Talk:Planet X

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[edit] General points

I have a vague memory of "Planet X" also having been used to describe the theoretical ninth planet that was apparently affecting the orbit of Neptune... the search for that Planet X eventually resulted in the discovery of Pluto, though Pluto didn't end up explaining the discrepancy either. -- April

  • Errr, isn't this what the article implies in its first couple of sentences? Rgamble
    • Yeah, just a terminology question. I thought it was used in the search for Pluto (Percival Lowell) with X=unknown instead of X=10. I could be wrong! -- April
      • Ah yes, you are right. That was one of my favorite astronomical stories as a child, so I do remember it. I guess I didn't notice the apparent connection in the article made between X and 'tenth planet'. Fortunate perhaps that the designation was made X, since it fits both possibilities (X=unknown and when that one wasn't found, X=10 if they had found the hypothetical tugger of Neptune). You're right, it could be made more clear and the connection to Lowell added. Rgamble

The article says our most powerful detection techniques can detect an earth sized planet up to 70 AU away. Since we managed to detect the much smaller Sedna at 90 AU, I think these numbers may need some updating? Martijn faassen 15:49, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The light received from sun decreases with the square of the distance d, and the fraction of light we're receiving from the object also decreases with the square of the distance (distances to sun and earth being approximately the same), so the intensity of the reflected light we're receiving from an object decreases with 1/d^4. The intensity is also proportional to the area of the planetary disk, so it's proportional to R^2. If we assume the same albedo for the earth-sized planet and want to know how far it has to be away to be as bright as Sedna, we find the equation R(Sedna)^2/d(Sedna)^4 = R(Earth)^2/d(unknown)^4 -> d(unknown) = d(Sedna) * sqrt(R(Earth)/R(Sedna)) = about 240 AU (for the upper limit of Sedna's size). The magnitude of Sedna is about 21, and we can detect objects down to at least magnitude 28, which is 7 mag dimmer or about 1/630 as bright as Sedna. So we can multiply the distance by 630^(1/4) which gives us about 1200 AU for an earth-sized planet! 193.171.121.30 23:38, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The albedo of Sedna is estimated to be > 0.2 .... if we've a really dark planet which has an albedo of 1/50 of Sedna's then we've to multiply the distance by 1/50^(1/4) which is about 450 AU. 193.171.121.30 23:42, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The following text was on the main page, which I've just removed. At first glance it looks like crackpottery. Martijn faassen 23:13, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/21/21_3/21_3.html good web page concerning to el. magnetic fields of our planets

According to seismo researches there is Earth's core spinning more quickly than crust. Reflex to it is generation of such rotor-conductor, which is surrounded by stator-less conductive layers, coats, where are areas permanent magnetised, semiconductive, insulative-dielectric. Result-consequence so is creation of Earths electro-magnetic field. When we look at other planets, Moon, Sun and especially on their el.mag. fields, we find that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Moon have got much weeker fields than Earth (<1/100 of Earth's e.m. field intensity). Magnetic fields of Jupiter, Saturn are many times stronger and e.m. fields of Uranus, Neptune are comparable with Earth's e.m. fields intensity. Why Mercury, Mars, Moon have week e.m. fields? 1. Their cores are small, there are not big enough differences in densities of cores and sheets (in bordering lyers). Moon has not symetrical position of its core toward sheet layers. E.m. fields of outdoor planets are in opposite orientation toward Earth's field orientation, have North and south poles exchanged!!! Why?! Planet X (circa 25x mass of Jupiter, but superdensty-dwarf star, something like neutron star, or core of star rid of outer layers?!...) when everytime after aprox. 1500 years comes to perihelia thanks to it big gravity, thanks strong e. m. field shifts planets from their orbits, swing their axes and with its strong e. m. field works as primary rotor, which activate, bestir cores-rotors of planets toward their stators-sheets. It works like when we spin, roll eg on the table. First are rotating more quickly surface layers, but on the end core is (thanks to higher density) spinning more quickly and longer time too. X is comming from direction under ecliptic and crosses plane of ecliptic somewhere between Jupiter and Mars, in band of asteroids. This is reason, why magnetic fields of Jovian planets are turned toward Earth's magnetic poles. X namely works on Earth and on Jovian planets with its (X's) opposite poles. X has perihelia circa 120 millions km from Sun, above path of Venus-aprox. X travel relativly farther (comes not so close) to Venus and Mercury than to Earth on its path. Suns gravity, e. m. forces works over there more on Venus, Mercury than X, X has got (at Mercury, Venus) other angle of e. m. field than at Earth, Jupiter... these are reasons, why Venus, Mercury had got week e. m. fields and are slowly axis rotating too. Now there were observed strong changes in power, direction of Saturn's e. m. field. X is namely approaching orbit of Saturn, going to cross it within 3 years, it is result of my calculations too. Probe Huygens-Cassini will it observe+ flood, tsunami waves on Titan best regards RNDr. Smutny Pavel www.mojweb.sk/planetx www.mojweb.sk/frances

Second batch of crackpottery stuff removed from article. Martijn faassen 23:21, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If you dont believe to old historical legends, historical maps writtings (Bible, senmut map, narmer palette, dendera zodiac...)so its your thing, but acceleration of motion of magnetic poles, acceleratiopn of ocean water level rising, global warming on Earth, on Mars... in last decade, evidences from ice core probes from Greenland, Antarctic-clear temperature jumps, big changes with period circa 1500years, speaks other than you... There are changes in orbits of planets, but because Planet X is member of our solar system minim. 500000 years so all planets and X and Sun are synchronised in their motions according Titus-Bode law. Super close opposition of Mars-(such close was only before 50000 years-NASA speaks so) too, transition of Venus in this summer speaks too so...were in direction from us...circa Orion const....where comes from X!!! All top astronomers in previous centuries looked for Planet X , because they have seen that paths of our planets, their deviations show existance of X. Those astronomers then forecasted position or discovered also Uranus, Neptune, Pluto!!!/!!!! Look on path of Sedna...direction Orion (there is involved ...astronomers..Brown, Trujillo...done it...opposite motion of Sun toward Planet X )...Look at many other proof (for Planet X exist.) placed on my webs.... thanks RNDr Pavel Smutny-Senmut-Resenmut...

If a tenth planet exists, it is unlikely to be native to the solar system:
comprehensive surveys of the ecliptic have been undertaken, concluding that
no planet of Earth size or greater exists in the ecliptic plane closer than 
60 AU. Thus, any tenth planet would have to be in a highly inclined orbit,
and so likely to be a captured object and not one that was formed with the
solar system.

I disagree with the conclusion drawn here. The proper conclusion seems to be: if there is a tenth planet it is either a captured planet or it is smaller than the earth or it is farther than 60 AU from the sun.

The link directly under the heading "Planet X Revived" redirects to the main Kuiper belt page, which mentions the apparent edge in passing, but does not discuss the speculation about a possible large body at all. The link doesn't seem very useful or informative in that light - I assume that it originally pointed to an actual page about this possibility? In any case, perhaps this should be changed.

[edit] Neptune's mass and its orbit

In this article, it is stated that "Planet X" was search for because

there was a real possibility that the errors in Neptune's orbit could be explained by a still-unknown planet.

Later, it says that

these apparent discrepancies were resolved when the Voyager 2 space probe discovered that Neptune's mass had been miscalculated; with Neptune's correct mass taken into account, there was no longer a need for another planet to explain its orbit.

This is bogus. The mass of a planet has no direct effect on its own orbit. Instead it is perturbed by the pull of other planets. So that discrepancies are either due to errors in the mass of Uranus, or the planet affected by the discrepancy in Neptune's mass was Uranus.

This issue needs to be researched and this article corrected. In addition, scolarly references are needed for this article. --EMS | Talk 19:12, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

P.S. See [SEDS on Planet X]. --EMS | Talk 19:29, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Just for the record - as mentioned in that reference, the masses for more than one planet were revised upwards. It appears the text has already been updated appropriately. Hv 00:08, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nibiru/Murdoc

On the section Planet X in Myth: This does not belong here. There is a page called 12th Planet which contains some of this material and where the rest belongs.

I am working on correcting this page in my user space. This stuff on Nibiru is going to go in almost its entirety. A reference of some sort will replace it, but that is all that I will tolerate in this page. This should be primarily about the search for trans-Neptunian objects, not this odd piece of pseudoscience. (This is not to say that the material does not belong in Wikipedia. I am just saying that the details do not belong here. I gather that this is part of human knowledge in one way or another.) --EMS | Talk 16:08, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

I've heard about this matter as well, on Coast To Coast AM and related radio shows, on the 'net. This rock was alleged to be the size of Jupiter or larger, it was supposed to "graze" this planet, which will tear it apart, leaving the alien planet intact.

A Zachariah Sitchin has repeated referred to this rock many times. Martial Law 10:13, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] QB vs UB

Does someone explain this terminology somewhere? Is my guess correct that QB = Kuiper Belt? What do the suffix numbers mean? -- Kevin Saff 18:53, 29 July 2005 (EDT)

See provisional designation. In a nutshell, this is a description of the object's discovery. 2003 UB313 means that this is the 7,527th object known to have been first observed in the second half of October 2003. By the way, this type of designation also indicates that this new object is presumed to be a minor planet. --EMS | Talk 03:27, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
P.S. Could you kindly sign your questions? Using ~~~~ will have Wikipedia generate a signature line for you. As-is I chose to generate one for you by getting the info out of this page's history. --EMS | Talk 03:27, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gravitational slingshot and outer planet masses

This article should not refer to the gravitational slingshot effect in refering to how the various space probes caused the masses of the outer planets to be revised. Even before the probes got flung around the planet, it was noticed that they were travelling faster than expected based on the Doppler shift in the frequencies of thier transmissions. That the probe was on a gravitational slingshot trajectory is irrelevant, and even with the discrepancy in the planet's mass there was not that much effect on the results of doing the slingshot. --EMS | Talk 17:18, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. Whether or not there was a "slingshot effect" in navigational terms, the process is the same, even for tiny amounts of accleration. I can see how linking to it could be slightly misleading. Nevertheless, I'd like to find the original paper (which isn't online, as far as I've found: Tyler et al, 1989, Science) or a good discussion of it, to be more precise about the methods used. --Dhartung | Talk 23:21, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 1983 discovery

Jcb33 added the following to the page, which at first glance tends to come off as a little too conspiracy-theoristy (and written in a way-too talkpagey style) to let stand. I've moved it over to the talk page until we can get some kind of confirmation aside from a apparently copyvio'ed newspaper article. -The Tom 17:02, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Possible Planet X Found In 1983?

Image:PX12Q.jpg
Posible Orbit Of Planet X.

On The 30th Of December In 1983, there was a press release from NASA to six different newspapers. Two of which were called "The Washington Press" and "The New York Times" The title used by The Washington Press was "Mystery Heavenly Body Discovered" and it was a FRONT page story! It was said that the planet discovered could be as large as Jupiter and although very far from earth (50 Billion Miles) was close enough to be in the orbit of our Sun. It was located towards the Orion Constellation by the U.S. infrared astronomical satellite (IRAS). This satellite was capable of cooling itself to such a level that it could detect even the coldest objects in the universe, which was useful as this new discovery was so cold that it cast no light or gave off heat of any description. It is very hard to find updated news on this as there have been so many discoveries in the time since this was posted, although it is very interesting that as soon as NASA realised it had gone to press they put a halt to any more information on it being released and still to this day keep it a secret. Did NASA suddenly consider this could be Planet X and regret there press release?

That article, I see, has been copyvio'd. In any case, this is definitely loose nut stuff, see Bad Astronomy and Zetatalk. Since the press conference did happen, apparently (first link), there may be justification for noting something about this in the article. --Dhartung | Talk 22:26, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Xena

How does the conclusion of this article correlate with the recent confirmaiton of the existence of Xena?[1] --Kmsiever 00:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't. Xena is too small to perturb the orbits of Uranus or Neptune in any way. The only thing it proves is that, since it lies at exactly the same distance as Harrington predicted for his Planet X, that if such a world as Harrington described existed, we would have seen it by now. Serendipodous 17:19, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re-instated Planet X conspiracy theory

Many people who come to Wikipedia searching for Planet X are looking for information on this conspiracy theory. I think it should at least be mentioned, but as a conspiracy theory. Nibiru and "Planet X" are not quite the same; Sitchin has never said this Planet X would arrive as soon as Nancy Lieder et al are claiming, so it should be discussed separately. Serendipodous 17:19, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree, the only context ive heard about it is in conspiracy sites and books. There should be a mention of this. /er

[edit] Exit Mundi

Shouldn't the Exit Mundi article be in the external links section? Argias 23:01, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

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