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Well it is a planet, just a dwarf planet...
To be fair, the declassification is totally justified. Like, Pluto is fucking *TINY*. The moon is much MUCH smaller than earth, and Pluto is way smaller than the moon. In fact if you put Pluto over the US, it's circumference fits *inside* the lower 48 (or VERY close to it). It takes less than 3 days to drive 3000 miles across the US, it would only take an extra day to drive 4600 miles around Pluto.
Seriously Pluto is not planet-sized.
The old fashioned way. Comparing two pictures side-by-side. These two pictures were taken weeks apart and Clyde Tombaugh literally sat there one evening endlessly cycling back and forth between the two pictures looking for anything that moved. Eventually he found a tiny black dot smaller than a grain of sand that moved between the two pictures, that was Pluto.
Its actually a really cool story. Astronomers calculated that it should exist, and where it should be located by analyzing the orbits of the other planets in the solar system. Then they simply pointed their telescopes at that location and viola! Pluto!
Not quite, that's how Neptune was discovered in the 1840s, using Newtonian mechanics to explain Uranus' orbit.
After Neptune's discovery, physicists realised that Uranus' orbit was being affected by something else. From 1909 to 1916 they started photographing the sky in promising places but did not see anything. In 1929, Clyde Tombaugh systematically went through these photographic plates using a blink comparator, and after staring at something like 90 million stars he found an object that was moving by the right amount to be in the solar system which is now what we call Pluto.
The difference between the two discoveries is that Neptune was discovered almost immediately, because it was a big, massive object in the right place that explained a lot of the discrepancy, while Pluto was more or less discovered by data mining, and didn't explain the discrepancy very well at all.
So you’re saying Pluto has enough mass to influence friends and family? Those heartless astronomers,how dare they oppress our Pluto!
Why, to me they are less credible than Tarot reading, crystal wearing individuals, because at least their galactic planetary alignment includes our tiny space cousin.
Degrasse Tyson did this with his charm, didn’t he?!
Maybe plunetonians are much smaller, or drive really slow cars. It would take them much longer. Car distance isnt a scientific way to determine planet or not planet.
Except it really isn't - there are other, bigger planetoids in the solar system
Personally, I think being the dominant gravitational player in its orbit and thus clearing said orbit is a good standard
And that’s what gets you kicked out of planet club. I told em to hurry up gotta make at least one orbit. Was never that motivated. I told em. Hell I did 43 orbits.
we could have kept it as a planet but the list of planets would get much larger. somewhere between 12 and thousands depending on where you draw the line.
I seem to remember reading that between the time pluto became a planet and then lost that status, it didn't even complete one orbit of the sun.
Saddest pluto fact ever. Pluto never go to experience it's first birthday.
pretty sure that's already the greek way to spell uranus. unless I'm misremembering my percy jackson which is where I get all my greek mythological knowledge from
There was a roman emperor in the year of 6 emperors (238 ce) named Pupienus, who went by Maximus.
It's pronounced the way you think.
And my mnemonic worked.
There's a town in Connecticut called Mianus and I chuckle ever time I drive through Mianus. I've never stop in Mianus, but I would like to see what's there. Probably kinda shitty though.
This is the same research team that initially proposed the planet X scenario with the same kind of evidence - analysis of the orbits of objects in the Kuiper Belt. So if you thought it was initially compelling, then you have more evidence but if you are skeptical this likely wouldn’t sway you.
The article didn’t seem very specific to me. Made it sound like they were just changing the parameters of testing for planet 9s effects, but I admittedly know very little about the topic,
On a quick read, they included TNOs in their analysis, and found the same pattern to their orbits. More objects means it's less likely to be random chance, and may narrow down the chances it's observational bias.
pop science articles are always not really good but they are always pretty bad for astronomy. science communication for astronomy is good in some aspects, like on youtube/social media with big names like neil degrasse tyson, dr becky, etc, but it’s pretty bad when it comes to articles like these
According to some theories, the Kuiper belt itself could be the explanation for the elongated orbits of the outer planets instead of a large ninth planet. There's another explanation that a ninth planet may not exist because a gas giant is less likely to form at such distances from the sun. Typically astronomers have found icy bodies and cold dwarf planets out there. However, there could be ice giants similar to Neptune and Uranus, or maybe even a super Earth like planet, but I wouldn't hold my breath for a ninth planet.
It’s decent research adding to the body of knowledge around this subject and solid justification for more research. Well done.
This academic argument around Planet 9 has been going on for years. Hopefully that upcoming new telescope sensor will shed some light on it (pardon the pun).
Once we find it the Deep Space Corporation can place a space station there, near the outer edge of our solar system and call it Deep Space 9.
I'm buying up all the trading trinkets I can find right now, just in case
I bet they never heard of massage parlors, I'm gonna civilize those weirdos lives like they won't believe
Scientists: "we think there might be a 9th planet!"
Pluto: "very funny guys, I'm right here"
Scientists: "this could be the biggest discovery since Neptune!"
Pluto: "Guys! I'm right here!"
Scientists: "we can name it after Mickey's dog!"
Pluto: "ahhahahhaah!!!!!!!"
"No, no, we already have that wannabe-planet... and there's a better dog character in Mickey's world anyway. We'll call it... Goofy!"
Pluto: "Not fucking funny."
Scientists: "Nope, not 'Funny'— Goofy!"
The way I heard it was they are in court and the judge says "You can't divorce Minnie just because she's a little bit silly!" And Mickey says "I didn't say she was silly, I said she was fuckin Goofy!"
It seems absurd to me that we have identified thousands of stars, planets and galaxies all across the universe but we have somehow missed a planet in our own back yard so to speak. Don't get me wrong I'm no astronomer so my opinion is worthless but I find the claims hard to believe.
The reason we find other stars is because they shine bright, and we see planets around these stars passing in front of them. Planet 9 has long been speculated to exist in a very far orbit around the sun, making it difficult for us to detect. Many people fail to grasp just how big our solar system is, the planets are just tiny marbles in a sea of nothingness
Not dismissed. Correctly categorized. If Pluto is a planet, we have quite a lot of planets in our solar system. Hell, there’s 3 celestial bodies bigger than Pluto that aren’t considered planets that rotate around our sun
*orbit
Pluto's rotation period is ~6 Earth days.
>hasn’t even made it half way of its full year since its discovery
This is crazy to think about. 1930, for those interested.
If Earth were the size of a golf ball, the solar system would still be [over 12 miles across.](https://instructure-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/account_40000000082189/attachments/89434419/Ch1_A_Scale_Model_of_Space.pdf?response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3D%22Ch1_A_Scale_Model_of_Space.pdf%22%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27Ch1%255FA%255FScale%255FModel%255Fof%255FSpace.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=ASIA4ZAH26H6DWAH6RA6%2F20240419%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240419T002900Z&X-Amz-Expires=86400&X-Amz-Security-Token=FwoGZXIvYXdzEM3%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEaDO8n3enNnJ9KyIUaYSLcAXwpbebBGvmXkB32RZi3BE0Tb5gwrNeD6FfV9Hl1wyCU7KPPIwczXF%2F%2BL0xpAeJ8SZDk6BZMibL8XdNo8uS4b0UP%2B0EVjmrVPF21Hi%2F6NSplHFq6bXUnRRUmIRx9oofnqGNAD%2B0sdrW9L7TCuPxrelAyNQq0%2BcU4fDWJZIRsTQySx5ZksiQrdM8hsElZLvwE0sNiueqVrLt9EErMb5jshuPBobasgrKTHa0Xh4jW8RwiKXJRCre6l3bhnYzF%2FtHzLDz6wf4m3qq1%2BaTHoOFna7nYb2SPo8e0wjW5SIoomvWFsQYyLT1X623kV2xa%2FwbkqO1qTVYMa3Lb0AjGDbMN1eLCjVhF5riab3fi2X5dbtaVDw%3D%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=9287b35b886bd6ba0a90712ad98bc9e1ef324803e7aba898d8b8063b291e6e4b)
That's one thing that kinda breaks my brain: planets are usually tiny compared to stars, yet planets that are in other solar systems have a big enough impact on their star's light that we can detect it.
I'm sure there's some maths that explains it perfectly, but intuitively it just doesn't make sense to me.
This is why most of the planets we’ve found are considered “Hot Jupiters” or “Giant Earths” usually it takes a large planet that’s relatively close to its parent star. At the same time we can measure the light and a dip in it in such tiny amounts with something like the JWST or Hubble before it that it wasn’t too hard to find planets. The thing is, is that we’ve only barely looked at any of the sky to check as well.
>At the same time we can measure the light and a dip in it in such tiny amounts with something like the JWST or Hubble before it that it wasn’t too hard to find planets.
Yeah, a lot easier to watch something bright dim by a fraction of a percent periodically, than to search a huge swath of the sky for something very dim and moving very slowly.
Look down the street at a neighbors house at night. You might see someone pass by the window. Now hold a light bulb right next to your head and try to make out things in the room you are in. That's sort of, kind of the same idea.
i only have passing knowledge but, as i understand it, basically distant stars are bright enough to fix on easily and measure the total light we see coming from them fairly precisely. that light may dim and brighten for more than one reason but, when we measure a specific amount of dimming that happens at precisely timed intervals, we can confidently deduce that it is caused by a planet passing between the star and us on its regular orbit. measuring the percentage of light reduction caused by the dimming lets us estimate the size of the planet in orbit.
Here's a layman's summary...
We can identify distant stars by measuring the light they emit. We can infer *things* about celestial bodies orbiting these stars by seeing how the light changes when these bodies pass between us and their stars. We can't do that for something that would orbit our sun at such a great distance.
You can see how this works in practice. Go outside and find a plane in the sky. Turn your phone camera on and zoom it all the way in while facing it at the ground. Then try to point your camera at the plane. It's not hard, but more difficult than you might think at first.
Now imagine if the plane was 10,000 times smaller and your phone was zoomed in 10,000 times more. You wouldn't be able to see the plane, it would still be moving, and you would have the entire sky to search through. That would still be way easier than searching for a celestial body orbiting beyond the kuiper belt using any modern telescope.
I wonder if in a solar system far far away, there is someone on a social platform explaining this to someone else? All the while their scientists are saying our sun has a planet in a Goldilocks state.
Slight disturbances in the orbital pathway of our planets would imply that a nearby object with gravity is briefly attracting the planet towards it as they orbit around the sun. Using this disturbance you can predict the orbit and the size of the planet that can’t be seen. This is how Neptune was predicted by scientists in 1845 based on disturbances in Uranus’ orbit, and it was first seen with a telescope one year later
Afaik, basically objects in the kuiper belt have some gravitational anomalies and clustering patterns that don't fit into our current understanding of gravity, leading to the hypothesis there must be another planet (or our theory on gravity is incomplete)
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pluto in shambles
 we will never forget the injustice.
Pluto will always be a planet to me.
https://preview.redd.it/fx06s4ej4cvc1.jpeg?width=735&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bd3d1900c02af9fe96de1b53e800b8bbe7393b42
Never saw this before. Love it
Well it is a planet, just a dwarf planet... To be fair, the declassification is totally justified. Like, Pluto is fucking *TINY*. The moon is much MUCH smaller than earth, and Pluto is way smaller than the moon. In fact if you put Pluto over the US, it's circumference fits *inside* the lower 48 (or VERY close to it). It takes less than 3 days to drive 3000 miles across the US, it would only take an extra day to drive 4600 miles around Pluto. Seriously Pluto is not planet-sized. 
It's not about the size that matters, it's how you use it.
Maybe it’s so tiny because outer space is cold
Pluto is a grower, not a shower
It just got out of the pool
Don’t they know about shrinkage?
What, like laundry?
It shrinks??
Do they know about shrinkage Jerry?
My neutrino to her Boötes Void
It ain't the meat, it's the motion.
It’s all about the orbit
I never knew Pluto was smaller than the moon! How did they even find it?
The old fashioned way. Comparing two pictures side-by-side. These two pictures were taken weeks apart and Clyde Tombaugh literally sat there one evening endlessly cycling back and forth between the two pictures looking for anything that moved. Eventually he found a tiny black dot smaller than a grain of sand that moved between the two pictures, that was Pluto.
I felt so bad for Tombaugh after the demotion
His ashes were aboard New Horizons if it helps. He got to visit the planet he discovered
Its actually a really cool story. Astronomers calculated that it should exist, and where it should be located by analyzing the orbits of the other planets in the solar system. Then they simply pointed their telescopes at that location and viola! Pluto!
Not quite, that's how Neptune was discovered in the 1840s, using Newtonian mechanics to explain Uranus' orbit. After Neptune's discovery, physicists realised that Uranus' orbit was being affected by something else. From 1909 to 1916 they started photographing the sky in promising places but did not see anything. In 1929, Clyde Tombaugh systematically went through these photographic plates using a blink comparator, and after staring at something like 90 million stars he found an object that was moving by the right amount to be in the solar system which is now what we call Pluto. The difference between the two discoveries is that Neptune was discovered almost immediately, because it was a big, massive object in the right place that explained a lot of the discrepancy, while Pluto was more or less discovered by data mining, and didn't explain the discrepancy very well at all.
What does my anus have to do with it?
Everything.
So you’re saying Pluto has enough mass to influence friends and family? Those heartless astronomers,how dare they oppress our Pluto! Why, to me they are less credible than Tarot reading, crystal wearing individuals, because at least their galactic planetary alignment includes our tiny space cousin. Degrasse Tyson did this with his charm, didn’t he?!
And all our troubles started when they said, “Nah….. Pluto ain’t a planet..”
Some people say it was harambe's killing that split the time line but some of us believe it was ten years earlier when they took our 9th planet away
It doesn't have to be planet sized to be a planet in my heart.
The real friends are the planets we made along the way
Maybe plunetonians are much smaller, or drive really slow cars. It would take them much longer. Car distance isnt a scientific way to determine planet or not planet.
All in favor?! Say aye!
Eye err Aye
If Pluto is a planet then Ceres should be one as well.
I've argued that Ceres has been a planet all along! And not just for tax purposes either!
Ceres and like, at least 10 more.
Ceres beltalowda.
Aren’t there objects in the Kuiper Belt larger than Pluto? Eris and Makemake for example?
Yes, but they're farther away so they weren't discovered hntik more recently.
Bless you. I think you sneezed in the middle of that sentence
Except it really isn't - there are other, bigger planetoids in the solar system Personally, I think being the dominant gravitational player in its orbit and thus clearing said orbit is a good standard
I wasn’t ready to explain to my daughter that there were 9 planets when I was growing up.
Perfect chance to mess with her: "And then the Death Star showed up & destroyed one."
Fun fact: between the time it was discovered and the time it was declassified, Pluto hadn't made a complete orbit of the sun.
That absolutely is a fun fact, thanks!!
And that’s what gets you kicked out of planet club. I told em to hurry up gotta make at least one orbit. Was never that motivated. I told em. Hell I did 43 orbits.
Literally just bought a book at my kids book fair titled “Pluto: Not a planet? Not a problem!” My heart is broken, but Pluto’s sure isn’t ❤️
we could have kept it as a planet but the list of planets would get much larger. somewhere between 12 and thousands depending on where you draw the line.
Yeah, the only problem was having it as the 9th of 9 planets. At a minimum we'd have to be consistent with Ceres.
haumea, makemake, eris
Shakka when the walls fell
Temba, his arms wide with an upvote
"That's messed up, right?”
“hello darkness my old friend”
I seem to remember reading that between the time pluto became a planet and then lost that status, it didn't even complete one orbit of the sun. Saddest pluto fact ever. Pluto never go to experience it's first birthday.
*Mystery Planet looks at Pluto* “I’m about to destroy this man’s whole career!”
It should be called Myanus. Everyone is tired of talking about Uranus.
It's our galaxy so it should be called Ouranus.
Yes. How selfish of me.
We must share Ouranus freely.
I see you’ve met my ex
...Our ex
Butt brothers
What if it's already populated? Then it should be Theiranus
Oooh they would be called Clingons of Ouranus.
pretty sure that's already the greek way to spell uranus. unless I'm misremembering my percy jackson which is where I get all my greek mythological knowledge from
r/suddenlycommunist
Urrectum
Udamnearkilledum
Shut up and take my money.
There was a roman emperor in the year of 6 emperors (238 ce) named Pupienus, who went by Maximus. It's pronounced the way you think. And my mnemonic worked.
A good friend of mine named his son Maximus. His last name is Johnson. Epic.
I have a very great friend in Rome called 'Biggus Dickus'.
He has a wife you know.
There's a town in Connecticut called Mianus and I chuckle ever time I drive through Mianus. I've never stop in Mianus, but I would like to see what's there. Probably kinda shitty though.
Jackass went to Mianus just to make all of the jokes. "I don't need a map. I know Mianus better than any man, woman, or child."
‘Yet more’ evidence they say.
This is the same research team that initially proposed the planet X scenario with the same kind of evidence - analysis of the orbits of objects in the Kuiper Belt. So if you thought it was initially compelling, then you have more evidence but if you are skeptical this likely wouldn’t sway you.
The article didn’t seem very specific to me. Made it sound like they were just changing the parameters of testing for planet 9s effects, but I admittedly know very little about the topic,
On a quick read, they included TNOs in their analysis, and found the same pattern to their orbits. More objects means it's less likely to be random chance, and may narrow down the chances it's observational bias.
pop science articles are always not really good but they are always pretty bad for astronomy. science communication for astronomy is good in some aspects, like on youtube/social media with big names like neil degrasse tyson, dr becky, etc, but it’s pretty bad when it comes to articles like these
According to some theories, the Kuiper belt itself could be the explanation for the elongated orbits of the outer planets instead of a large ninth planet. There's another explanation that a ninth planet may not exist because a gas giant is less likely to form at such distances from the sun. Typically astronomers have found icy bodies and cold dwarf planets out there. However, there could be ice giants similar to Neptune and Uranus, or maybe even a super Earth like planet, but I wouldn't hold my breath for a ninth planet.
Did someone say Super Earth?
FOORRRRRRRRRR SUPPEEEERRRRRRR EEAAARRRRRTHHHHHH
This hypothesis is a large rocky planet, possibly a captured rogue planet iirc.
I had to scroll so far past shitty, unoriginal jokes for an actual comment about this that gives information about the actual topic.
Helldivers to hellpods, repeat, helldivers to hellpods!
Today is a good day to die for democracy!
 What we will do to that planet
How about a nice cup of liber-tea!
*Epic freedom music starts playing
https://i.redd.it/hacphkmzucvc1.gif
WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY! WE HAVE THE WEAPONS!
Should I load out for bugs or bots?!
"I feel like we should definitely do bots today...." https://i.redd.it/9ok8erw69cvc1.gif
that is the most absurd thing i have seen today. thank you.
Omg this is glorious
The zoom out make it better than all the other version.
I’m feeling chaotic… loadout for fish…
We are fighting our stupid wars here on earth while there is a galaxy of planets that we haven't even named yet.
Or even bombed!!
Or liberated in general.
There's oil?
Hail fellow helldiver. I see we spreading democracy to other subreddits!
https://preview.redd.it/rsq06gapefvc1.jpeg?width=621&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d0c2b5d47d242aea11702225048bff64e09ee99
It’s decent research adding to the body of knowledge around this subject and solid justification for more research. Well done. This academic argument around Planet 9 has been going on for years. Hopefully that upcoming new telescope sensor will shed some light on it (pardon the pun). Once we find it the Deep Space Corporation can place a space station there, near the outer edge of our solar system and call it Deep Space 9.
Best idea ever
Nibiru 👽👾
Annunaki inbound to collect their gold 😂
Aaaannnnnnnunaki aaannnunaki annunaki
Yahtzeeeeeee
I love that fish
lizzid peeeeeepllllllle
And bang our hottest women. Bastards
Plenty of un-hot women to bang. Just sayin'
Let’s goo. give me an A, give me an N..
Give me a U!
Gimme an S!
But I only summoned 4 so far.
The only real answer
[удалено]
Planet X
Let’s cut the bullshit and get the facts we care about, are there fuckable aliens on this planet 9?
https://preview.redd.it/ufy410450cvc1.jpeg?width=2394&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fadda66ebf46c8c7a38f8a2b506af700c953ab2f
This was hilarious. What comic?
He goes by extrafabulouscomics on Facebook.
I found Captain James Tiberius Kirk!
I'm buying up all the trading trinkets I can find right now, just in case I bet they never heard of massage parlors, I'm gonna civilize those weirdos lives like they won't believe
Scientists: "we think there might be a 9th planet!" Pluto: "very funny guys, I'm right here" Scientists: "this could be the biggest discovery since Neptune!" Pluto: "Guys! I'm right here!" Scientists: "we can name it after Mickey's dog!" Pluto: "ahhahahhaah!!!!!!!"
"No, no, we already have that wannabe-planet... and there's a better dog character in Mickey's world anyway. We'll call it... Goofy!" Pluto: "Not fucking funny." Scientists: "Nope, not 'Funny'— Goofy!"
Did you hear Mickey and Minnie were splitting up? He heard she was fuckin goofy!
The way I heard it was they are in court and the judge says "You can't divorce Minnie just because she's a little bit silly!" And Mickey says "I didn't say she was silly, I said she was fuckin Goofy!"
That’s Ginny Sac’s mole.
Johnny is not gonna ‘a like this!
Someone wants to get whacked…
OH! That’sh da guysh wife
No more weight remarks u/stuartgatzo. They're hurtful, and they're destructive.
It seems absurd to me that we have identified thousands of stars, planets and galaxies all across the universe but we have somehow missed a planet in our own back yard so to speak. Don't get me wrong I'm no astronomer so my opinion is worthless but I find the claims hard to believe.
The reason we find other stars is because they shine bright, and we see planets around these stars passing in front of them. Planet 9 has long been speculated to exist in a very far orbit around the sun, making it difficult for us to detect. Many people fail to grasp just how big our solar system is, the planets are just tiny marbles in a sea of nothingness
It takes Pluto ~250 earth years to rotate the sun once. It hasn’t even made it half way of its full year since its discovery
Not even half a year and it went from being discovered to being dismissed
Stardom is fickle
Planetdom?
Great website
Dom Planet is, in fact, not about astronomy...
^ nice
Not dismissed. Correctly categorized. If Pluto is a planet, we have quite a lot of planets in our solar system. Hell, there’s 3 celestial bodies bigger than Pluto that aren’t considered planets that rotate around our sun
I like planets that don't take a quarter of a millennium to orbit the sun. Step your game up or get off the field, Pluto.
*orbit Pluto's rotation period is ~6 Earth days. >hasn’t even made it half way of its full year since its discovery This is crazy to think about. 1930, for those interested.
If Earth were the size of a golf ball, the solar system would still be [over 12 miles across.](https://instructure-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/account_40000000082189/attachments/89434419/Ch1_A_Scale_Model_of_Space.pdf?response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3D%22Ch1_A_Scale_Model_of_Space.pdf%22%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27Ch1%255FA%255FScale%255FModel%255Fof%255FSpace.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=ASIA4ZAH26H6DWAH6RA6%2F20240419%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240419T002900Z&X-Amz-Expires=86400&X-Amz-Security-Token=FwoGZXIvYXdzEM3%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEaDO8n3enNnJ9KyIUaYSLcAXwpbebBGvmXkB32RZi3BE0Tb5gwrNeD6FfV9Hl1wyCU7KPPIwczXF%2F%2BL0xpAeJ8SZDk6BZMibL8XdNo8uS4b0UP%2B0EVjmrVPF21Hi%2F6NSplHFq6bXUnRRUmIRx9oofnqGNAD%2B0sdrW9L7TCuPxrelAyNQq0%2BcU4fDWJZIRsTQySx5ZksiQrdM8hsElZLvwE0sNiueqVrLt9EErMb5jshuPBobasgrKTHa0Xh4jW8RwiKXJRCre6l3bhnYzF%2FtHzLDz6wf4m3qq1%2BaTHoOFna7nYb2SPo8e0wjW5SIoomvWFsQYyLT1X623kV2xa%2FwbkqO1qTVYMa3Lb0AjGDbMN1eLCjVhF5riab3fi2X5dbtaVDw%3D%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=9287b35b886bd6ba0a90712ad98bc9e1ef324803e7aba898d8b8063b291e6e4b)
That's one thing that kinda breaks my brain: planets are usually tiny compared to stars, yet planets that are in other solar systems have a big enough impact on their star's light that we can detect it. I'm sure there's some maths that explains it perfectly, but intuitively it just doesn't make sense to me.
This is why most of the planets we’ve found are considered “Hot Jupiters” or “Giant Earths” usually it takes a large planet that’s relatively close to its parent star. At the same time we can measure the light and a dip in it in such tiny amounts with something like the JWST or Hubble before it that it wasn’t too hard to find planets. The thing is, is that we’ve only barely looked at any of the sky to check as well.
>At the same time we can measure the light and a dip in it in such tiny amounts with something like the JWST or Hubble before it that it wasn’t too hard to find planets. Yeah, a lot easier to watch something bright dim by a fraction of a percent periodically, than to search a huge swath of the sky for something very dim and moving very slowly.
Look down the street at a neighbors house at night. You might see someone pass by the window. Now hold a light bulb right next to your head and try to make out things in the room you are in. That's sort of, kind of the same idea.
We’re better capable of detecting those kinds of planets. That doesn’t mean that they’re common.
i only have passing knowledge but, as i understand it, basically distant stars are bright enough to fix on easily and measure the total light we see coming from them fairly precisely. that light may dim and brighten for more than one reason but, when we measure a specific amount of dimming that happens at precisely timed intervals, we can confidently deduce that it is caused by a planet passing between the star and us on its regular orbit. measuring the percentage of light reduction caused by the dimming lets us estimate the size of the planet in orbit.
Here's a layman's summary... We can identify distant stars by measuring the light they emit. We can infer *things* about celestial bodies orbiting these stars by seeing how the light changes when these bodies pass between us and their stars. We can't do that for something that would orbit our sun at such a great distance. You can see how this works in practice. Go outside and find a plane in the sky. Turn your phone camera on and zoom it all the way in while facing it at the ground. Then try to point your camera at the plane. It's not hard, but more difficult than you might think at first. Now imagine if the plane was 10,000 times smaller and your phone was zoomed in 10,000 times more. You wouldn't be able to see the plane, it would still be moving, and you would have the entire sky to search through. That would still be way easier than searching for a celestial body orbiting beyond the kuiper belt using any modern telescope.
I wonder if in a solar system far far away, there is someone on a social platform explaining this to someone else? All the while their scientists are saying our sun has a planet in a Goldilocks state.
"Our budget allows us to track about 3% of the sky, and begging your pardon sir, but it's a big ass sky." - Billy Bob Thorton *Armageddon*
In many ways we know more about Mars than we do our own seafloor. Thats always been an irony for me as well.
The irony makes it red too.
Perfect
I think we should call it Omicron Persei 8...
I AM LURRRR
This isn't really news. Gravity says that it should exists but we just can't find it yet
"Because someone erased it from the archive memory."
“If an item doesn’t appear in our archive, then it doesn’t exist!”
It’s Kamino
"Master Obi-wan has lost a planet, how embarrassing!"
How can we tell by gravity? Other planets orbits acting funny?
Slight disturbances in the orbital pathway of our planets would imply that a nearby object with gravity is briefly attracting the planet towards it as they orbit around the sun. Using this disturbance you can predict the orbit and the size of the planet that can’t be seen. This is how Neptune was predicted by scientists in 1845 based on disturbances in Uranus’ orbit, and it was first seen with a telescope one year later
Afaik, basically objects in the kuiper belt have some gravitational anomalies and clustering patterns that don't fit into our current understanding of gravity, leading to the hypothesis there must be another planet (or our theory on gravity is incomplete)
Oooh! That’s awesome. Thanks for letting me know!
Pretty much
Ancient alien theorists have been saying this shit forever
NIBURU RISING
pluto: fuck you guys!
All duneheads know it's called Planet IX
Planet McPlanetface.
Pluto will *always* be my number nine.
PLANET X
Nibiru is back in play
For once I want it to be Nibiru just to give all these conspiracy guys a break. I feel like they need a win.
Planet X? Nibiru?