
The Science About Planet Nine, So Far - rbanffy
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/05/09/the-scientific-truth-about-planet-nine-so-far/#5d165fe7d84e
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nieksand
If this topic interests you, check out the really awesome lecture by one of
the original paper authors. It's both informative and very well done.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMCwezegPNg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMCwezegPNg)

Forbes does mention the blog, and that's worth following directly too:

[http://www.findplanetnine.com/](http://www.findplanetnine.com/)

~~~
ansible
And for more of a layman's introduction, The Verge also has done a small
feature on it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwz7Z5cUDuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwz7Z5cUDuM)

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pc2g4d
Interesting. I really feel these sorts of searches could be automated. Given a
database of all known objects in space, attempt to infer likely objects that
have not yet been observed. Then automatically direct telescopes to make
observations at the inferred location. If they find something, then pass it
along to a human for assessment.

Piece by piece the database would grow in coverage. As it does, its power to
make predictions of unknown objects should grow, until we've reached the limit
of our current instruments' ability to observe.

Yeah?

~~~
mturmon
A piece of this (automated object searches) has already happened, as you may
know. For one of several operational implementations, see:

[http://crts.caltech.edu/index.html](http://crts.caltech.edu/index.html)

The original survey was built for near-Earth objects, but the extra-solar-
system transients detected (e.g., supernovae) became the subject of many
papers.

The supernova catalog that observations like these compiled -- but from other
transient-detection networks -- became the basis of the 2011 Nobel Prize for
the observational discovery of dark energy:
[https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/20...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/press.html)

You may be seeking after something harder, which is to use orbit anomalies to
infer positions of objects - kind of an automation of all the orbital
simulation efforts described in the article. That, of course, has not been
done.

~~~
theoh
Though of course this is the method that led to the discovery of Neptune:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_Neptune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_Neptune)

~~~
mturmon
Yes. Refreshing my memory from the link you gave, it seems like the Neptune
searchers would have benefited decisively from image-differencing and all-
inclusive source databases -- like the ones that are now automated. Because,
during their search for Neptune, they observed it twice without noticing it:

"Only after the discovery of Neptune had been announced in Paris and Berlin
did it become apparent that Neptune had been observed on August 8 and August
12 but because Challis lacked an up-to-date star-map, it was not recognized as
a planet."

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jecjec
Forbes = auto-close tab

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maxsavin
Haha, funny thing is conspiracy theorists have been saying there is a planet 9
for long before all of this.

~~~
chimen
Planet 9 discovery and early papers dates back to 1800s. Don't attribute this
to "conspiracy theorists". It just so happens that they like to cling on "not
yet fully understood" artifacts of theories and research fields so they can
fuel their ramblings and lure people. It was the mayan calendar, the 9th
planet or Nibiru how they like to call it and now they like to use the word
quantum a lot.

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csours
Why can't we just shine some radar out there?

~~~
danielvf
When light travels, it spreads out as it goes, making it less powerful for a
given area. This is the famous inverse square law.

Radar decreases the same way. However, radar is even worse in that it also
decreases on the way back to the sender.

So if you double the distance to the target, the radar signal coming back is
1/16 as strong. If you increase the distance by a factor of 1,000, then the
signal coming back is 1/1,000,000,000,000 as strong. And so on...

This makes radar a pretty poor tool for space exploration.

~~~
dzdt
And it makes it amazing that we actually _did_ use Earth-based radar to study
the planet Mercury. Before the Messenger spacecraft, some of our best science
about Mercury came from Arecibo radar observations.

~~~
farnsworth
Arecibo is a radio telescope, not radar. It receives radio waves transmitted
by objects in space, but doesn't send and bounce them off objects.

~~~
thirdhaf
Arecibo is and has been used for radar astronomy as well
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy)

~~~
farnsworth
Whoa, I had no idea - thanks! Should have mentioned that IANAAstronomer.

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darklajid
Warning: This website started to play a random video in the upper left corner
for me. With audio.

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lucasmullens
It was muted by default for me.

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pluma
It wasn't muted for me. Chrome on Linux with no ad blocking.

It actually took me a few seconds to find out where the sound was coming from
because there was no indication or even volume control.

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aaron695
I'm still blown away the highest ranking story about planet nine only has 883
votes on HN

