Discovery of new dwarf planet suggests a massive planet (10 earth masses) @ 250AU

The recent discovery of another dwarf planet on a elliptical orbit strongly hints at a massive planet in the outer reaches of the solar system. This planet is estimated to be 10 earth masses at a distance of 250au.

A surprise monster may be lurking in our solar system. A newly discovered dwarf planet has grabbed the crown as the most distant known object in our solar system – and its orbit hints at a giant, unseen rocky world, 10 times the mass of Earth and orbiting far beyond Pluto.

This planet will be so cold that the recent WISE survey would not pick it up.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) scoured this region of space in 2010 and 2011 searching for a so-called Planet X and came up empty.

However, WISE was looking for the tell-tale warmth of gas giants – a rocky "super-Earth", like the one Sheppard's team suggest, would be too cold for the telescope to pick up. "This is too faint for WISE," says Ned Wright, the space telescope's principal investigator. Even if the planet has a small internal heat source – and absorbs some sunlight, it would still not generate enough heat to register, he adds

SOURCE
New Scientist

Maybe planet X is out there after all?

This would be very cool especially that its rocky, but for now its just a theory. I am curious I don't have much knowledge on planet x or Nibiru or what ever you want to call it. Where did the idea of a super planet in our solar system come from? it's a little off topic but I am curious.

reply to post by Shepard64


There are probably some great topics on it here. But, Planet X, or Nibiru, is a legend, originating in one of the oldest cultures on earth. They saw their gods and visitors, coming from this mythical planet that crosses near the earth orbit every 28,000 years or something. Each time, it brings death and destruction. The great flood has been theorized as a result of this planet.

Anyway, the visitors, the Anunnaki, had problems with their atmosphere, says the legend, they came here to mine gold, and so they created mankind as a worker beast.

Planes X came back as a conspiracy theory all tied to the 2012 phenomena. It's arrival even thought to be predicted by the Mayans.

So far, at least, Planet X has remained mysterious and undiscovered. If it exists.

Curiously, I have seen scientists write today that sprinkling gold elements into the upper atmosphere would be a good way to restore our ozone layer. Funny how legend meets scientific knowledge, in this case.

reply to post by Jchristopher5


Hm interesting, I feel like we would have detected a planet that big by now though. But I could be wrong, it will be interesting to see.

How long would it take for this "new monster" to orbit the sun?

reply to post by Shepard64


If I read the words correctly from this scientific team, they perhaps have discovered it, based on a gravitational effect that presumes something of mass hiding in the distance.

Because it would be a rocky world, and not a brown dwarf star, it would not create any light. At something like 250 AU, the light from the sun is so faint, even the most powerful telescopes in the world might not detect it.

I am not saying it's there, just challenging the idea that we would have obviously discovered it by now.

reply to post by cestrup


Roughly 4000 years for a circular orbit @ 250AU radius. The 250AU is just SWAG

link to play with calculatorlink to play with calculator

How long would it take for this "new monster" to orbit the sun?

About 4000 years at an average distance of 250AU. However, the orbit of a planet this far out will probably be significantly more eccentric and inclined than the orbits of the eight known major planets, so the orbital period could be a lot greater than that.

As for the term "monster", that is a bit misleading. Whilst it would be very large compared to other objects in the Inner Oort Cloud, it would be nowhere near as large or massive as the four gas giants.

welshreduk
The recent discovery of another dwarf planet on a elliptical orbit strongly hints at a massive planet in the outer reaches of the solar system. This planet is estimated to be 10 earth masses at a distance of 250au.

I know it's really NewScientist saying that, but what the actual Nature article says is a bit different. They simulated a 2-15 ME object at 250 AU as a test to see if such an object could constrain the argument of perihelion (w) of these new found dwarf planets, since they seem to be clustering around 0 degrees w. The simulation does not constrain the conditions of such a hypothetical planet though, it's not so much that they're estimating that the planet is 10 earth masses at 250 AU, nothing nearly so specific. The media has got it the wrong way around. The scientists say in the Nature article that any number of combinations could produce this effect, the purpose of the simulation was simply to see if it was a viable mechanism. The way the media makes it sound, it sounds like we already know what mass and distance this planet is and all that remains is simply to find it.

"We numerically simulated the effect of a super-Earth-mass body at 250 au and found that w for inner Oort cloud objects librated around 0 +/- 60 degrees for billions of years (see Extended Data Figs 2 and 3). This configuration is not unique and there are many possibilities for such an unseen perturber.
...
We note that the planet configurations we tested are not unique and there are likely to be many possible orbital patterns for an unseen perturber that could produce a w constraint among the most distant bodies in the Solar System."

www.nature.com...
In fact, other research by Lorenzo Iorio (of "moon eccentricity anomaly" fame) has suggested that the scenario they tested is an unrealistic configuration.
arxiv.org...
The hypothetical planet, if it exists, is likely less massive than what they tested if it's at 250 AU. Their lowest test mass was still 2 ME, but there's no telling if a more realistic .7 ME would have been sufficient to constrain w. Alternatively it could be more massive, but it would need to be much further away as well, while not being so massive that WISE would have detected it.

Yeah, but the thought that an unseen planet of appreciable size is out there is so much more exciting! Even if it's only the size of Mars, it would be an awesome discovery.

Reminds me of the movie Melancholia (mispelled?). Albeit, the estimations of its orbit put it nowhere close to ours but this is a rather interesting discovery. Should be interesting to follow...

reply to post by ngchunter


Thanks for clarifying that, ngchunter. I notice the article you quote seems to acknowledge the existence of a 'perturber', though not necessarily one with the mass and orbital characteristics modelled.

So... there is something out there after all?

Jchristopher5
reply to post by Shepard64

 

There are probably some great topics on it here. But, Planet X, or Nibiru, is a legend, originating in one of the oldest cultures on earth. They saw their gods and visitors, coming from this mythical planet that crosses near the earth orbit every 28,000 years or something. Each time, it brings death and destruction. The great flood has been theorized as a result of this planet.