What happened to NASA's discovery of massive planet Tyche?

It has been hypothesized for some time that our sun may have a dark binary star lurking at the outermost edges of the Oort cloud. It cannot be seen but its effects have been visible. This explains why Pluto and Sedna don't fly off into outer space, NASA also said that it could explain periodic extinction events here on earth. Anyway, NASA said that WISE would be able to confirm the existence of Tyche (sometimes called nemesis) back in March of 2012 but, it was never mentioned nor has NASA mentioned it since?! Is the information considered classified now? Thought it strange and wanted to bring up for discussion.


www.nasa.gov...

reply to post by BrieBird


I also find it strange that NASA is now back peddling on the galactic alignment that is set to take place in a little over a week. Back in the mid 1990's and until about the early 2000's it was held as common knowledge that it was a rare event. I wish I would have kept the articles on the subject because it is clear that NASA has washed this info from showing up on their site. Why the complete 180 on the topic?...especially since they never gave any explanation about the change of opinion.

reply to post by BrieBird


First we should get some facts straight. Nemesis and Tyche are two separate hypothetical objects. The idea of Nemesis came about in the 80s after a paper was published attempting to prove a periodicity to mass extinctions. Nemesis would have been a brown dwarf or other small mass star that would send comets hurtling towards Earth. Since this time the periodicity in mass extinctions has been disproven and the need for Nemesis has disappeared. Seeing the need for an explanation regarding why long period comets enter the inner solar system Matese and Whitmire (from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, not NASA) came up with the idea of Tyche. As of now there has been no sign of Tyche in the WISE data.

reply to post by BrieBird

First of all, Tyche was not hypothesized to be a dark star; the hypothesized mass is not great enough. The hypothetical Tyche is thought to be a gas giant up too four times the mass of Jupiter (which is still not massive enough to be a brown dwarf star).

Secondly, Pluto and Sedna do NOT need another body keeping them the solar system. Pluto's orbit is well-understood. Sedna does indeed have an unusually wide elliptical orbit, but there are other explanations other than "a brown dwarf" for that unusual orbit...

..Sedna's orbit could also be explained by the presence of Jupiter and Saturn giving Sedna (which once may have been closer to the Sun in a less elliptical orbit) a gravitational push out into its present orbit. Orbital calculations have been done that explain this push by Jupiter and Saturn.

As for Tyche...
The main reason the scientists who hypothesized Tyche think it may exist is because of a slight bias in the origin of comets from a region of the outer solar system. They hypothesize that this potential gas giant planet is perturbing a portion of the Oort cloud, causing this bias in the population of comets.

Data from the WISE telescope may give some clues as to the possible existence of Tyche, but the analysis of such data could take years.

Originally posted by BrieBird
It has been hypothesized for some time that our sun may have a dark binary star lurking at the outermost edges of the Oort cloud. It cannot be seen but its effects have been visible. This explains why Pluto and Sedna don't fly off into outer space, NASA also said that it could explain periodic extinction events here on earth. Anyway, NASA said that WISE would be able to confirm the existence of Tyche (sometimes called nemesis) back in March of 2012 but, it was never mentioned nor has NASA mentioned it since?! Is the information considered classified now? Thought it strange and wanted to bring up for discussion.


www.nasa.gov...

edit on 12-12-2012 by BrieBird because: (no reason given)

Tyche is a hypothesised planet, not a dark star. It was hypothesised by two astrophysicists (who don't work for NASA, by the way). Thing is, it's just a guess from two people, and although they are professional scientists, they can be mistaken. So far, there is no proof of Tyche in WISE images or anywhere else.

en.wikipedia.org...
blogs.discovermagazine.com...

P.S. Pluto and Sedna orbit the Sun, they are gravitationally bound to it. They don't need another object to keep them from flying away.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Thanks for all the info..it was stated in another article by NASA that they would have a response by last March so am I to assume they found nothing then? and are still looking?

Originally posted by BrieBird
reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

 

Thanks for all the info..it was stated in another article by NASA that they would have a response by last March so am I to assume they found nothing then? and are still looking?

The only thing that NASA said about WISE back in March was:

PASADENA -- NASA unveiled a new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky today showing more than a half billion stars, galaxies and other objects captured by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.

NASA Releases New WISE Mission Catalog Of Entire Infrared Sky - 14 March, 2012

The only mention of Tyche by NASA was the article by JPL:

In November 2010, the scientific journal Icarus published a paper by astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire, who proposed the existence of a binary companion to our sun, larger than Jupiter, in the long-hypothesized "Oort cloud" -- a faraway repository of small icy bodies at the edge of our solar system. The researchers use the name "Tyche" for the hypothetical planet. Their paper argues that evidence for the planet would have been recorded by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).

Can WISE Find The Hypothetical Tyche? - 18 Feb, 2011

Here is a link to all the news articles put out about WISE:

News and Events - WISE, from Berkeley

reply to post by BrieBird


Soylent Green Is People,
WildeSpace,
& Eriktheawful ...

Explained it well enough. Stars for them.

Picking through the data from WISE, as mentioned, especially since there's really only 2 scientists in the community who think there's a substantial body to be found that are reviewing the data, could take YEARS, possibly over a decade until another WISE-like and/or complimentary data set survey can confirm/deny their hypothetical.

This kind of science, or really any science isn't like a Hollywood movie where scientists have an idea and then solve it within the run-time of the film. As stated, stuff like this can take years, if not well over a decade if not more, of painstaking finite interrogation of an overwhelmingly huge data set.

Sure does seem to be a media blackout for the past 10 years or so since Nasa confirmed Tyche

originally posted by: eugenic
Sure does seem to be a media blackout for the past 10 years or so since Nasa confirmed Tyche

Sorry, but NASA never confirmed Tyche, because it was never found.

Did you even read the posts above yours?