Planet X

[Ray McCarthy]

More nonsense debunked (on Indo or Guardian too)
Saturn spacecraft immune to mysterious Planet 9's charms

 

[J Riff]

I wish someone could ac`tually bunk some of this info. THe truth is there, on YouTube I reckon, - people just don't search for it right. No ETs, oh no, we need a whole alien planet, not just a few ufos and ETS, a whole planet smashing on in, that's what's in the news... and still nobody notuices nuthin in this town.
What's that in the sky... is it a bird, a plane?..... no... it's a gigantic planet just wAndering on in to smash us all to dust. War of the Worlds anyone?

 

[Brian G Turner]

The search for Planet X is narrowing: We are closing in on possible whereabouts of Planet Nine

 

[J Riff]

MAybe this will help revive Ed Wood's career.... Plan (et) Nine from outer space. It's cloudy today, so no giant solar bodies visible.

 

[Serendipity]

And here's some hypotheses about how Planet IX (if it truly exists) might have formed.... http://gizmodo.com/planet-nine-just-got-weirder-1774497705

 

[Brian G Turner]

Option 3 - extrasolar in origin.

We already know that space must be filled with wandering planets. It is utterly plausible that our solar system should be able to capture one or more. The trouble in accepting that is the realisation that the solar system we have now might not actually have started that way, and one or more planets we know and love may actually be extra-solar in origin.

Btw, hasn't it been underlined enough that there is no computer model that ever predicts a solar system forming with inner rocky and outer gas giant planets?

Uh-huh.

 

[J Riff]

There is no matter wandering in space, which is not subject to the gravity well o' th' Galaxy (Milky What?) - Zero. There are no rogue planets in our solar system, never were. There IS a lot of rubble from a gigantic explosion in the system. That's it, move back, noting happening here folks, it's all over, millenia ago, keep moving, don't block the intake vents.
- ET.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

there is no computer model that ever predicts a solar system forming with inner rocky and outer gas giant planets?

We know very little about planetary formation and star systems because till recently we could only study one. We can't study other ones well enough. So we have only highly speculative models.
We know now there are stars with gas giants in orbits closer than Mercury, which was a surprise.
Pluto is a surprise as is Makemake

 

[Brian G Turner]

We know now there are stars with gas giants in orbits closer than Mercury, which was a surprise.

Indeed, and the modelling suggests the gas giant spiralled in over time, ejecting other planetary bodies as it did so. Yet these "hot Jupiters" are surprisingly common, suggesting an awful lot of planets - and their moons - ejected to wander through interstellar space.

 

[J Riff]

I will say nay - again - based on gravity, and suggest that there is exactly zero planets or large bodies of any kind - wandering anywhere in space.
None, zilch. You can't move in or out, away from the core o' the Milky Way. Can't do it. Can't even imagine ETs powerful enough to move anything Large - other than back and forth a bit - inside the force that holds yer planet at an exact distance from the core for millions years at a time. Could be wrong. )

 

[Brian G Turner]

@J Riff - you misunderstand: interstellar space is space between the stars within the Milky Way; intergalactic space is the space between galaxies.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

there is exactly zero planets or large bodies of any kind - wandering anywhere in space.
None, zilch. You can't move in or out,

There certainly are at least wandering stars and could be wandering planets. Not many.
Encounters between galaxies, between star systems or novas etc cause the existence of Wanderers.

There is also no edge to the "Milky Way" or any other galaxy, they are just less and less dense away from the centre.

While the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is the nearest galaxy like ours in shape, it's not the nearest galaxy. Ours is about 150,000 LY across (0.15 M LY), some are not much further away.
Some may be close enough to account for wanderers.
List of nearest galaxies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The satellite galaxies of Andromeda M31 are about 22 to 45 on the list.

There is also the unsolved problems of rotation and expansion which might also account for a few wanderers. Dark Matter and Dark Energy might not be real, they have been hypothesised because the expansion speed of the visible universe is wrong. The rotation of galaxies are "wrong" too. They rotate all of a piece, like a record or any solid disk. The outer bits should be rotating slower than the inner bits due to inverse square law of gravity and most of the mass being toward the centre. So for now "Dark Energy" and "Dark Matter" is the fudge to make the equations work, till either we discover those are real things or some other explanation as to why galaxy scale structures are not behaving in the same manner as individual star systems.

Also interestingly the "dark" bits between the spiral arms of our galaxy have LOADS of stars, just not as many, so they seem darker.

There are about 47 members in our "local" group of Galaxies. Andromeda contains about a million million stars, at least twice the number of stars in the Milky Way, which is estimated to be 200–400 thousand million. They keep revising the number of stars in our galaxy upwards.

So a few wandering stars, gas giants and rocky planets are to be expected, especially an outer gas giant that survives the nova even of its star.

As Douglas Adams said, "space is big, really big".

Our own star and system is in a local low density "bubble" of the Milky Way due to a super nova. That may have left or caused some wandering objects in the neighbourhood.

 

[Serendipity]

They have already discovered a rogue planet without a star wandering all on its lonesome about 80 light years away from Earth. see Institute for Astronomy Press Release: Found: A Strange Lonely Planet without a Star ...

 

[J Riff]

That's more like it, some facts. I will argue some more - that we cannot leave our groove in the record. Even if our Sun blew up, its matter would continue to circle the core at the same distance. That's how powerful gravity is, galactic-style. Nothing wandering in or out, unless it has been ejected by an explosion so large that it shoulda been destroyed. And, anything wandering would simply head for the largest nearby mass, and stay there. Comets circle our solar system, they can't escape even that. It looks like a big, slow-moving place with lots of different zones, but rotation is king and movement between solar systems almost impossible without a fully-fueled spaceship. No planet could possibly break free of its rotation around the core, can't see it.
The further back IN, toward the core you go, the more ancient and locked-in it all is. We are on the edge, or near it, and anything drifting in from another galaxy may well show up out here first.... possibly the only advantage to living way out here in the sticks.

 

[mosaix]

J Riff I think there's a misunderstanding here. I think, maybe I'm wrong, that the term 'wandering' is describing a planet that is not orbiting a sun of its own. Of course, as you say, any such planet would be subject to the gravitational attraction of the galaxy itself.

 

[J Riff]

But can it stay wandering? Of course not. It will achieve orbit around something, has to. And I cannot see such a planet moving one inch further from galactic central. It has to circle, like a record goin' round, round, right round. *)

 

[mosaix]

The term wandering obviously isn't correct. The orbit it is achieving is around the galactic centre. But it may come under the influence of a nearby sun and possibly be captured by its gravity. I think that is what is being suggested may have happened.

 

[J Riff]

Yup. But I'm betting nope. No planet has drifted into our system. Doesn't add up. It's something else, if anything. (?)
I like the record album analogy. If our Sun exploded it would all still stay in the same groove. So, a nearby star means one in the same groove, and no way to go anywhere elset. That's how it was shown to me, and heck it makes sense, but what is this planet 9 thing? A ship or a hallucination? No idea.

 

[mosaix]

Yes but a 'wandering' (wrong word) planet doesn't have to have come about as a result of an exploding sun. Couldn't it get 'kicked out' of its own solar system by, say, the gravitational influence of another much larger planet? This could give it a different speed / galactic orbit than before, allowing it to catch up with or be caught by a new solar sytem.

 

[J Riff]

Why not? Stuff must drift in from other galaxies, too. Until we meet interstellar travellers some of this theory has to be theoretical. Must be a way to use the gravity to slingshot stuff...