New Planet Found in Our Solar System? | Hacker News Reader

New Planet Found in Our Solar System?

news.nationalgeographic.com

40 pointsjapaget13 comments

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I forgive them. The title is misleading, but I imagine the alternative:

"Kuiper Belt Orbits Indicate A New Planet" Nah.

"Mystery Planet Influences Kuiper Orbits" Nah.

"Data suggests Remote New Planet" Nah.

Ah screw it.

"New Planet Found in Our Solar System", oh add ?, and Print it!

These sensationalist headlines on science stories really get me down. Cue the Nibiru cult parades in the streets any moment now. It kind of reminds me of the recent HuffPo article on intelligent alien dinosaurs.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/12/advanced-dinosaurs-...

Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines

Unlike Rudiam, I thought the title was basically appropriate. Through the extensive quotes at the end of the article (clearly, the author did more interviews than he could have gotten away with), the author made it clear that these findings were the result of one scientists, and that his peers were interested, still not convinced, and awaiting more data. Pretty good for pop sci!

I won't argue that the article wasn't comparitively reasonable (at least when stacked against the normal fare of science journalism), It just makes me sad when publications (perhaps rightfully so) assume that they need to craft their headlines and spin articles around sensationalistic conjecture or speculation in order for the public to be interested. I would have preferred an article in the form of "these interesting/anomalous things were noticed, here are some possible explanations from various members of the astronomical community" as opposed to "there may be a new planet! here's the new anomalous things that may support it, oh by the way most people in the astronomical community are skeptical about the new planet thing until we get more data."

Wasn't Pluto discovered based on Percival Lowell's calculations that there need to be a Planet X to account for gravitational anomalies in Neptune's orbit?

Do your own fact checking, but iirc Pluto was a lucky find - it was way too small to be the theoretical 'Planet X', but just happened to be in the right area when Clyde Tombaugh was looking there based on Lowell's calculations?

I guess my point is: this isn't a new theory, but it certainly has a lot more data than Lowell had in the '20s. And it would be fascinating if a ninth planet were discovered, based on the same process that led us (flukily) to Pluto.

This is like twisting the knife after we stabbed it in Pluto's back, if you ask me.

Pluto was reclassified as a Kuiper belt object because there are lots of those and it fit that category better than it fit in the category of planets.

Put Pluto, Vesta, Mercury and Mars side by side. They look pretty similar; a lot more similar than Mars and Mercury do to Jupiter and Saturn.

It's not about looks. There are 3 criteria to being classified as a planet[1]:

* Orbits the sun

* Massive enough for its gravity to make it all the way around

* 'Cleared its neighborhood' of smaller objects arounds its orbit

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_planet

Pluto has much more in common with Eris, Sedna, Quaoar, Makemake, and Haumea (and probably with dozens or hundreds of yet-to-be-discovered similarly-sized icy bodies beyond Neptune's orbit) than with the rocky bodies of the inner system.

Mars has an atmosphere, Vesta is mostly rock not ice, and they are all in the wrong orbits to be Kuiper Belt objects. edit: Don't worry, Pluto is also classified as a dwarf planet, just like Eris.

Wouldn't it have to clear it's orbit to be considered a planet?

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