Planetoid discovery in Solar System leads to Planet X suspicions - Polidicks

[quote]Astronomers have increased the size of the observable solar system after spotting a 450-km wide object orbiting the sun. The lump of ice and rock circles the sun at a greater distance than any known object, and never gets closer than 12bn kilometres – 80 times the distance from Earth to the sun. If its size is confirmed it could qualify as a dwarf planet in the same category as Pluto. Researchers said the discovery proves the existence of the inner Oort cloud, a region of icy bodies that lies far beyond the orbit of Neptune – which at 4.5bn kilometres from the sun is the most remote planet in the solar system.[/quote] [quote]Though exciting in its own right, the discovery raises a more tantalising prospect for many astronomers: that a "Super Earth" up to 10 times the mass of our planet orbits the sun at such a great distance that it has never been seen.[/quote] [url]http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/science/space/a-new-planetoid-reported-in-far-reaches-of-solar-system.html?_r=0[/url] [url]http://www.astronomy.com/news/2014/03/major-new-dwarf-planet-discovered[/url] [url]http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/26/dwarf-planet-super-earth-solar-system-2012-vp113?CMP=fb_gu[/url] Space is wack

I thought they just completed a survey of that area and concluded there was no planet x

upon further investigation, the planetoid is found to be your mom

its nibiru, man. the annunaki are gonna come to reclaim humanity

Imo it shouldn't be called planet X because that's related to stupid "end of world!!!" bullshit. Actually I thought the theorized planet was called Tyche?

[quote]a "Super Earth" up to 10 times the mass of our planet orbits the sun at such a great distance that it has never been seen.[/quote] Where did this come from?

[QUOTE=MatheusMCardoso;44365197]Where did this come from?[/QUOTE] As far as I know, the idea is that objects at that distance aren't moving in the trajectories scientists think they should, so one of their ideas is that there's a large planet out there influencing their orbit. We can't see it because not enough light reaches it. Past Neptune shit becomes quite dark ya dig?

[QUOTE=MatheusMCardoso;44365197]Where did this come from?[/QUOTE] Guardian article, should have said in quote, sorry

[QUOTE=MatheusMCardoso;44365197]Where did this come from?[/QUOTE] Because of the erratic orbits of some TNOs and variable orbit bodies, as well as Neptune or Uranus, I believe iirc, it's been long suspected that a larger-than-Earth body or gas giant outside of our visual detection may be affecting their orbits. It's been an ongoing theory that was just brought up again with the WISE survey which just completed and showed no evidence for such a body. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyche_(hypothetical_planet)[/url]

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;44365192]Imo it shouldn't be called planet X because that's related to stupid "end of world!!!" bullshit. Actually I thought the theorized planet was called Tyche?[/QUOTE] Tyche is a gas giant theorized to have been ejected from the solar system and thrown into the Oort Cloud as the system was initially being formed. the same NASA study that disproved the potential existence of Planet X recently also disproved the existence of Tyche, so i don't know if the Super Earth would take the same name, assuming it even exists. maybe it's hanging out in the Cloud with the star Nemesis, being all ominous (and probably not real).

Why does all the disproved stuff get the best names? I'd love to see a star called Nemesis, that sounds badass!

[QUOTE=SpartanXC9;44365487]Why does all the disproved stuff get the best names? I'd love to see a star called Nemesis, that sounds badass![/QUOTE] it's badass cos it's supposedly influencing the Oort Cloud from a very long distance away from our sun, plucking magnet strings and manipulating orbits to send asteroids shrieking towards us every two hundred and fifty million years, which tends to kill most life on Earth. this is called the [I][B]Death Star[/B][/I] hypothesis. the orbit of Sedna could be thought to support this theory. its orbit is bizarrely elliptical and elongated, so that it's both never affected by the sun and never far enough away to be affected by anything else. everything we know says that it was probably just stretched out into that orbit by a passing star without anywhere to stay, which is the more probable conclusion. also, the WISE scan that ruled out Tyche also showed that there couldn't be a star out there any bigger than Saturn that could be orbiting our sun. so, cool (and scary) as Nemesis may be, it just isn't supported by any of our scans or theories. [editline]27th March[/editline] basically Nemesis gets the coolest name because it's a giant cosmic railgun for asteroids that kills everyone whenever it feels like it. i'm pretty glad it's not real

[QUOTE=Eltro102;44364962]upon further investigation, the planetoid is found to be your mom[/QUOTE] [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/gn2Ea.png[/IMG]

Make Pluto a planet again and I'll call it Planet X, until then, it's Fuckwadoficeandrock X.

I'm more impressed that they managed to spot a 450km wide object at that distance.

The last Super-Earth I read about, after doing the math would take at a lowball estimate about 6000 years to reach with current technology or current technology with minor advancements. So, it would require crew, fuel and a ship capable of sustaining life and operation for at least 6000 years to reach the new Super-Earth and god help you if you get there and it doesn't have a breathable atmosphere. Since we're nowhere near human hibernation technology, this is assuming the crew would have to be constantly screwing each other and raising their children to be astronavigators, mechanics, scientists, etc. Basically, impossible. We're pretty much stuck here on this rock unless some friendly aliens pop in and share some Star Trek/Star Wars technology with us.

[QUOTE=IGotWorms;44366151]Basically, impossible. We're pretty much stuck here on this rock unless some friendly aliens pop in and share some Star Trek/Star Wars technology with us.[/QUOTE] Well, we might also just invent the technology over the course of time, due to the ever-changing and ever-improving nature of scientific progress. We might consider FTL travel impossible for now, but as long as we continue to exist, someone will eventually come along and figure out how to break, circumvent or otherwise get around the light-speed limit. Supposedly-concrete laws and facts have been frequently changed as time rolls on, since science is always growing and changing, so FTL travel suddenly becoming possible or circumvent-able sometime in the future is a real possibility. That, or some hostile aliens with their own FTL/light-speed limit-avoiding tech will come around, get their asses kicked, and we'll reverse-engineer their tech for our own purposes. That could work as well, and we'd get extra galactic bragging-rights for beating the crap out of a more advanced species, despite being a bunch of mostly-homeworld-bound primitives who can't stop squabbling amongst themselves.

[QUOTE=Sableye;44364959]I thought they just completed a survey of that area and concluded there was no planet x[/QUOTE] Well they were probably looking for a gas giant or something else as big, not a dwarf planet.

[QUOTE=TurboSax;44366303]Well, we might also just invent the technology over the course of time, due to the ever-changing and ever-improving nature of scientific progress. We might consider FTL travel impossible for now, but as long as we continue to exist, someone will eventually come along and figure out how to break, circumvent or otherwise get around the light-speed limit. Supposedly-concrete laws and facts have been frequently changed as time rolls on, since science is always growing and changing, so FTL travel suddenly becoming possible or circumvent-able sometime in the future is a real possibility. That, or some hostile aliens with their own FTL/light-speed limit-avoiding tech will come around, get their asses kicked, and we'll reverse-engineer their tech for our own purposes. That could work as well, and we'd get extra galactic bragging-rights for beating the crap out of a more advanced species, despite being a bunch of mostly-homeworld-bound primitives who can't stop squabbling amongst themselves.[/QUOTE] I have a feeling that the Earth will be destroyed by ourselves, natural disasters or an ELE before we're able to create technology capable of self-sustained human deep space exploration. Maybe, if the world combined and focused their efforts on endeavors like this but everyone is more concerned with just being dicks to each other, so space exploration takes the sideline, is often used for propaganda/nationalist purposes in many countries and takes a major backseat to military spending.

I want them to call it Mondas

[QUOTE=IGotWorms;44366439]I have a feeling that the Earth will be destroyed by ourselves, natural disasters or an ELE before we're able to create technology capable of self-sustained human deep space exploration. Maybe, if the world combined and focused their efforts on endeavors like this but everyone is more concerned with just being dicks to each other, so space exploration takes the sideline, is often used for propaganda/nationalist purposes in many countries and takes a major backseat to military spending.[/QUOTE] Well, things may look shitty now in terms of world cooperation and politics, but the general prevalence of violence and hatred has actually been steadily decreasing over time, and we're in a pretty damn nice and friendly world compared to even a hundred years ago, much less a thousand. It may not look like we're getting closer to a single or cooperating-group Earth government and focused space innovation right now, but we actually are getting closer and closer at an ever-growing rate. Sure, there's still bickering divided governments and space travel that's being shelved in favor of war, but you can't reasonably expect humanity to just drop every bad habit within under a century since the last big global war. We've been taught through trial and error that we have to remain in separated tribes as a species and kill/consume any different tribes in order to survive for thousands of years, which is a cultural trait that's served us well up until the last century or so. It's ingrained into our many cultures because not being warlike often got your tribe fucked over by the other tribes who were, so even now we're still trying to shake the "kill everyone but your own kin" behavior. Even in spite of our stuck-in-a-rut aggressive behavior, science is still advancing at a constantly-rising rate, to the point where even the most war-heavy periods in recent history had extreme leaps in scientific knowledge. Science is still progressing with or without cultural backup because science in its raw form doesn't give two shits about culture, and it never has. It just adapts to further advance in spite of obstacles, rather than truly being stopped. Even the most restricted and intellectual-fearing periods in human history have had science continue on its undying journey of advancement. As long as at least one single human being on this planet wants to improve something or learn anything new, science will march on like an unstoppable machine no matter what we put in its way. It'll just do so more slowly if we make obstacles for it to overcome, is all. Advancement might be slowed down due to political dick-waving, but nothing short of the total annihilation of humanity will stop science from marching onward. We'll get to space travel eventually, but first we gotta conquer our aggressive cultural demons. And we're getting closer and closer to achieving said conquest by the day, no matter how grim it looks outside. Besides, compared to previous eras, this is a very peaceful, intellectual and globally-connected one, so we're already way better-off than any of our ancestors were. Just have patience, we'll make it to space-travel eventually so long as we survive, the progression will just be slowed a bit by our inability to kick our aggressive habits in any quick time span. As for natural/space disasters, that kind of shit could happen at literally any time from now until the death of the universe itself, so it's not worth considering as a definitive obstacle we must overcome. It's definitely a real threat, but there's no way to defend against or predict gigantic atmosphere-destroying cosmic rays and other such interstellar disasters as of yet, so we should just stick to not killing each other and cross that bridge when we get to it.

[QUOTE=IGotWorms;44366151]The last Super-Earth I read about, after doing the math would take at a lowball estimate about 6000 years to reach with current technology or current technology with minor advancements. So, it would require crew, fuel and a ship capable of sustaining life and operation for at least 6000 years to reach the new Super-Earth and god help you if you get there and it doesn't have a breathable atmosphere. Since we're nowhere near human hibernation technology, this is assuming the crew would have to be constantly screwing each other and raising their children to be astronavigators, mechanics, scientists, etc. Basically, impossible. We're pretty much stuck here on this rock unless some friendly aliens pop in and share some Star Trek/Star Wars technology with us.[/QUOTE] I seriously doubt any aliens capable of reaching us would be doing so out of the kindness of their hearts. My bet is they'd either be like the aliens in Independence Day, or they'd be the salarians who want us to fight a war for them.

[QUOTE=Ekalektik_1;44367337]I seriously doubt any aliens capable of reaching us would be doing so out of the kindness of their hearts. My bet is they'd either be like the aliens in Independence Day, or they'd be the salarians who want us to fight a war for them.[/QUOTE] Like many primitive species, an alien race would have likely in many ways mirrored human history. They would have advanced from tribal stages to nations and/or unified world powers. An alien species that had advanced towards deep space/interstellar travel would have had to make significant scientific advances. So far as far as we can see space is vast, empty and void of any life that we have the means to detect. It is likely that wherever these aliens came from would be very similar so it would be unlikely their motivation to explore/travel space would be hostile takeover of other inhabited planets on the rare chance they find one, especially given the logistical costs of maintaining a planetary invasion fleet. Not to mention, if they already had the means to travel across the galaxies it would likely be much cheaper for them to just travel to another super-Earth or M-Class planet and colonize that. If they needed slaves/workers they could far more easily source it from their own species. Such an advanced alien society would probably have little use as well for our primitive infrastructure. It could be possible they could subjugate the Earth and demand our resources, although unless they had the means of teleportation of said resources, the logistic cost to transport said resources would end up costing more resources than they gained and said resources would be quickly depleted, since it costs us resources to create resources. Any resource tithing would have to be a very measured amount over time. Therefor, it would be far more likely that if they did manage to locate and travel to Earth it would be more so out of scientific curiosity and the desire to make contact with another sentient species.

Lets call it "Pluto II" or something

[QUOTE=Sableye;44364959]I thought they just completed a survey of that area and concluded there was no planet x[/QUOTE] The planet failed to load, we needed to send a ticket to the support team and refresh the solar system first.

It's clearly aliens, we need to get our guns ready.

I heard they were going to make an announcement yesterday about something they discovered about the outer solar system, and my friend joked saying "It's probably Planet X". Wow.

[QUOTE=TurboSax;44366303]Well, we might also just invent the technology over the course of time, due to the ever-changing and ever-improving nature of scientific progress. We might consider FTL travel impossible for now, but as long as we continue to exist, someone will eventually come along and figure out how to break, circumvent or otherwise get around the light-speed limit. Supposedly-concrete laws and facts have been frequently changed as time rolls on, since science is always growing and changing, so FTL travel suddenly becoming possible or circumvent-able sometime in the future is a real possibility. That, or some hostile aliens with their own FTL/light-speed limit-avoiding tech will come around, get their asses kicked, and we'll reverse-engineer their tech for our own purposes. That could work as well, and we'd get extra galactic bragging-rights for beating the crap out of a more advanced species, despite being a bunch of mostly-homeworld-bound primitives who can't stop squabbling amongst themselves.[/QUOTE] well the problem with FTL is that it violates everything we're almost entirely certain is concrete about the universe, and we know that very bad things happen when those established laws aren't laws anymore. it could be possible in the far future (maybe, if you're a glass-half-full type), but A) that's just due to the general assumption that we'll be smarter in the future rather than any actual theoretical possibility, and B) by the time we have easy access to it for simple interstellar travel, society, if not humanity, will be on a very different level than ours. we would probably be very scared and confused if we knew where we were going. but anyway, the important thing you need to know about FTL is that an FTL rocket is as effective as an engine as it is as a weapon. even at 99.99% of [I]c[/I], a rocket aimed at Earth would utterly vaporize most planets in our system and devastate orbits - going [I]faster[/I] than light, which by definition has no upwards cap on velocity, the destruction is ridiculous in both scale and in villainy. if a bunch of aliens [I]really[/I] wanted to wipe us out for whatever reason, they would just shoot a rocket our way, forget about it, then watch Earth explode into tiny bits forty years later through some telescopes. even worse, you can't stop or even accurately detect a rocket flying at relativistic speeds. no hijacking to be done here, the aliens just fire away from their distant planet, and forget there was ever a watery blue speck in a system some greasy brain-damaged monkeys dubbed "Sol". the only possible reason for aliens wanting to kill us but also holding off on annihilating our planet is if we have something that they want, and they're very close by. there's very few resources worth extincting a civilized species for, and even fewer that can't be found in abundance elsewhere. so as you can tell, the prospects for being invaded rather than just vaporized are not looking too great. whoever would want to capture Earth would have to have some very unusual, oddly roundabout motivations for doing so, perhaps even to the point of being inscrutable to we humans. either way it's clear that galactic civilizations are weird and largely inexplicable, so xenosociology is really not my kind of science. it's fun (and sometimes scary) to think about though.