Sci/Tech Up telescope! Search begins for giant new planet in our solar system

[The Helper]

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

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 Jupiter 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 solar system. 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 Nasa space telescope, Wise, and is just waiting to be analysed.

Up telescope! Search begins for giant new planet

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

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Jedimindtrixxx]

sigh, so much for all those acronyms we learned and relearned about the order of planets.

seriously though how did scientists not see this before? we've found planets on other solar systems but we still havnt found this.

 

[thewrongvine]

sigh, so much for all those acronyms we learned and relearned about the order of planets.

seriously though how did scientists not see this before? we've found planets on other solar systems but we still havnt found this.

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.

Science is imperfect. Especially in space. We don't really know much, don't expect all of what you learn now to be relevant later on.
But other than that, I agree with you, ha.

 

[xPass]

Darn!!! and soon they will discover another dimension >.<

 

[SerraAvenger]

sigh, so much for all those acronyms we learned and relearned about the order of planets.

Lazyness pays! Maybe not outright, but in the long run it does : )

 

[YourFace]

Nope! There are actually 24 planets in our solar system.

 

[Jedimindtrixxx]

Darn!!! and soon they will discover another dimension >.<

6 more, actually.

 

[Blackveiled]

6 more, actually.

Notice how it says imagining?

 

[Jesus4Lyf]

This makes me want to play Planetarion.

Darn!!! and soon they will discover another dimension >.<

And cats! They'll discover moar felines!

 

[xPass]

This makes me want to play Planetarion.

And cats! They'll discover moar felines!

and more dogs too

 

[phyrex1an]

seriously though how did scientists not see this before?

Because there is absolutely no evidence that there is a planet. What they got so far is a statistical model that predicts this planet with a probability slightly larger than the one you get on average due to pure chance.

However, if there really is a planet then WISE might have caught a glimpse of it. Analyzing the data from WISE will take lots of time and until that is done there really is nothing more to this than a potential statistical anomaly. It's more interesting than a random guess, less interesting than most other stuff.

 

[Whitesock]

Don't you think we woulda at least seen something by now if this was true?

 

[xPass]

Don't you think we woulda at least seen something by now if this was true?

They should post a photograph or two

 

[uberfoop]

Don't you think we woulda at least seen something by now if this was true?

Not really. If it exists, it's probably not well-illuminated by the sun, and it wouldn't have enough gravitational effect on the inner solar system for us to make out easily.

The easiest way to detect extrasolar planets, for example, is if their orbit around their star causes them to transit their star relative to us, since in that case, if a planet has sufficient mass and is close to its sun, there will often be a substantial transverse wobble in the motion of the star relative to us. Such wobble manifests itself in the form of slight doppler shifting, which is something that our detectors can pick up on extremely fine scales, indicating an orbiting body.

It's actually usually obscenely hard to detect or even verify known far-off planets via techniques like "look for it in a picture."

It's also worth noting that we have no solid techniques for dealing with potential objects in the realm of where such a planet would be expected to be. The Oort Cloud is a mysterious thing.
For that matter, we don't have solid and precise techniques for dealing with a lot of stuff in astronomy. There are plenty of objects that we know are fairly close by, but which still have massive error bounds on expected absolute distance, for example.

 

[Varine]

I vote we bring Pluto back into the gang and tell this new planet it ain't cool enough to hang. Then colonize Mars.

And according to M Theory, there are 11 dimensions. And it's way better than any of the string theories.

 

[Whitesock]

I never said we would take a picture guys. If a giant planet is within our solar system it would have an affect on smaller objects (asteroids, comets, ect.) and I would think that we would see some data by chance from all the collection of areas of the sky.

 

[Varine]

Eh, not really. I doubt it's gravitational force is strong enough to have much of a noticeable impact at that distance. Especially given that most of the math is theoretical and there isn't really a set coordinate system to map it's path through space.