Planet 4x larger than Jupiter possibly in our solar system

[nivek]

http://gizmodo.com/#!5759865/the-mystery-of-the-giant-planet-hidden-in-our-solar-system

There's a giant planet right here, hiding in our Solar System. One that nobody has ever seen, even while it is four times larger than Jupiter and has rings and moons orbiting it. At least, that's what two astrophysicists say.

The name of the planet is Tyche. The scientists are John Matese and Daniel Whitmire, from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. According to them, this colossus is hiding in the Oort Cloud—the asteroid beehive that forms the outer shell of our home system, one light-year in radius. They claim that data already captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer proves its existence. It only needs to be analyzed... over the next two years.

Matese and Whitmire are convinced that Tyche is very real now, however. 15,000 times farther from the Sun than Earth, Tyche would be made mostly of hydrogen and helium. The titanic planet would orbit the Sun with moons and rings around it, bubbling with clouds and storm systems similar to Jupiter. It would even have a mild temperature (-73ºC/-99.4ºF) compared to the asteroids around it, which are almost near absolute zero. Whitmire says that the temperature difference is because a titan of this size takes a long time to cool off after its formation.

Would Tyche be the 9th planet of our Solar System, after Pluto's demise? If its existence is finally confirmed, its Solar System planet status may not be guaranteed. The reason: Astronomers theorize that Tyche could be a planet born in another star system and captured by ours. But whatever classification it gets, it's exciting to think that there may be a new neighbor just around the corner. [The Independent]

 

[syntax]

Thats cool!

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Can't keep on hiding my secret paradises any more... dang

 

[Nuro]

Would be cool if we could initiate fusion and create a second small sun.

 

[Geriatrix]

So it's that thing that periodically slings some extinction level event rocks our way every few million years? NUKE IT I SAY!

 

[scotty777]

Would be cool if we could initiate fusion and create a second small sun.

It's won't work... Jupiter is about one thousand times smaller than the sun... Simply put, you need a very large mass of Hydrogen to have sustained fusion, so that the gravity of the mass can hold itself together. You'll also need that mass to force everything together and get the reaction going. So if you do get that planet to blast off, it'll either just stop reacting or explode .

 

[Nuro]

It's won't work... Jupiter is about one thousand times smaller than the sun... Simply put, you need a very large mass of Hydrogen to have sustained fusion, so that the gravity of the mass can hold itself together. You'll also need that mass to force everything together and get the reaction going. So if you do get that planet to blast off, it'll either just stop reacting or explode .

Yeah. According to Wikipedia, Jupiter needs to be 75 times as massive to fuse hydrogen, so even this 4x planet is still not big enough

 

[DigitalSoldier]

The original Planet X ?

n 1894, with the help of William Pickering, Percival Lowell, a wealthy Bostonian aristocrat, founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. In 1906, convinced he could resolve the conundrum of Uranus's orbit, he began an extensive project to search for a trans-Neptunian planet,[11] which he named Planet X. The X in the name represents an unknown and is pronounced as the letter, as opposed to the Roman numeral for 10 (Planet X would, at the time, have been the ninth planet). Lowell's hope in tracking down Planet X was to establish his scientific credibility, which had eluded him thanks to his widely derided belief that channel-like features visible on the surface of Mars were canals constructed by an intelligent civilisation.[12]

Lowell's first search focused on the ecliptic, the plane encompassed by the zodiac where the other planets in the Solar System lie. Using a 5-inch photographic camera, he manually examined over 200 three-hour exposures with a magnifying glass, but found no planets. At that time Pluto was too far above the ecliptic to be imaged by the survey.[11] After revising his predicted possible locations, Lowell conducted a second search from 1914 to 1916.[11] In 1915, he published his Memoir of a Trans-Neptunian Planet, in which he concluded that Planet X had a mass roughly seven times that of the Earth—about half that of Neptune—and a mean distance from the Sun of 43 AU. He assumed Planet X would be a large, low-density object with a high albedo, like the gas giants. As the result it would show a disc with diameter of about one arcsecond and an apparent magnitude of between 12 and 13—bright enough to be spotted

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_x#Discovery_of_Pluto

 

[mercurial]

The original Planet X ?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_x#Discovery_of_Pluto

Ooh, now it's getting interesting.

 

[S.Harris]

I’m getting a lot of email and tweets about NASA supposedly having proof of a giant, Jupiter-sized planet orbiting the Sun way beyond Pluto. Let me be clear: while certainly possible, this idea is not at all proven, and in my opinion still pretty unlikely. As usual, this started as a more-or-less accurate media story and is getting inflated as it gets re-reported. As far as I can tell, the original report was in the UK paper The Independent.

Here’s the deal. Two astronomers, John Matese and Dan Whitmire, have theorized about the possibility of a previously-undiscovered planet way beyond Pluto for some time. This is not a crazy idea; we see planets orbiting other stars way out, and there’s other evidence big planets can be pretty far out from the Sun (mind you, evidence does not mean proof). As it happens, there are lots of chunks of ice orbiting the Sun pretty far out as well. Some of these have orbits which bring them into the inner solar system, and we see them as long-period comets.

What Matese and Whitmire did was wonder how a big planet would affect the orbits of these comets. If you measured enough of them, would you see the effects of the gravity of this planet? They claim you can, and even gave the planet a tentative name: Tyche.

I read their papers, and thought the data were interesting but unconvincing. The sample size was too small. A bigger study was done, but again the effects weren’t quite enough to rise to the level of breakthrough. I’m not saying the astronomers are wrong — the data were certainly provocative, and potentially correct! Just not firm enough.

What I want to see are observations of this planet. And our best hope may be in the NASA satellite WISE — the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which has scanned the entire sky over the past year or so. A planet in the outer solar system may be warm enough to glow in the IR and be spotted in the WISE data.

The article in The Independent talks about this, saying:

But scientists now believe the proof of its existence has already been gathered by a Nasa space telescope, Wise, and is just waiting to be analysed.

The first tranche of data is to be released in April, and astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette think it will reveal Tyche within two years. "If it does, John and I will be doing cartwheels," Professor Whitmire said. "And that’s not easy at our age."

Note that first line: it makes it seem as if the proof of the planet is already in the data. We just need to find it!

But that’s not really the case. This planet may not exist at all. It might, and I’d love for that to be true. But at the moment we just have interesting but inconclusive evidence supporting the idea of a large planet in the deep dark recesses of the solar system. That’s a long way from proof.

I’ll note the popular site Gizmodo has an article on this that starts off well, but then goes even farther than the Independent did: "[Matese and Whitmire] claim that data already captured by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer proves its existence. It only needs to be analyzed… over the next two years".

The Independent said that the astronomers believe the proof is there, but that’s different than actually claiming it’s there. I think the article in The Independent is fairly well-measured, but Gizmodo took it a bit too far. And in either case, I’m quite sure that lay people reading these articles will walk away thinking the planet’s reality is a given.

But at this point, we don’t know. And it’s possible that the planet exists and WISE won’t see it; it may be too dim to spot. There are many variations here. Basically it boils down to only one statement that can be said with certainty: if WISE sees it, it exists. But if it’s not seen in the WISE data, that doesn’t prove anything one way or another; it narrows the possibilities down and gives us an upper limit on how big, distant, and warm the planet might be. But we’d need to keep looking for it.

There’s been a spate of overblown stories dealing with astronomy lately (see Related Posts, below). I think this is a coincidence, but it’s certainly keeping me busy. And I’m still not done yet. Stay tuned.

Phill Plait - Bad Astronomy

 

[Ninja'd]

Would be cool if we could initiate fusion and create a second small sun.

Cool. Someone else read 2010. Bombard it with monoliths.

 

[Ockie]

Cool. Someone else read 2010. Bombard it with monoliths.

lol.

As long as we stay away from Europa! We must not attempt to go there!!!!

 

[K3NS31]

@ S. Harris
Thanks for that. Most useful

 

[House]

Interesting...

 

[Nokkie]

oh, so lets make Tyche part of our solar system while Pluto is ignored as a planet. How can you make something part of the solar system which is further away... if Pluto even can't be part of ours?

 

[MiY4Gi]

Awesome! It's a pity it's only made of gas. Imagine if it was another Mars.

 

[K3NS31]

What's amazing is how nobody seems to have read the "we don't actually no anything yet, it's gonna take ages to find out for sure" article just a coupla posts up

 

[MiY4Gi]

What's amazing is how nobody seems to have read the "we don't actually no anything yet, it's gonna take ages to find out for sure" article just a coupla posts up

The possibility that it exists is AWESOME!

 

[K3NS31]

The possibility that it exists is AWESOME!

For sure. Be a while before we know tho.

 

[scotty777]

Awesome! It's a pity it's only made of gas. Imagine if it was another Mars.

a mars that's 4 times larger than Jupiter? That thing would have gravity so strong you would literally squash to the floor and the atmosphere would be so dense on the floor that it would be like chilling at the bottom of the ocean .