Did we really find a "super-"earth" in our Solar System?

[RandomRyan]

According to two new open access unreviewed papers, there may have been a giant, Earth-sized planet hanging out in our solar system this whole time. Researchers from Sweden and Mexico using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile claim that a mysterious object, another planet about 1.5 times the size of Earth, may be lurking deep in our solar system beyond Pluto.

 Did we?

 Slate post

Edited December 12, 2015 by RandomRyan
another link

[Scotius]

Doubtful. We can discover bodies roughly the size of Pluto, but we missed a planet bigger than Earth? It's possible of course - space is BIG. But it's also very empty - the bigger you are, the more detectable you become. It's easy to miss a grain of sand in the pool - but brick is hard to miss.

[Bill Phil]

Just now, Scotius said:

Doubtful. We can discover bodies roughly the size of Pluto, but we missed a planet bigger than Earth? It's possible of course - space is BIG. But it's also very empty - the bigger you are, the more detectable you become. It's easy to miss a grain of sand in the pool - but brick is hard to miss.

This is true, yes. However, at a certain distance the angular size of the brick becomes close to the angular size of the grain of sand. Making both ny undetectable.

We missed Eris, which is thought to be bigger than Pluto.

[Kryten]

Could there a super earth out in the outer solar system? Maybe. Could there be enough of them that two surreptitiously end up in ALMA data, given ALMA's tiny field of view (this would mean tens of thousands)? Probably not.

[problemecium]

I'm wondering why nobody else seems to have speculated on whether it's a rogue planet. They say there's billions of these things flying around, so maybe now we've spotted one.

[PB666]

1 hour ago, RandomRyan said:

According to two new open access unreviewed papers, there may have been a giant, Earth-sized planet hanging out in our solar system this whole time. Researchers from Sweden and Mexico using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile claim that a mysterious object, another planet about 1.5 times the size of Earth, may be lurking deep in our solar system beyond Pluto.

 Did we?

 Slate post

What? either its surface albido is black.  Remember that people once believed there was a phantom planet between mercury and venus.  What is this fascination with mysterious outer system objects all about, we have like 5 or 6 threads open on 'vapor' astronomy? 

[PB666]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

This is true, yes. However, at a certain distance the angular size of the brick becomes close to the angular size of the grain of sand. Making both ny undetectable.

We missed Eris, which is thought to be bigger than Pluto.

But at what point does suns gravitatinal pull become trivial gravity decreases with the square of distance and even though the x dimension increase the absolute attraction relatve to relative visible area. IOW, a brick can have an apparent visible size as a grain of sand, if these were two dimensional, the gravity would be the same, however. So here you have an object say a fraction of plutos visible area sitting 10-100 times as far from pluto passing in and out of the suns heliosphere, it moping around in its orbit about the same speed as a 1975 Trabant which has unfortuitously run over bubble gum. Any thing that passes close by is going to jostle it, for example in about 10,000 years from now alpha centuari would like pull it into a different inclination.

We missed eris? We missed pluto? we missed neptune? . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

Sure we miss things until they are discovered, but uncertainty principle pertains, you can't define the object until you observe it, black swan statistics apply, there are an infinite number of objects that might exist and certainly there are kbo that exist we are unaware of.  But these speculations just feed space fantasies.

 

I would just make the point that an object traveling around the sun at below 50 m/s could be easily induced into an inclination change by passing stars,  if such a change was made it would not synchronized with other kbo and the theory that explains other kbo orbits may not be as relevant as some think. 

[_Augustus_]

I think that we found it, but there need to be more measurements of it before we officially start saying that there are 9 or 10 planets in the solar system.

[Rakaydos]

If an article title ends in a question mark, the answer is probably no.

[fredinno]

3 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

This is true, yes. However, at a certain distance the angular size of the brick becomes close to the angular size of the grain of sand. Making both ny undetectable.

We missed Eris, which is thought to be bigger than Pluto.

Eric's and Pluto are actually about the same size.

Also, mods, please merge all these "Extra Planet" threads when they show up. Which is a lot.

[Bill Phil]

2 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Eric's and Pluto are actually about the same size.

Also, mods, please merge all these "Extra Planet" threads when they show up. Which is a lot.

It might be mass... Actually. In any case, it's similar in size.

[Hcube]

Wouldn't something this big be confirmed/infirmed by calculating it's supposed effects on nearby known objects ? Like, can't we just look at Pluto's orbit and look for inconsistencies in its orbit that match the supposés position of that planet ?

Just like Le Verrier calculated the position of Neptune before it was seen

[PB666]

34 minutes ago, Hcube said:

Wouldn't something this big be confirmed/infirmed by calculating it's supposed effects on nearby known objects ? Like, can't we just look at Pluto's orbit and look for inconsistencies in its orbit that match the supposés position of that planet ?

Just like Le Verrier calculated the position of Neptune before it was seen

Plutos orbital period is 100s of years, if the object has an inclined orbit relative to pluto or neptune, it may only come close enough to pluto or neptune to have an effect.

They got to put thier money where there mouth is, if its a planet sized object, its going to have an icy white surface just like pluto has in some of its faces. Therefore we have to expect is has high enough albedo to be seen, if they say it can be predicted then they have to know where to look to find it, so the question is why its still a question, its should be answered. 

[fredinno]

39 minutes ago, Hcube said:

Wouldn't something this big be confirmed/infirmed by calculating it's supposed effects on nearby known objects ? Like, can't we just look at Pluto's orbit and look for inconsistencies in its orbit that match the supposés position of that planet ?

Just like Le Verrier calculated the position of Neptune before it was seen

Yes, we have, and they exist- or so it is claimed. Remember, people thought there must be a Planet X after Neptune, only to realize it was because we overestimated masses of the Ice giants after the Voyager 2 flybys.

[Bill Phil]

11 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Yes, we have, and they exist- or so it is claimed. Remember, people thought there must be a Planet X after Neptune, only to realize it was because we overestimated masses of the Ice giants after the Voyager 2 flybys.

*before

Voyager helped us find accurate mass figures.

[fredinno]

9 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

*before

Voyager helped us find accurate mass figures.

That's what I meant. My phrasing must have been bad.

[Dispatcher]

I think there's probably a lot of stuff out in the outer solar system.  We may call it deep space but certainly not deep within the solar system, which is where we are; the exception being within the asteroid regions.