I think “15 times further from the Sun than Pluto” is more meaningful for most readers than “700 times further from the Sun than Earth.” If it exists, it’s way way way out there.
Most people don't know off-hand that Pluto is ~40-50AU from the sun, so 700AU is hard to conceptualize.
Most people won't even have the slightest idea what 1 AU is. Most people know less about most topics (including space) than the original ChatGPT (3.5) did — probably only people who at least started a degree with a space sciences module are likely to know more than 3.5, and I expect plenty of space.com readers to be enthusiastic amateurs rather than professionals.
That said, I do I expect the average reader of space.com to know what an astronomical unit is, but even so I don't expect them to know the average orbital distance of Pluto.
But is even that assumption my quartz?
~30-50AU if you are referring to the range of orbital distance.
Side note: Apart from AU already being defined as average distance and not current distance, the distance referenced is how far out the proposed object is now, not its general orbital parameters. At that orbital distance 23 years of motion isn't going to be much change in distance even if it's in a hyperbolic orbit.
Hell, it's been nearly 2 decades since Pluto was itself planet 9. Just bringing the name up in a discussion about planets is going to cause more confusion.
The source we are discussing is space.com, a website which frequently mentions Star Wars and whose stated mission is to "transport our visitors across the solar system and beyond through accessible, comprehensive coverage of the latest news and discoveries." My comment was about communicating this research in a way that better fits "most readers" of space.com. If you think qualitative orrery models are beneath you and want to exclude those people, then you are not the target audience. Just go read the actual paper.
Or four days travel at the speed of light, to an outside observer. Or instantaneous for anyone travelling at the speed of light.
Time units are more approachable than distances I will never cross.
() Not really, I'm using artistic hyperbole.
If we are going to get anywhere in space it’s looking like we’re going to need some kind of technological leap. Would be wild to see that happen this lifetime.
https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/nearest_star_i...
But if you got “15x further than Pluto” you have context without needing to know any other trivia-style numbers.
Also it’s not like distance to Pluto is a meaningful number either since it’s extremely variable . AU at least is fixed
15x means no one alive today will see a mission that reaches the planet, and that's more accessible for most readers per above.
(9.5 * 15 / 3 = 47.5) + 30 years = 77.7 so some teenagers could live to see a probe reach it even without hypothetical life extension technology.
Or 698 trillion bananas.
Warp 4 = 109 billion km/hr
Per https://i.imgur.com/Su1RB.jpeg
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factor also lists values in a couple charts that check out.
Then to show Planet 9 distance they have to get in a car and drive a few miles.
That worked for me.
It communicates the scales really well, while only taking up a little over a foot of bookshelf space when not being "navigated". I have two heavy metallic retro looking rocket bookends for it.
I wonder how could this object be counted as a "planet" belonging to the Solar system, even if it were the size of Jupiter. But it's an object "estimated to be 2 to 4 times the radius, and about ten times the mass of the Earth". This must be another class of celestial bodies, some jumbo-sized Oort cloud object.
Also depending how elliptical the orbit, is the perigee might be much closer than 700AU, while still being further than Pluto's orbit. For all we know 700 AU is the apogee and say the perigee is 70 AU (1.4x Pluto's apogee ).
The body must also be large enough to clear other bodies in the same orbit, except at the Trojan positions (L4 and L5), to be considered as a planet. Otherwise it would just be a Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) or a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) at these distances.
It obviously does in this case. But this pedantic detail is rather important. It was used to demote Pluto a few years back.
Does it? Would we actually know if there was another slightly more sparse belt at 700AU? If we can't track a large planet in that area, why would we be certain about the belt?
Alternatively, if it's an external object captured by the Sun, how would we even classify it as clearing or not if there's nothing to clear?
> how would we even classify it as clearing or not if there's nothing to clear?
I assume that it's based on mathematical modeling.
10x earth masses usually implies a gas giant.
You don't need complex reverse slingshot interactions. You just need a low enough relative velocity to not shoot off the other side.
I would expect this to be the norm for capture, not some exotic phenomenon.
A ball doesn't need to lose energy to be captured in a valley either.
You just apply a radial force to turn a line into a circle.
Anything that approaches the sun slower than escape velocity will be captured.
You could think of it as speeding up as it falls toward the sun, it then slows down by the exact same amount as it leaves the Sun.
In order to stay near the sun it needs to lose some of that speed, and given that momentum is conserved, the only possible way is to either hit the Sun or send that momentum to a third object.
And the comment you're responding to already mentioned that other bodies can make a capture happen. Nobody was saying capture is impossible.
There is no way to capture with just 2 bodies - it would have to leave on gthe same hyperbolic orbit that it arrived on. However if it drove by and had a close enough interaction with a third body, like Jupiter, it could lose angular momentum to the planet, resulting in entering an orbit around the Sun. Further gravitational interactions with planets could then smooth that orbit out over time.
Alternately this could be the more straightforward scenario of interstellar object hits planetoid, they merge, and the new combined object is now in orbit.
I guess I’d always put all the gas giants in the same “very, unimaginably big” bucket. I knew Jupiter was the biggest, then Saturn, but I didn’t realize just HOW big they were compared to the rest. At the risk of stating the very, very obvious, Jupiter is huge!!!
Masses of gas giants are: Jupiter, 317.8 earth mass; Saturn, 95.2 earth mass; Neptune, 17.1 earth mass; Uranus, 14.5 earth mass
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_mass#Unit_of_mass_in_a...
It seems like the idea was to send a bunch of instruments way out and then take pictures in the brief time they were at a useful distance, but if there's a planet out there we can orbit and so stop the instruments at that distance it seems like we could make a permanent super telescope.
* 700 times further from the Sun than the Earth
* 15 times further from the Sun than Pluto
* 0.01 lightyear, or 1/400th the distance to the nearest star
Or, it's the difference between going for a 15 minutes walk and walking from Boston to Orlando (or San Diego to Seattle, for the West Coasters).
Hutton Orbital is located approximately 6,784,404 light seconds, or 0.22 light years, so this will be 50 hours of non boosted SC.
I think you have an extra factor of 1000 somewhere.
Which means Hutton is a lot further actually.
It's off by a factor of 8ish, which I applied to turn 2mph from a rate into a smaller unit of time but failed to balance.
It should have been an hour's walk (~2 miles) versus 700 hours' (~1400 miles).
Pluto is a fairly unremarkable dwarf planet. I don’t think it really helps to compare things to it.
I don't need to sue you. It's just entirely incorrect by any sane definitions of a planet. It's not the further if you include similar bodies or not a planet. As I have no interest in saving American misplaced pride (because let's not kid ourself it's about anything else), I don't see the point of spreading misinformation.
> Because more people know about Pluto than Eris or Sedna
Only if you were born before it was retrograded which will be less and less likely as time goes on.
> My cosmological knowledge is above average, but I don't know off the top of my head if 700 AU is super-duper far away or still in the range of the gas giants.
I'm not convinced that giving it in multiple of the distance between Pluto and the sun is in any way more useful than distance between the Earth and the sun or that it helps conceptualise the distance relative to the gas giants.
Anyway, Pluto orbit is highly excentric so you have 20AU of wiggle room here when considering distance.
> Only if you were born before it was retrograded which will be less and less likely as time goes on.
I admit my age plays into it. Though I am curious about the role Pluto has in modern primary school, do you know? I understand that it now has the same technical status as Eris et al., but I think it's still a fantastic example of how scientific understanding develops and changes. Not on par with discarding heliocentricity, but a very practical example of ongoing changes still present in our own time.
> As I have no interest in saving American misplaced pride (because let's not kid ourself it's about anything else)
I don't understand how this ties into American pride (nor am I American), what did I miss?
Pluto was the only planet discovered by an American and most of the people who are extremely attached to it tend to feel that removing Pluto as a planet is somehow taking something away from the USA.
As far as I know, the topic barely exists at all in other countries.
700 further from the Sun than Earth is tangible as "really really far" though.
Another perspective on the size of the solar system, like the Pale Blue Dot.