Largest planet in the solar system could be about to be discovered (4x Jupiter)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1356748/Search-Tyche-believed-largest-planet-solar-system.html ^

[Oztrich Boy]

Without it, short period comets cannot be explained.

Exactly.

You have a better explanation for them?

[aruanan]

The Long Lost Planet X?.................

Probably Long Lost IX since they demoted Pluto.

[MrB]

Well, obviously, SOMETHING has to be there,
because we MUST assume that the solar system is ~5 billion years old,
otherwise, there’s not enough time for evolution to occur.

[Thermalseeker]

So how did the astrologists base horoscopes founded on the notion that the relative positions of celestial bodies can explain or predict fate, personality, human affairs, and other earthly matters without knowing about this?

File it with that psychic convention crowd a few years ago in Chicago that got busted by police. None of the psychics saw it coming.......

[Oztrich Boy]

this could be the fabled ‘nemesis’ that shakes loose comets to bombard us every 100 million years or so....

The Hammer is coming.

[corkoman]

More... Radiation particles will sterilize any baby girl being conceived in deep space, say scientists

Ummmm...this has to be from the thread of sex in space right? Do we need to do any copulating in space to find this gas giant? If so, well then OK by me.

[mo]

“Do scientists usually announce things that they might be about to discover?...”

Only when writing another grant...

[SharpRightTurn]

“the outer Oort Cloud”

Ah, no wonder I haven’t noticed it.

[Oztrich Boy]

Both HAVE to exist, though, for the solar system and the earth to be billions of years old, because without the Oort cloud containing “baby comets” and a body to dislodge them, short period comets wouldn’t exist, being burned up on the first few hundred trips around the sun.

You should have quit while you were ahead.

"burned up on the first few hundred trips". With short period comets having orbits as short as 10 years, without Nemesis to generate new ones, the age of the solar sysytem is about 2000 years, 2500 tops.

Does this seem right to you?

[MrB]

Just tell me when you see it. I’ll wait over here.

[Sopater]

"...a gas giant in the outer Oort Cloud"

Isn't the Oort cloud only "hypothesized"?

[Monorprise]

“Or a red dwarf companion star with the mass of Jupiter.”

A Brown(not Red) Dwarf needs a minimum of ~13 times the mass of Jupiter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf

Red Dwarf are much bigger, I believe at least 60+ times the size of Jupiter.

The hypothetical planet Tyche is said to be only about 4 times the size of Jupiter.

http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00555/tyche3_555342a.pdf

[Red Badger]

too late.....post 13.....

[Sopater]

Hello again MrB.

I see you were immediatly drawn to the mention of the Oort cloud, as was I. Indeed it is only a hypthetical object that was dreamed up to explain short-period comets. It’s like saying that Santa Clause must exist because we know that there are presents under the tree on Christmas morning.

[knarf]

Stands t'reason ....

Increase the debt ceiling and suddenly our universe has expanded with a newer, improved and larger planet.

Stroke o'th'pen ... law o'th'land .... kind'a neat, eh?

[aruanan]

Even if you believed that the locations of planets had any effect on people's fates, this one's effect wouldn't have changed for all of recorded history.

Or its very slow orbit has been subtly changing what was believed to be the regular influences of all the other planets in a unique way each year, which basically trashes any predictive aspects their positions could be alleged to have.

[backwoods-engineer]

Well, obviously, SOMETHING has to be there, because we MUST assume that the solar system is ~5 billion years old, otherwise, there’s not enough time for evolution to occur.

400 quadrillion years wouldn't be enough time for evolution to occur, without external information input.

5 billion years is from radioactive dating, NOT from evolution. That figure was arrived at separately from the faulty "theory of evolution" in biology.

[Aevery_Freeman]

The existence of the Oort cloud is widely accepted, albeit not proved.

However, a quick Google search of the publications claiming the imminent discovery of a planet with sufficient mass to become a dwarf star should dim the enthusiasm.

[Sopater]

5 billion years is from radioactive dating, NOT from evolution. That figure was arrived at separately from the faulty "theory of evolution" in biology.

Actually, the 4.5 billion years could not be arrived at by any scientifically calibrated method. It is widely accepted, however, because it fits well with the need for an old earth to allow time for the evolution of species present today.

[Wuli]

“Or a red dwarf companion star with the mass of Jupiter.”

I have occasionally speculated, in my mind, on a non-standard theory of “alternative” “planet” formation.

Standard theory expects that all planets in a solar system are born of the same process as the formation of a solar system’s “sun”; that planets were further out in the “cooling” ring of material from which a sun and all it’s planets were formed.

But, that has always led me to the following questions.

If - across the entire universe, and even across our own galaxy - stars (suns) are not only dying all the time, are they not also (different ones) being born all the time?

In as much as all stars (suns) do not have 100% the same composition then would it not also be true that what is left when a star (sun) “dies” is also not the same; not the same as that star’s remnant but also not the same with regards to its “solar system”.

Since, what remains when a star (sun) dies is not always the same, then when a star “dies”, or after a star “has died”, is it not also possible that some rocky-core remnant or cooling gaseous remnant of a star, or of it’s “solar system” MAY, in time - pushed and pulled by all the stars around it (no matter how weakly from no matter how far away) - be pulled into the “orbit” (approximate gravitational-assisted direction) of another star (sun).

If that series of questions all have positive answers (if it could be proven) then it would demonstrate that not all “planets” in a “solar system” necessarily originate in that solar system.

What if years from now some form of “dating” shows some planet in our solar system with an orbit outside of our orbit (pick one) to be “older” than the “sun” is believed to be, by current “solar” science?

Now, either I am ignorant (in this realm of science) or nuts, or I need to “patent” this series of questions. /sarc