around the Sun is highly elliptical.
New York Times June 19, 1982
Quote :
A pair of American spacecraft may help scientists detect what could be a 10th planet or a giant object billions of miles away, the national Aeronautics and Space Administration said Thursday. Scientists at the space agency's Ames Research Center said the two spacecraft, Pioneer 10 and 11, which are already farther into space than any other man-made object, might add to knowledge of a mysterious object believed to be beyond the solar system's outermost known planets. The space agency said that persistent irregularities in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune "suggest some kind of mystery object is really there" with its distance depending on what it is. If the mystery object is a new planet, it may lie five billion miles beyond the outer orbital ring of known planets, the space agency said. If it is a dark star type of objet, it may be 50 billion miles beyond the known planets; if it is a black hole, 100 billion miles. A black hole is a hypothetical body in space, believed to be a collapsed star so condensed that neither light nor matter can escape from its gravitational field.
Newsweek Does the Sun Have a Dark Companion? June 28 1982
Quote :
When scientists noticed that Uranus wasn't following its predicted orbit for example, they didn't question their theories. Instead they blamed the anomalies on an as yet unseen planet and, sure enough, Neptune was discovered in 1846. Now astronomers are using the same strategy to explain quirks in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. According to John Anderson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., this odd behavior suggests that the sun has an unseen companion, a dark star gravitationally bound to it but billions of miles away. ... Other scientists suggest that the most likely cause of the orbital snags is a tenth planet 4 to 7 billion miles beyond Neptune. A companion star would tug the outer planets, not just Uranus and Neptune, says Thomas Van Flandern of the U.S Naval Observatory. And where he admits a tenth planet is possible, but argues that it would have to be so big - a least the size of Uranus - that it should have been discovered by now. To resolve the question, NASA is staying tuned to Pioneer 10 and 11, the planetary probes that are flying through the dim reaches of the solar system on opposite sides of the sun.
Astronomy Searching for a 10th Planet Oct 1982
Quote :
The hunt for new worlds hasn't ended. Both Uranus and Neptune follow irregular paths that observers can explain only by assuming the presence of an unknown body whose gravity tugs at the two planets. Astronomers originally though Pluto might be the body perturbing its neighbors, but the combined mass of Pluto and its moon, Charon, is too small for such a role. ... While astronomers believe that something is out there, they aren't sure what it is. Three possibilities stand out: First, the object could be a planet - but any world large and close enough to affect the orbits of Uranus and Neptune should already have been spotted. Searchers might have missed the planet, though, if it's unusually dark or has an odd orbit. ...
Quote :
NASA has been recording velocities for a year now and will continue for as long as necessary. This past spring, it appeared that budget cuts might force the end of the Pioneer project. The space agency now believes that it will have the money to continue mission operations. Next year, the JPL group will begin analyzing the data. By the time the Pioneer experiment shows results, an Earth-orbiting infrared telescope may have discovered the body. ... Together, IRAS and the Pioneers will allow astronomers to mount a comprehensive search for new solar system members. The two deep space probes should detect bodies near enough to disturb their trajectories and the orbits or Uranus and Neptune. IRAS should detect any large body in or near the solar system. Within the next year or two, astronomers may discover not one new world, but several.
New York Times January 30, 1983
Quote :
Something out there beyond the farthest reaches of the known solar system seems to be tugging at Uranus and Neptune. Some gravitational force keeps perturbing the two giant planets, causing irregularities in their orbits. The force suggests a presence far away and unseen, a large object that may be the long- sought Planet X. ... The last time a serious search of the skies was made it led to the discovery in 1930 of Pluto, the ninth planet. But the story begins more than a century before that, after the discovery of Uranus in 1781 by the English astronomer and musician William Herschel. Until then, the planetary system seemed to end with Saturn.
Quote :
As astronomers observed Uranus, noting irregularities in its orbital path, many speculated that they were witnessing the gravitational pull of an unknown planet. So began the first planetary search based on astronomers predictions, which ended in the 1840's with the discovery of Neptune almost simultaneously by English, French, and German astronomers. But Neptune was not massive enough to account entirely for the orbital behavior of Uranus. Indeed, Neptune itself seemed to be affected by a still more remote planet. In the last 19th century, two American astronomers, Willian H. Pickering and Percival Lowell, predicted the size and approximate location of the trans-Neptunian body, which Lowell called Planet X. Years later, Pluto was detected by Clyde W. Tombaugh working at Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Several astronomers, however, suspected it might not be the Planet X of prediction. Subsequent observation proved them right. Pluto was too small to change the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, the combined mass of Pluto and its recently discovered satellite, Charon, is only 1/5 that of Earth's moon.
Quote :
Recent calculations by the United States Naval Observatory have confirmed the orbital perturbation exhibited by Uranus and Neptune, which Dr. Thomas C Van Flandern, an astronomer at the observatory, says could be explained by "a single undiscovered planet". He and a colleague, Dr. Richard Harrington, calculate that the 10th planet should be two to five times more massive than Earth and have a highly elliptical orbit that takes it some 5 billion miles beyond that of Pluto - hardly next-door but still within the gravitational influence of the Sun. ...
US News World Report Planet X - Is It Really Out There? Sept 10, 1984
Quote :
Shrouded from the sun's light, mysteriously tugging at the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, is an unseen force that astronomers suspect may be Planet X - a 10th resident of the Earth's celestial neighborhood. Last year, the infrared astronomical satellite (IRAS), circling in a polar orbit 560 miles from the Earth, detected heat from an object about 50 billion miles away that is now the subject of intense speculation. "All I can say is that we don't know what it is yet," says Gerry Neugesbeuer, director of the Palomar Observatory for the California Institute of Technology. Scientists are hopeful that the one-way journeys of the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes may help to locate the nameless body.
admin Admin
Posts : 5879 Join date : 2008-11-28
Subject: Re: Stewart Swerdlow ~ Blue Blood True Blood - FULL Fri Sep 06, 2013 6:16 pm
Dr. Phil Valentine - Hollow Earth
Sponsored content
Subject: Re: Stewart Swerdlow ~ Blue Blood True Blood - FULL
Subject: Stewart Swerdlow ~ Blue Blood True Blood - FULL 
Fri Sep 06, 2013 1:22 pm
