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Is there a Planet X?
New Scientist ^ | 31 January 2009 | Govert Schilling

Posted on 02/18/2009 4:45:00 PM PST by SunkenCiv

Planet X would be the most significant addition to the solar system since the discovery of Pluto... Any new object would have to be well clear of the Kuiper belt to qualify as a planet. Yet intriguingly, it is studies of the belt that have suggested the planet's existence. Some KBOs travel in extremely elongated orbits around the sun. Others have steep orbits almost at right angles to the orbits of all the major planets. "Those could be signs of perturbation from a massive distant object," says Robert Jedicke, a solar system scientist at the University of Hawaii... Over the past 20 years, huge swaths of the sky have been searched for slowly moving bodies, and well over 1000 KBOs found. But these wide-area surveys can spot only large, bright objects; longer-exposure surveys that can find smaller, dimmer objects cover only small areas of the sky. A Mars-sized object at a distance of, say, 100 AU would be so faint that it could easily have escaped detection. That could soon change. In December 2008, the first prototype of the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) was brought into service at the Haleakala observatory on Maui, Hawaii.

(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...


TOPICS: Astronomy; Science
KEYWORDS: catastrophism; nemesis; xplanets
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To: SunkenCiv

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/29jul_planetx.htm

Ancient astronomers wrote that “Planet X” was actually a binary system with a planet orbiting a brown dwarf.
Time will tell how accurate their historical descriptions were.


21 posted on 02/18/2009 5:06:35 PM PST by silverleaf ("Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury" - Screwtape)
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To: cripplecreek

Really? Wow. That’s just dumb luck on my part.

Unless you’re talking about the cartoon character...

Oh, wow!

http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/pluto/plutodiscovery4.html

...Then on February 18 came the break: Planet X, predicted by Percival Lowell had been found. — Amir Alexander


22 posted on 02/18/2009 5:07:12 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/____________________ Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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To: txnativegop

“Why do we call hemorrhoids hemorrhoids and asteroids asteroids? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” — Bob Schimmel


23 posted on 02/18/2009 5:11:34 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/____________________ Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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To: silverleaf

According to Sitchin — the inventor of Nibiru — the fictional planet is on a 3600 year orbit, which means it would have made its last pass through the inner Solar System in the late centuries BC.

Nothin’.


24 posted on 02/18/2009 5:13:27 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/____________________ Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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To: silverleaf

Which ancient astronomers wrote that?


25 posted on 02/18/2009 5:13:41 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/____________________ Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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To: silverleaf
In the first article you cite, they call "Nibiru" Eris. Eris is a dwarf planet, and spends most of it's time outside Pluto. The closest it comes is to graze Neptune's orbit.

As for your second article, well...here is the original image. You judge for yourself. I can make all sorts of claims about images being inverted and mirrored, especially when my target audience knows NOTHING about spacecraft instruments.

His photo collage after that of "Planet X" peeking out from behind the sun shows a flawed understanding of orbital physics. Likely gleaned from hours of watching Star Trek and Star Wars in his parent's basement.

26 posted on 02/18/2009 5:15:26 PM PST by AntiKev ("Within the strangest people, truth can find the strangest home." - Great Big Sea - Company of Fools)
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To: Radagast the Fool
He told me too!


27 posted on 02/18/2009 5:20:02 PM PST by Young Werther (Julius Caesar (Quae Cum Ita Sunt. Since these things are so.))
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To: SunkenCiv
Wait a minute... wouldn’t it be between Planet W and Planet Y?

Nyah nyah. ;’)

Better laugh now...in all Fairness, thuh fewchur dunna look brite...

28 posted on 02/18/2009 5:21:01 PM PST by bigheadfred (Negromancer !!! RUN for your lives !!!)
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To: SunkenCiv

Pluto was discovered, in part, out of the general search for Planet X. After the discovery of Neptune, astronomers noticed that it was not appearing where the laws of physics, which accurately described the orbits of the other planets, predicted. Uranus tended to be slightly off as well. This prompted the theory that something beyond Neptune was “tugging at it”. The discovery of Pluto was thought to have provided the answer, until astronomers quickly figured out that Pluto is not nearly massive enough to be the culprit. So the search for something larger beyond Neptune continues. I find the thought that the culprit may not be a planet but a brown dwarf or other burned out star orbiting the sun (or perhaps the other way around) very intriguing.


29 posted on 02/18/2009 5:48:38 PM PST by bobjam
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To: AntiKev

Nibiru is just one of many names for this planet from the Sumerian writings...it means “ferry” or “The planet of the crossing” or something like that. There may be multiple planets- multiple names. The concept of this explaining a connection to another solar system and another race... I find is fascinating.

art work from “Dark Star” aside, it’s an interesting subject to read about. The recent observatories established in Antarctica and now in Hawaii, plus other programs, may provide more hard data.

There certainly is a lot of commonality in the lore of the cultures of early earth, and in prophecy, and it does provide a fantastic wway to interpret some puzzling geological and other evidence. Has there been a polar reversal in the past- why? Will it happen again and why and when? Why are the bodies in the outer solar system warming -are they getting more geologically active? Are we?

Were we visited? Were we colonized? Were we “bred”?

This is one of those times when, if these is any credence to the descriptions of all of this as a cyclical event which will affects us again in our time, we will know one way or another soon enough. Meanwhile it’s interesting to BS about.

People are sure going to be speculating and reading more after the movie “2012” comes out this summer. Will this planet “X” become more visible by the same time this summer, as was written here? Maybe we’ll know this summer!
Meanwhile scientists are stockpiling those Noah’s arks with seeds- and maybe other stuff, too.
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/2012/


30 posted on 02/18/2009 5:58:15 PM PST by silverleaf ("Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury" - Screwtape)
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To: SunkenCiv; Dutch Boy

I was an astronomy buff, off and on, in my early teens (mid 1970s). The “Nemesis” hypothesis was very popular for explaining mass extinctions.
It went something like:
1. There are more binary star systems in the galaxy than single star systems.
2. The presence of a partner star to our Sun would cause a change in gravity affecting comets or larger asteroids as the two stars moved closer or farther apart.
3. Path changes in comets or large asteroids increase the possibility of collisions.
Now, this is what, 20 years before Hubble?


31 posted on 02/18/2009 5:59:57 PM PST by fortunate sun (Undermine Obama with every thought, word and deed.)
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To: SunkenCiv
Here ya go:

Planet X Adult Superstore - Tampa, FL, 33619 - Citysearch

Probably find ya one of those very popular Obama-Head of State ....er....devices.

32 posted on 02/18/2009 6:01:55 PM PST by tbpiper
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To: SunkenCiv

A planet sized, well, planet, might not have a really great effect on the earth when it comes ‘back’ into our solar system, eh?


33 posted on 02/18/2009 6:03:33 PM PST by fanfan
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To: fanfan

I’m pretty sure there’s a Planet Claire. I heard she came from there. Like a Plymouth Satellite, faster than the speed of light... Planet Claire has pink air, all the trees are red. No one ever dies there, no one has a head.


34 posted on 02/18/2009 6:05:03 PM PST by rintense (Go Israel!)
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To: silverleaf

These theories are awesome for finding flaws in science while partaking in the beverage of the evening. But as for verifiable science...well, I guess that’s TBD.


35 posted on 02/18/2009 6:12:17 PM PST by AntiKev ("Within the strangest people, truth can find the strangest home." - Great Big Sea - Company of Fools)
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To: rintense
No one ever dies there, no one has a head.

Planet Claire used to be married to a NY TV station owner?

36 posted on 02/18/2009 6:12:41 PM PST by fanfan
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To: SunkenCiv

Wouldn’t that be planet IX once again since Pluto got demoted?


37 posted on 02/18/2009 6:58:02 PM PST by eclecticEel (Wall Street isn't a charity ... so why are we giving them money?)
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To: SunkenCiv

Just think, if you had thought to say Planet X was proof that Darwin was a poopyhead, this would be prominently displayed in NEWS instead of CHAT.

And you could start the same thread ten times a day without objection.


38 posted on 02/18/2009 7:29:16 PM PST by tlb
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To: Radagast the Fool
The Man from Planet X!!

Oy....someone else that wasted precious time on those books....

39 posted on 02/18/2009 7:35:38 PM PST by Some Fat Guy in L.A. (Nope. Not gonna do it.)
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To: SunkenCiv

I was lucky enough to get to hear Clyde Tombaugh give a talk once—he was then in his 80s but still full of enthusiasm for astronomy. A memorable experience.


40 posted on 02/18/2009 7:53:34 PM PST by Verginius Rufus
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