Finding Planet X
February 24th 2011 01:55
Category: Planets
mystery planet X may look like this? : image CarlCan
Far beyond the outer reaches of Pluto over the void to the region call the Oort cloud it is believed to be lurking somewhere in the midst of this vast expanse of debris and frozen material a large planet like object.
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE has made a systematic wide field sky search has taken place over a period of one year.
This will allow researchers to track the location and movements any of distant objects that are bright to be seen within the infrared spectrum.
From this information we should be able to determine its approximate size and orbital path, providing an opportunity to identify a potential super-Jupiter sized object.
During the 19th-century a French mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier hypothesized that they was another planet besides Mercury and this “planet” was responsible for causing variation in the orbit of Mercury.
This mysterious “planet” was thought to be closer to the sun than Mercury.
Le Verrier later named the mystery planet Vulcan later this name became famous by 20th Century Star Trek character Spock when the series was created in the 1960s.
There is no other planet in an orbit between Mercury and the Sun and no object has yet been found.
There may be a few trapped asteroids orbiting close to the sun but these objects (if any do exist) would be extremely small perhaps no bigger than a house.
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Rumors of undiscovered planets have been around for two hundred years to this date none have been found.
But still the search for the fabled 9th planet continues (Pluto no longer classed as a planet but given dwarf planet status).
They may be a large planet yet unseen perhaps as big as Jupiter or a failed star orbiting beyond the Oort cloud far into interstellar space perhaps with an orbit length of around 25 million years on a very long elliptical orbit around our sun.
If such an object was to exist and it its orbital path was to intersect with our solar system it would certainly disrupt the natural order of the planets within our solar system.
It will probably take another two years to trawl through the immense stock pile of data, but when complete we may know if there is a large planet object out there. If a planet or large planet object is found another chapter in the mysteries of our solar system will be written.
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Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Vulcan (according to Star Trek) is a very hot planet...
Comment by CarlCan
Astroearth
Camera Sense
Thank you for the comments….
If a planet does exist it may well be a gas giant much like Jupiter or Saturn.
We just don’t have enough information, although it is possible.
Even if the planet was the size of Jupiter it’s just too far out beyond our solar system to able to see it.
Whether it would support life is another story would depend on how we define life.
Such a planet would too far from the sun to support life as we know it. The planet would most likely be a frozen world.
If the planet has an active volcanic system it would support some form of life, perhaps single cell organisms bacteria.
For the present I’s a bit like lead in the ocean … wait and see.
We just don’t have enough information, although it is possible. Even if the planet was the size of Jupiter it’s just too far out beyond our solar system to able to see it.