- Mercury: Water
- Venus: Metal
- Mars: Fire
- Jupiter: Wood
- Saturn: Earth
Water-> Fire->Metal->Wood->Earth
Pluto
editLeuschner questioned whether Pluto was Trans-Neptunian- this was not possible
initial calculations suggested pluto ahd a 3000 year orbit and an eccentricity of 0.9CC
siphon cred? Slipher
Crommelin stood by lowell prediction,. brown and breuwer did not
Pickering complained that Pluto was his Planet O; though he had also predicted several other planets, and Planet O was based on false evidence anyway.
By the 1940s, even Tombaugh was beginning to wonder if Lowell had predicted Pluto
Disnmore Alter, tombaugh's Professor at KU, entertained the idea that Pluto was covered with an ocean of liquid air, that would act like a convex mirror and only the reflection of the sun would be visible, allowing it to have a diamter of 10 thousand miles
Unfortunately, to be the 6-7 earth masses required to perturb Uranus, Pluto would have to be larger even than that.
These uncertainties began to make Clyde panic; what if he had missed the actual planet X? what if someone else found it?
Tombaugh had examined two million stars. A search for other pluto objects would require him examining 20 million more. By 1934, he had viewed 35 million.
By the time World War II ended his planet hunt, tombaugh had individually examined 45 million stars over 14 years and 7000 hours of work. one planet, one globular cluster, one supercluster, several galactic clusters, 1 comet and 775 asteroids
Slipher asked him to continue the search to see if there were no other plutos out there
NGC 5694
Tombaugh had always assumed that others saw as well as he did. The sheer amazement of visiting astronomers at his accomplishment taught him otherwise.
"That's a good name, Pickering-Lowell"
1800 variables 3969 asteroids 29000 galaxies 2 comets
Alter flatly refused to let Tombaugh take a course in introductory astronomy, claiming that it would be ludicrous for the discoverer of the Solar System's ninth planet to do so. Tombaugh thought it might have been fun.
Bar his five years to attain a masters degree, Tombaugh blinked plates from 1929 to 1943.
In 1943, he was drafted to teach navigation- not just astronavigation, which was easy for him, but actual navigation, about which he knew nothing, and could only learn just slightly faster than he could teach it.
After Slipher fired him, Tombaugh was asked by his brother in law to take up a position proving telescopes at White Sands missile range, calibrating telescopes to test captured Nazi V2 rockets.
Tombaugh's observations showed that galaxies below the supercluster level had a non-uniform distribution which got him into a feud with edwin hubble
his work on galaxy distribution was abandoned when Slipher fired him. Perhaps out of jealousy, so the discovery of voids and superclusters eventually went to others Harlow shapley coined the term galaxy
James Christy had no PhD
In 1965, Christy was shown images of pluto that appeared distended- he assumed the plates were overexposed
In 1975, he married his second wife, Charlene (char)
US naval observatory was conducting precise astronomical surveys of the Moons of Uranus and Neptune in preparation for the Voyager program. Christy asked if he could use the same technology to search for Moons of pluto, but was denied.
In 1978, Robert Sutton Harrington gave Christy a bonus project after he had finished five days early- re examine the supposedly defective plates that had showed Pluto as distended.
Gearard Kuiper had searched for a moon of Pluto with the world's largest telescope and found nothing
He noted that the stars appeared not to be distended along with Pluto, and that the distention appeared to be orbiting Pluto. He concluded that Pluto had a moon, and announced it to the empty room. He then told Harrington, who said "Jim you're crazy".
But precovery images showed that the lump reappeared regularly in images dating back a decade. Eventually, harrington was convinved, and in two weeks another observatory had confirmed it.
Christy knew nothing of mythology, and decided on a whim to call the moon "Charon", as if he had named a subatomic particle after his wife. More mythically fluent colleagues had suggested Persephone, the wife of Pluto, as a better option.
Later that night he looked up the name "Charon" in an encyclopedia and discovered it was the name of the ferryman who brought souls across the River Styx. Christy was sold. Charon it would be. "Many husbands promise their wives the moon; mine delivered" said Char later.
Harrington was the first to calculate Pluto's mass from Charon 1978
Flandern and Harrington decided to search for a tenth planet
Such an object would have to be 5 times the mass of the earth and have a highly inclined orbit, for it would have to be in a region not searched in great detail, such as the south celestial pole
Harrington called the planet "humphrey"
Van flandern attempted to model observations of Uranus and Neptune's orbit from centuries past (the planet may have a highly elliptical orbit and may have been more disruptive to past orbits) and found that no single object could explain all the deviations. Perhaps there were several objects out there.
A targeted search found nothing, and some speculated that the earlier deviations were caused by a single event, such as an impact.
gerry Neugebauer and James houck Iras
May, 1993: Astronomical journal "Planet X: No dynamical evidence in the optical observations
Neptune, voyager 2, almost 1 percent less massive
nemesis for nemises mark bailey piet hut article in nature
Tom van Flandern and Myles Standish were friends and colleagues while students at Yale. Now they don't talk, avoid each other when necessary and blast each other in interviews.
Van flandern argued that pre-modern observations were still valid, despite being made with antiquated equipment and star charts
But by then he had wandered off into his own vision of reality that envisioned a solar system of exploding planets and absent gravity. So no one took him seriously.
Flandern made error filled comments about others work, refusing to admit when he was wrong
Demotion
editMax Wolf and and Baade codiscovered the first nova to be classified as "super", and Baade would become a world authority on supernovas once he arrived in America
Hamburg director wanted to collect data for future use, financed eclipse expeditions.
He had already become noted for his work with galaxies and variable stars, and discovered a comet, comet Baade, in 1921.
Stellar populations I, II 1944, wartime blackouts cut light pollution, allowing clearer images of galaxies. Also, as he was not an american citizen (he had lost his application papers while moving house and lost patience with bureaucracy) he was declared an enemy alien and confined to Mt wilson while other astronoemrs were doing war work.
Hidalgo discovered 1920 Hamburg, anmed for father of mexican independence, as a thank you to mexico for their hospitaltiy during a 1923 eclipse expedition
walter Baade German astronomer who emegrated to America in 1929.
Charles Kowal Palomar Observatory Caltech Schmidt Telescope- supernova, lost asteroid and comet hunter
builds robots as a hobby. Spent 20 years looking for supernovae in photographic plates, id'd asteroids as a sideline. He discovered two moons of Jupiter, Leda and Themisto, which was lost until 2000.
charles Kowal decided to search for Planet X in 1977, before Charon's discovery had reduced Pluto to the runt of the Solar System. He simply thought, why not? He even secretly named it "Rhadamanthus".
Decided to to a whole-zodiac survey for a tenth planet. Rhadamanthus, judge of the dead
He figured it would take him ten years.
November 1977, examining plates taken the previous month when he noticed a moving object. Precovery images dated back to 1895. Brightness measurements had suggested it was no more than 140 km across. So not Planet X then.
"Object Kowal", 1977 UB, orbit from saturn to Uranus. "too small to be a planet; too distant to be an asteroid, and didn't look like a comet"
"The Centaur" John updike. Chiron was the son of Saturn, and a centaur- neither an asteroid nor a comet (though Kowal did not know of its dual nature at the time) throguh the 1980s, Chiron brightened, leading to it developing a coma by 1989.
asteroid 2060 and comet 95 P- grew a coma in 1988
Much liek tombaugh, Kowal continued his search but found little of significance. In 1992 David rabbinowitz found the second Centuar, Pholus
Brian Marsden gave a speech at Clyde Tombaugh's behet at Pluto's "golden anniversary" in 1980, and said in a speech that Pluto should be reclassfified alongside distant minor planets like Chiron and Hidalgo. "my dad was crushed", recalled Tombaughs daughter.
in the 40s and fifties, pluto was ignored. By the 1980s Clyde Tombaugh had become a star.
"my dad was angry, and he was crushed that Brian chose that time to bring it up"
"They're not astronomers. They don't see it in quite the right way"
Lowell was "Very much a member of the minor leagues" "bamboozled"
"As if someone had stood up at a couple's golden anniversary party and announced that the wedding was a sham."
"It was partly in jest that I spoke at the time"
"they're not astronomers; they don't see it in quite the right way"
In 1982, Jewitt became the first person to observe Halley's Comet since its 1910 apparition.
Luu and Jewitt began their search with Schmidt cameras and photographic plates.
"I'm coming to hawaii and I'm going to get you". Billy death threat email to david jewitt 1995
discovered |Jupiters moon adrastea in voy photos
1985- not interested in searching the zodiac- they should be in numebrs. so focus on one spot with long enough exposures and a sensitive telescope, blink comparaotr, photographic plates, nothing
1987 help from student jane luu
the daughter of South Vietnamese who had worked for Americans, she was evacuated from the Fall of Saigon and eventually settled in California, where she sailed through high school
sp comets have 1400 year lifespans; to maintain the population over the age of the solar system, a new comet would have to be added every twenty years.
Published in 1980, largely ignored. 1985, read by scott tremaine
1973: Gerard Kuiper, editor solar system encyclopedia: "You know Clyde, although your discovery of Pluto was a very important event, knowing how thoroughly you went through it, I'm more impressed at what you did not find out there."
Pluto and charon would most likely have formed from a giant impact, but the odds of such an impact happening at Pluto's distance from the Sun were negligible, unless there were thousands of Pluto-like objects out there.
"Pluto has been a longstanding myth that's difficult to kill"- Marsden, a year after Tombaugh's death. CCDs, digital cameras
(initially) small field of view, determined by PX, but far more sensitive than a photographic plate, digital processing, virtual blinking
Brian Marsden made a $500 bet that QB1 was a centaur. He lost, though Jewitt would pay him back with an expensive lunch.
1992: 4 million pixel camera t 2.2 metre telescope
Clyde tombaugh, 1994 letter to sky and telescope:
"While we are considering reclassifying astronomy, how about revamping the Hertzprung Russell diagram so that the spectral types are alphabetically ordered? No that would wreck extensive catalogs of stellar spectra. Or lets throw out the awkward constellation system! Alas that would discard our beautiful mythology. Pluto started out as the ninth planet, a supposed fulfillment of Lowell's Planet X. Lets simply retain Pluto as the ninth major planet. After all, there is no Planet X. For 14 years, I combed two thirds of the entire sky down to 17th magnitude and no more planets showed up. I didn the job thoroughly and correctly. Pluto was your last chance at a major planet."
The conteroversy did not help his condition any- Tombaugh's daughter annette. Tombaugh was aware of the debate about Pluto's planethood; it "ddin't help his condition any"
In 1999, Marsden made (for him) a modest proposal to the IAU: Make Pluto Minor planet #10,000, as the number was fast approaching, or start up a new minor planet list for the trans-Neptunians, making Pluto #1. Pluto could also keep its planetary status for the time being. Once the press heard about it, it crashed and burned. "Send these scientists to Pluto" cried the Peoria Journal star" Marsden attemted several conciliatory methods to get Pluto demoted. From granting it #1 status on a new minor planet list to granting it "dual nationality". Once the public heard of this, the reaction was toxic, and fanned by Pluto lovers like Mark Sykes.
The IAU did not make any calls unless backed by broad consensus. So the idea was quickly killed.
"maybe i've been too democratic about it. Maybe I should have made the decision, and that's that." Marsden
Neil degrasse tyson remodeleled the NY NH museum Hayden planetarium to exclude Pluto, reopened in 2000, Tyson began receiving tons of hate mail from angry children: "Dear Natural History Museum, you are missing planet Pluto. Please make a model of it. This is what it looks like. It is a planet. Love Will Galmot.
10 percent of Heyden planetarium visitors wondered where Pluto was, leading to the creation of a "Where's Pluto" sign
Chad trujillo, writer of programs to automate digital blinking, joined Jewett and Luu in 1995
Mark Sykes: plutophile, NASA dawn mission director of the planetary science institute in tuscon also a law degree also an opera singer Arizona opera company
Mike Brown
editA talent for mythopeia that would earn him a cult following among astrologers.
December 1999 Hale Telescope Palomar, cloudy night, precious eyepiece time slipping away, pondering his dead father, telling a friend, I think there might be another planet beyond Pluto
1992: Berkeley Jane Luu ("Nobody knows yet, but we just found the Kuiper Belt"
"Wow! What's the Kuiper belt?"
PHD thesis studying volcanoes on Io
"I don't have any evidence; I don't have any proof. I don't have anything other than this deep feeling that another planet past Pluto makes sense. And I'm willing to bet that there's one out there."
End date: 31 December, 2004: winner, five bottles of champagne.
Born and raised in Huntsville Alabama where you were either a rocket engineer, a rocket engineer's child, or a rocket engineer's wife. The Apollo program meant life was full.
Brown was never all that interested in the night sky- in 1973, when his father dragged him out of bed to view Comet Kohoutek, little Mike Brown saw a smeary smudge and then asked he could go back to bed.
Mike was a far more stereotypical nerd than the earthier Clyde. While Clide ground his own mirrors, Mike concluded that his hands were better at making model airplane wrecks than model airplanes.
And then he saw a rare conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Orion, and was hooked. He kept it to himself, and didn't learn what it was for weeks.
While a grad student, he lived in a boat; while a professor, he lived in a cabin with an outhouse.
1997: PhD
Thanksgiving 1997: clouded over thanksgiving, trapped in the monastery with other frustrated astronomers, occasionally conversing about their individual studies.
48-inch Schmidt? Wide angle, large sky survey, POSS, photographic plates, CCDs (digital cameras) not large enough yet to replace it
Mike hadn't handled film since 3rd grade
Luckily he didn't have to; two assistants at the Schmidt did the developing; 239 fields covering one third of the zodiac
A thousand times as many stars as Tombaugh; to to the search with a blink comparator would have taken 40 years.
Instead, the photographic plates were digitally scanned, and Mike spent a year writing a computer program to sort the cosmic wheat from the chaff. The computer identified 8761 objects. Mike had to check them all by eye.
Computers are not smart; only a human eye can distinguish a moving object from a glinting star
"Final score: No 8734. Maybe 27. YES! 0"
Fall 2001: With his 27 maybes, he went to the Palomar Observatory's 60-inch telescope, fully equipped with a modern CCD, to track them down- difficult, due to a year having passed
Just like Lowell and Tombaugh before him, Mike was beginning to lose hope
Halfway though his maybe list, he gave a speech to a visiting group in which he insisted that there were other planets out there, and that he would find them. He had found nothing. He did ultimately marry the group's director, though, so there's that.
All the maybes failed to pan out. His first quest was a failure. He didn't care.
New project: photographic plates dismantled at Schmidt. CCD replacement only one twelfth the coverage. However, what had been done in 20 minutes could now be done in 1, meaning that the process was still faster, and two to three times more sensitive.
Contacting Chad Trujillo, graduate of Hawaii, thesis on finding KBOs
"Object X" Bigger than Pluto? Brown prefers to study objects before announcing them, which led to terror of them being scooped. And would lead to some controversy later.
Charles Kowal had used the same telescope the 48 inch schmidt on his planet x hunt, and not found it. Brown believed that fainter objects may have slipped through his net. Others believed he was cuckoo.
Mike went into the Schmidt telescope's archives and tracked down Kowal's plates, and, without the aid of a blink comparator, eventually tracked down Object X
Three weeks later, he swapped out his telescope time at the Keck from looking for ice volcanoes on the moons of Uranus to searching for Object X. He discovered it was only half the size of Pluto.
He and Chad decided to name it after a new world creator god, and contacted the historian of the Palomar-based Tongva tribe and asked if they could use the name Quaoar. The historian agreed and the object got its name
Quaoar's orbit is nearly circular, but also highly inclined. NY Times, more planetlike than Pluto
Largest object found since Pluto: reignited the planet debate.
"Quaoar definitely hurts the case for Pluto being a planet. If Pluto were discovered today, no one would even consider calling it a planet, because it is clearly a Kuiper Belt Object.
37,000 errors; lucky they were systematic and could be excluded by removing specific patches of sky.
After discovering Sedna, he realised that he needed to tweak his program to be more sensitive and spent months rewriting from scratch
Next came Haumea (Santa)
And then: "Subject; Why we get up in the morning. New bright object. Please sit down and take a deep breath."
If it had been at another point in its orbit in 1930, Tombaugh would have found it
It triggered a marital debate about whether it was a planet, or Pluto wasn't; Diane suggested that it might help his daughter's chances with college if it was (mostly joking)
keep up interest in astronomy with new planets being found
2006: "Pluto has been a planet for so long that the world is comfortable with that. It seems to me a logical extension that anything bigger than Pluto and farther out is a planet." Mike Brown
Not Americans vs rest of the world, but dynamicists vs geophys: different ways of looking at the Solar System. How it looked vs how it moved
Should planets be special, like continents, or mundane, like mountains?
initial resolution: 12 planets, including charon.
"He couldn't find his own planet because it was dust on the poster" - david fischer, german science writer
Julio Fernandez led the counter insurgency
"I would like to note that the two speakers who have spoken so far have committed a rather insulting gaffe; they have used the expression, a physical definition of a planet; by implication suggesting that a dynamical definition is not physics!"
" don't know who is leading the charge, but tell them from me, I will be very happy to have my name attached to the list of supporters of the only reasonable proposal I have seen thus far." Mike Brown
Jocylen bell presented the three classes of object with a balloon for planets, a pluto doll for pluto, and a cereal box for ceres
"I am of course disappointed that Xena will no longer be the tenth planet, But I definitely support the IAU in this difficult and courageous decision." MB
"It's going to be a laughingstock. It's going to be a mess for schoolkids. I don't think the textbooks will even accept it." AS
Textbooks were fine with it. Alan stern's son was marked down on a test because he refused to acknowledge eight planets
MB thought the discussion should be left as is, giving wounds time to heal. AS wanted to continue the discussion, so that the opponents could get a proper hearing
"we don't vote on relativity or quantum mechanics; we don't vote on any scientific discovery, because it just doesn't work that way. The IAU could vote that the sky is green but that doesn't mean people will follow, because it's not." AS
"People are asking, what do we need these guys for? The IAU has no special claim. They have no a police force or army. They're not the Supreme Court." AS
PIONEER PLAQUE; Arecibo message: nine planet
"If pluto continues to be referred to as the ninth planet, it would only be due to tradition and sentimental reasons. People are fond of planets, because the idea of a planet conjurs up up notions of home, life, happy things and astronomers are always looking to find more planets, not to lose them". Jane Luu
stern and marsden were on the 2003 panel
new panel, seven rather than 19
debate was between planetary scientists and astronomers; between dynamicists and geophysicists
star trek test for planethood
the seven member team did not include any of the major voices in this battle:
richard Binzel (MIT) Andre Brahic (Universite Denis diderot) Junichi Watenabe (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan) Iwan Williams (Queen Mary) Catherine Cesarsky (IAU President) Owen gingerich Dava Sobel
2400 astronomers at teh Prague assembly
if charon was a planet, would our own moon be a planet in 50 billion years?
fernandez IAU commission 20: "It is a pity that, occupying so seemingly high a position in the IAU, that I only learned about the proposal by the executive committee when I arrived here, not before."
The final resolution passed so so overwhelmingly that no one bothered to count the votes.
"I think things were rather badly handled [but] all things considered, we did the right thing" BM
"Pluto and I were retired on the same dy, you might say" BM
"If it was the last thing he did, he was going to put an asteroid number on Pluto. And it was the last thing he did. AnT
The ugly number was seen by some as payback for his earlier suggestions being shot down Initially did not want to refer to Xena as the tenth planet, just "larger than Pluto", but gave in over the phone to CalTech PR Diane's waters breaking "likely changed astronomical history", according to Brown.
If a planet is anything bigger than Pluto that orbits the Sun, then what about Sedna or Quaoar?
Planets vs continents
4 press releasees: eight planets, nine planets (non science) ten planets (anything Pluto or larger) 200 planets (most radical proposal disguised as the most conservative; would make Brown the most prolific planet discoverer in history.
IAU committee member called Brown and informed him that Xena was to be a planet; Brown opened the champagne and celebrated with his wife.
Then they revealed their plan: 12 planets, including xena, ceres and charon. Brown believed they had done this so as not to upset the cultural applecart too much. Brown was appalled. He was on vacation at the time, but spent much of the week on the phone, explaining why the idea was a bad one.
Jupiter centre of mass; moon on an elongated orbit shifts its centre of mass so would be a planet or not depending on its orbit; our own moon is moving outward
The vote would be broadcast around the world; afternoon in Prague is before dawn in Pasedena, but he led a press conference to commentate on the event
Jocelyn Bell led the vote on 5B, that would have kept Pluto a planet. Classical planets vs dwarf planets. Resolution 5B was not passed. Brown declared to the press "Pluto is dead". Trujillo and Sheppard
Both Sedna and 2012 VP113 have similar arguments of perihelion (v 5 311u and 293u, respectively). The orbital element v describes the angle between the point of perihelion and where a body’s orbit crosses the celestial plane. Surprisingly, this similarity is shared for all known objects with semi-major axes greater than 150 AU and perihelia greater than that of Neptune (v < 340u 6 55u; see Fig. 3, Extended Data Fig. 1 and Extended Data Table 2). These extreme scattered disk objects may have a similar origin to Sedna or 2012 VP113 but their much lower perihelia (q , 49 AU) allow their existence to be explained through resonant interactions with Neptune, except for 2004 VN112, 2010 GB174 and possibly 2000 CR105 (refs 10, 24–27).We find that this v clustering cannot be due to observational bias for two reasons: (1) any bias for v 5 0u is the same as the bias for v 5 180u; and (2) the surveys that have found the objects with clustered v were often off-ecliptic or all-sky surveys, which would not have a biasfor either v 5 0u or 180u(Methods). Thus, we conclude that the v clustering is a real effect.
This [kozai mechanism] cannot explain the v < 0u trend today, because v circulates owing to the presence of the giant planets. By numerically simulating the effect of the known mass in the Solar System on the inner Oort cloud objects, we confirmed that inner Oort cloud objects should have random v (Methods). This suggests that a massive outer Solar System perturber may exist and restricts v for the inner Oort cloud objects. We numerically simulated the effect of a super-Earth-mass body at 250 AU and found that v for inner Oort cloud objects librated around 0u 6 60ufor billions of years
Batygin Brown 1
Arguments of perihelia clustered approximately around zero.
A value of ω = 0 requires that the object’s perihelion lies precisely at the ecliptic
Previous studies had shown that this clustering was not due to observational bias
Orbital grouping in ω is surprising because gravitational torques exerted by the giant planets are expected to randomize this parameter over the multi-Gyr age of the solar system
Trujillo & Sheppard (2014) suggest that an external perturbing body could allow ω to librate about zero via the Kozai mechanism.
the existence of librating trajectories around ω = 0 requires the ratio of the object to perturber semimajor axis to be nearly unity. This means that trapping all of the distant objects within the known range of semimajor axes into Kozai resonances likely requires multiple planets, finely tuned to explain the particular data set.
Trujillo & Sheppard (2014) point out that the Kozai mechanism allows libration about both ω = 0 as well as ω = 180, and the lack of ω ∼ 180 objects suggests that some additional process originally caused the objects to obtain ω ∼ 0. To this end, they invoke a strong stellar encounter to generate the desired configuration.
the dynamical effects of such a massive perturber might have already been visible in the inner solar system
particularly for low-inclination perturbers, objects more massive than the Earth with a ∼ 200–300 AU are ruled out from the data
They find that all objects with q > 30 AU and a > 150 AU are clustered around ω ∼ 0.
In order to identify which of the q > 30 AU and a > 150 AU KBOs are strongly influenced by Neptune, we numerically evolved six clones of each member of the clustered population for 4 Gyr. If more than a single clone in the calcuations exhibited large-scale semimajor axis variation, we deemed such an objects dynamically unstable.2 Indeed, many of the considered KBOs (generally those with 30 < q < 36 AU) experience strong encounters with Neptune, leaving only 6 of the 13 bodies largely unaffected by thepresence of Neptune.
Interestingly, the stable objects cluster not around ω = 0 but rather around ω = 318° ± 8°, grossly inconsistent with the value predicted from by the Kozai mechanism. Even more interestingly, a corresponding analysis of longitude of ascending node, as a function of the semimajor axis reveals a similarly strong clustering of these angles about Ω = 113° ± 13°. Analogously, we note that longitude of perihelion, v w = + W, is grouped around ϖ = 71 ± 16 deg.
The clustering of both ϖ and of Ω suggests that not only do the distant KBOs cross the ecliptic at a similar phase of their elliptical trajectories, the orbits are physically aligned.
Much like confinement in ω, orbital alignment in physical space is difficult to explain because of differential precession. In contrast to clustering in ω, however, orbital confinement in physical space cannot be maintained by either the Kozai effect or the inclination instability. This physical alignment requires a new explanation.
the current mass of the Kuiper Belt is likely insufficient for self-gravity to play an appreciable role in its dynamical evolution.
In particular, the long-term modulation of scattered KBO eccentricities provides a natural explanation for the existence of the so-called distant detached objects such as Sedna and 2012VP113
Another unanticipated result that arises within the context of our narrative is the generation of a highly inclined population of orbits. Gladman et al. suggested that the presence of highly inclined KBOs, such as Drac, point to a more extensive reservoir of such bodies within the Kuiper Belt.
Another curious feature of the distant scattered disk is the lack of objects with perihelion distance in the range q = 50–70 AU. aka the Kuiper cliff.
brown and batygin 2
Allowed orbits, which confine KBOs with semimajor axis beyond 380 au, have perihelia roughly between 150 and 350 au, semimajor axes between 380 and 980 au, and masses between 5 and 20 Earth masses.
Orbitally confined objects also generally have orbital planes similar to that of the planet, suggesting that the planet is inclined approximately 30°to the ecliptic.
Planet Nine is likely near aphelion with an approximate brightness of $22\lt V\lt 25$. At opposition, its motion, mainly due to parallax, can easily be detected within 24 hours.
Premonition
six objects that occupy the most expansive orbits in the Kuiper belt (including Sedna and 2012 VP113) trace out elliptical paths that point into approximately the same direction in physical space, and lie in approximately the same plane.
the probability of the observed alignment being fortuitous can be assessed in a statistically rigorous manner, and clocks in at right around 0.007%
if allowed to evolve under the gravitational influence of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the orbits would become randomly oriented on timescales much shorter than than the multi-billion year lifetime of the solar system
More unexpectedly, the confined orbits would cluster in a configuration where the long axes of their obits are anti-aligned with respect to Planet Nine, signaling that the dynamical mechanism at play is resonant in nature.
gravitational torques exerted onto the Kuiper belt by Planet Nine would induce long-period oscillations in the perihelion distances of the confined KBOs. This naturally generated detached orbits, such as those of Sedna and 2012 VP113. Moreover, the evolutionary calculations suggested that if we were to revisit the Kuiper belt in a hundred million years, objects like Sedna and VP would look like conventional garden variety KBOs, while some of the more typical objects would acquire detached orbits.
the model consistently generated orbits that are nearly perpendicular with respect to the nominal plane of the Kuiper belt. Imagine our surprise when we realized that such a population of objects actually exists! (See also this paper by Gomes et al) Ultimately, some additional effort is needed to understand the process by which KBOs acquire perpendicular orbits, but our bets are placed onto the Kozai effect inside mean-motion resonances.
Nice and Nice 2
Patryk Lakawka, kuiper cliff
What is is- a super earth
vulcanoids
gomes
Brown at MBA
After noticing the orbital alignment, Brown contacted Batygin, who suggested a planet could be responsible
intuition, and initial calculations, suggested the planet's orbit would be similarly aligned to the objects
Batygin decided to do a computer simulation over the course of the age of the Solar System
French academy- nice exercise, to belief: the perpendicular orbitals.
Subaru telescope: biggest camera lens ever, covers more sky than any other large telescope
20 nights of observation over 2-3 years
brown sakler
gomes 2000 cr105 (same direction) proposed a planet could be responsible
Planet nine really irritates pluto lovers and "just cracks me up"
NASA astrophysics
alien astronomers could see Neptune thanks to its impact on the dust in the Kuiper belt