New Evidence of Another Planet in Our Solar System

[NGNM85]

Up telescope! Search begins for giant new planet

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Tyche may be bigger than Jupiter and orbit at the outer edge of the solar system

By Paul Rodgers

If you grew up thinking there were nine planets and were shocked when Pluto was demoted five years ago, get ready for another surprise. There may be nine after all, and [COLOR=blue !important][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=Verdana]Jupiter[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] may not be the largest.

The hunt is on for a gas giant up to four times the mass of Jupiter thought to be lurking in the outer Oort Cloud, the most remote region of the [COLOR=blue !important][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=Verdana]solar [/FONT][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=Verdana]system[/FONT][/COLOR][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR]. The orbit of Tyche (pronounced ty-kee), would be 15,000 times farther from the Sun than the Earth's, and 375 times farther than Pluto's, which is why it hasn't been seen so far.

But scientists now believe the proof of its existence has already been gathered by a [COLOR=blue !important][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=Verdana]Nasa[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] 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."
Once Tyche has been located, other telescopes could be pointed at it to confirm the discovery.
Whether it would become the new ninth planet would be decided by the International [COLOR=blue !important][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=Verdana]Astronomical[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] Union (IAU). The main argument against is that Tyche probably formed around another star and was later captured by the Sun's gravitational field. The IAU may choose to create a whole new category for Tyche, Professor Matese said.
The IAU would also have the final say about the gas giant's name. To the Greeks, Tyche was the goddess responsible for the destiny of cities. Her name was provisionally chosen in reference to an earlier hypothesis, now largely abandoned, that the Sun might be part of a binary star system with a dim companion, tentatively called Nemesis, that was thought responsible for mass extinctions on Earth. In myth, Tyche was the good sister of Nemesis.
Tyche will almost certainly be made up mostly of hydrogen and helium and will probably have an atmosphere much like Jupiter's, with colourful spots and bands and clouds, Professor Whitmire said. "You'd also expect it to have moons. All the outer planets have them," he added.
What will make it stand out in the Wise data is its temperature, predicted to be around -73C, four or five times warmer than Pluto. "The heat is left over from its formation," Professor Whitmire said. "It takes an object this size a long time to cool off."
Most of the billions of objects in the Oort Cloud – a sphere one light year in radius stretching a quarter of the distance to Alpha Centauri, the brightest star in the southern constellation – are lumps of dirty ice at temperatures much closer to absolute zero (-273C).
A few of these are dislodged from their orbits by the galactic tide – the combined gravitational pull from the billions of stars towards the centre of the Milky Way – and start the long fall into the inner solar system.
As these long-period comets get closer to the Sun, some of the ice boils off, forming the characteristic tails that make them visible.
Professors Matese and Whitmire first proposed the existence of Tyche to explain why many of these long-period comets were coming from the wrong direction. In their latest paper, published in the February issue of Icarus, the international journal of solar system studies, they report that more than 20 per cent too many of the long-period comets observed since 1898 arrive from a band circling the sky at a higher angle than predicted by the galactic-tide theory.
No other proposal has been put forward to explain this anomaly since it was first suggested 12 years ago. But the Tyche hypothesis does have one flaw. Conventional theory holds that the gas giant should also dislodge comets from the inner Oort Cloud, but these have not been observed.
Professor Matese suggests this may be because these comets have already been tugged out of their orbits and, after several passes through the inner solar system, have faded to the point that they are much harder to detect.
So if it is real, Tyche may not only be disrupting the orbits of comets, it may also overturn an established scientific theory.



Courtesy of The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...t-2213119.html

[Amphictyonis]

No fucking way. The 2012 Nurubu thing is in full jonesing on crack mode now? Seeing you posted this it has to be a liberal conspiracy. No but seriously, is this real? I'd be interested in any moons seeing the size of the gas giant would cause internal heating of any moon and since it's in the ort cloud there would be plenty of water to form a moon like Europa. I wonder how long it would take to get a probe out that far or if a probe could survive the ort cloud. This is almost more exciting than the earth size planets being found in the habitable zone. Not sure what to think of this yet....

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All I know for sure is the Zecharia Sitchin crowd will be out en mass. An undeniable fact is the Sumerians did say there was another large planet out past Pluto but errr....We're going to have to shut the end of the world crowd up now because they're going to be pretty vocal. They're already making "emergency" videos on youtube.

+ YouTube Video

He's got it all figured out! LOL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zecharia_Sitchin[FONT=Verdana]


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[Amphictyonis]

There should be 50 posts in this thread. Sorry if I muffled it up with the conspiracy theory jokes.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I'll believe it when I see it. All they have at the moment is a tentative hypothesis.

[NGNM85]

I'll believe it when I see it. All they have at the moment is a tentative hypothesis.

Oh, absolutely. I never meant to imply it was a sure thing. I just thought it was interesting and I was surprised nobody had acknowledged it, yet. Whenever stuff like this comes up somebody always beats me to it.

[NGNM85]

Update from ScienceDaily;
'Can WISE Find Hypothetical 'Tyche' Planet at the Edge of Our Solar System?'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0220204429.htm

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

It looks like we won't have anything to go on until the full WISE data is released in 2012.

[Amphictyonis]

It looks like we won't have anything to go on until the full WISE data is released in 2012.

But we'll all be dead by then!

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

But we'll all be dead by then!

I can't tell you how smug I will be when that year rolls around and the world hasn't ended.

[Amphictyonis]

I can't tell you how smug I will be when that year rolls around and the world hasn't ended.

There should be a count down party online. Whats the date? Dec 23'd 2012? How sad that would be if entire families thought the end of the world was really coming. All sorts of bad things can happen in that scenario. Doomsday cults being just one. Cults are interesting though, interesting in the sense that only if a minority believes in a lie then it's a cult but if half the world practices the lie then it's legitimate. Like Orwell said being an island of one doesn't make you crazy. "Truth is defined by conformity to the masses". In this sense I see most of the culture in the USA as a cult. Whats the line between cult and generic consumerist society? People who are engulfed in the paradigm presented to them? I'll clarify if this makes no sense.

[Zav]

Well, I must say this is pretty cool. I wonder if it's true.
At least probes can get there in a person's lifetime.