Astronomy - http://www.woodrecords.com/10thplanet/collection5

is one inch from the sun. On this scale, Pluto, the ninth planet would be a bit more than a yard from the sun. The new planet, by contrast, would be a half-mile distant.
At that great distance, the 10th planet would be too dim to see by current telescopes, although there is some hope that if it exists, the next generation of space-based infrared telescopes might be able to pick it up.
Murray hypothesizes the planet may have been wandering through the galaxy before being captured by the solar system’s gravity. Whitmire suggests it is a “brown dwarf,” or a failed star, a companion to the sun that was too small to light up.
Although suggestive, the findings are not conclusive. While Murray and the Louisiana physicists agree how distant the new object is, they trace out very different orbits. Murray considers the orbits of 13 comets with the most accurately known orbits; the Louisiana team considers 82.

Too Early to Look for a Name
“It’s possibly suggestive,” comments Brian Marsden, associate director for planetary sciences at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. “I don’t want to bet on it. We’re certainly not going to name it.”
Whitmire agrees it’s too early to say definitely there’s something out there.
“Until it’s found, you can never be overly confident,” he says. “We know in science you can be fooled by statistics.” But he adds, “If I was betting, it’s better than 50-50 odds that it’s there.”

http://www.astronomynow.com/breaking/9910/07mystery/index.html
Intrigued by the fact that long-period comets observed from Earth seem to follow orbits that are not randomly oriented in space, a scientist at the Open University in the UK is arguing that these comets could be influenced by the gravity of a large undiscovered object in orbit around the Sun. Writing in the issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society published on 11th October, Dr John Murray sets out a case for an object orbiting the Sun 32,000 times farther away than Earth. It would, however, be extremely faint and slow moving, and so would have escaped detection by present and previous searches for distant planets..
Long-period comets are believed to originate in a vast 'reservoir' of potential comets, known as the Oort cloud, surrounding the solar system at distances between about 10,000 and 50,000 astronomical units from the Sun. (One astronomical unit is approximately the average distance between the Earth and the Sun.) They reach Earth's vicinity in the inner solar system when their usual, remote orbits are disturbed. Only when near to the Sun do these icy objects grow the coma and tails that give them the familiar form of a comet. Dr Murray notes that the comets reaching the inner solar system include a group coming from directions in space that are strung out along an arc across the sky. He argues that this could mark the wake of some large body moving through space in the outer part of the Oort cloud, giving gravitational kicks to comets as it goes.
The object would have to be at least as massive as Jupiter to create a gravitational disturbance large enough to give rise to the observed effect, but currently favoured theories of how the solar system formed cannot easily explain the presence of a large planet so far from the Sun. If it were ten times more massive than Jupiter, it would be more akin to a brown dwarf (the coolest kind of stellar object) than a planet, brighter, and more likely to have been detected already.
So Dr Murray speculates that such an object, if it exists, will be planetary in nature and will have been captured into its present orbit since the solar system formed, even though the probability of such an event seems low on the basis of current knowledge.
Though a large, distant planet is a fascinating possibility and the evidence is suggestive, Dr Murray nevertheless stresses that he is not ruling out other possible explanations for the observed clustering of the comet orbits.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_467000/467572.stm
By News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse
A UK astronomer may have discovered a new and bizarre planet orbiting the Sun, 1,000 times further away than the most distant known planet.
Currently, Pluto is the planet we think of being on the edge of our planetary system.
But the new body would be 30,000 times more distant from the Sun than the Earth - putting it a significant distance on the way to the nearest star.
What is more, it seems that the new planet cannot be a true member of our Sun's family of planets. It may be a planet that was born elsewhere, and roamed throughout the galaxy only to be captured on the outskirts of our own Solar System.
The controversial suggestion that there is another planet in deep space comes from Dr John Murray, of the UK's Open University. For several years, he has been studying the peculiar motions of so-called long-period comets.
Comets deflected
Comets - flying mountains of rock and ice - are thought to come from the cold and dark outer reaches of the Solar System, far beyond the planets in a region called the Oort cloud.
They spend millions of years in the Oort cloud, until they are deflected into an orbit that takes them into the inner Solar System where we can see them.
By analysing the orbits of 13 of these comets, Dr Murray has detected the tell-tale signs of a single massive object that deflected all of them into their current orbits.
"Although I have only analysed 13 comets in detail," he told BBC News Online, "the effect is pretty conclusive. I have calculated that there is only about a one in 1,700 chance that it is due to chance."
In a research paper to be published next week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, he suggests that the so-far unseen planet is several times bigger than the largest known planet in our Solar System, Jupiter.
Being so far from the Sun - three thousand billion miles - it would take almost six million years to orbit it.
"This would explain why it has not been found," explained Dr Murray to BBC News Online. "It would be faint and moving very slowly."
Opposite direction
He has calculated that it lies in the constellation of Delphinus (the Dolphin).
But the planet orbits our Sun in the "wrong" direction, counter to the direction taken by all the other known planets.
It is this which has led to the remarkable suggestion that it did not form in this region of space along with the Sun's other planets, and could be a planet that "escaped" from another star.
But, if it is discovered, will Dr Murray get a chance to name it?
"Probably not," he says. "That will be up to an international committee. But it would be nice to make a few suggestions."
Further evidence to support Dr Murray's claims will be presented at a conference in Italy next week.
Professor John Matese, of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, has carried out a similar study and reached broadly similar conclusions. His research is to be published in Icarus, the journal of Solar System studies.

http://explorezone.com/archives/99_10/07_new_planet.htm
After studying 13 comets whose orbits seem to have been affected by a massive object far beyond Pluto, a British scientist announced today that there may be a previously unknown and very large planet orbiting the Sun.
Separately, three astrophysicists are set to propose that a brown dwarf lurks in the outer reaches of our solar system. Brown dwarfs are near-stars that never gathered enough fuel to become true stars; they can be many times more massive than Jupiter.
If either object is confirmed to exist, researchers will have a whole new batch of theories to create about how comets are formed, how they evolve, and how some are set on devastating paths toward Earth.
The two studies combined also open the possibility that a host of unfound planet-like objects may one day be added to our current nine-item list.
John J. Matese, a physics professor at the University of Louisiana, writes of the possible brown dwarf, based on a study of 82 comet trajectories, in an upcoming issue of the journal Icarus. Matese told explorezone.com that it's "very plausible" that there are several unknown planets and/or brown dwarfs orbiting the Sun.
"We suggest that this (brown) dwarf may only be the most likely to be detected during this epoch," Matese said, adding the cautionary note that "the existence of the object we discuss is not certain."
The brown dwarf would not likely have formed from the disk of gas and dust out of which the other planets were born, Matese and his colleagues say.
The possible 10th planet
Writing in the Oct. 11 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Open University professor John Murray says he observed 13 long-period comets -- objects that orbit the Sun but also travel to the far reaches of the solar system -- whose trajectories follow a similar arc. Murray suggests the common path is the result of a gravitational deflection caused by a planet-like object at least as massive as Jupiter.
Interestingly, Murray told explorezone.com that his research had been done in 1996, rejected by two science journals, and only recently been accepted for publication.
"It was finally accepted by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in May this year, but was still not really taken very seriously until a few days ago, when (Matese's team) announced that they have come to a very similar conclusion."
Murray describes his planet-like object as a lone wanderer that has been captured into an orbit around the Sun after a journey through space. Its orbit, he says, is in the opposite direction as the nine known planets (a motion called retrograde). He says the object orbits the Sun 32,000 times farther away than Earth (some 3,000,000,000,000 miles from the Sun) where it would be extremely faint and slow moving, and so could have escaped detection by present and previous searches for distant planets. He estimates the object takes 6 million years to orbit the Sun.
The telltale comets
Long-period comets are believed to originate in a vast 'reservoir' of potential comets, known as the Oort cloud, surrounding the solar system at distances between about 10,000 and 50,000 astronomical units from the Sun. (One AU is the average distance between Earth and the Sun.) These comet define the edge of our solar system, nearly 200,000 times as far from the Sun than is the Earth. Estimates for the number of these comets range into the hundreds of billions.
These Oort cloud comets visit the inner solar system when their usual, remote orbits are disturbed. Only when they pass close to the Sun do these icy objects grow the bright heads and tails that give them the familiar form of a comet (and make them observable).
Murray notes that the Oort cloud comets reaching the inner solar system include a group coming from directions in space that are strung out along an arc across the sky. He argues that this could mark the wake of some large body moving through space in the outer part of the Oort cloud, giving gravitational kicks to comets as it goes.
"Not only were there more of them between 30,000 and 50,000 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun, but their furthest points were found to lie in a band across the sky," Murray told explorezone.com. "This is precisely what would be expected if their orbits had been disturbed in the past by the gravitational attraction of a large planet. Looking at the orbital revolution periods of the comets concerned gave me a clue as to where the planet had been in its orbit at certain times in the past, from which a distance and present position of the planet could be derived."
The object would have to be at least as massive as Jupiter to alter the comets' orbits to the extent observed, Murray says. But current leading theories of how the solar system formed cannot easily explain the presence of a large planet so far from the Sun, so Murray speculates that such an object, if it exists, will be planetary in nature and would have been captured into its present orbit sometime after the solar system formed, even though the probability of such an event seems low based on current knowledge.
"I won't be certain until somebody actually finds it," he said. "You have to keep an open mind about other possible explanations for this non-random behavior, but at the moment, it seems to me the most likely possibility."
Possible brown dwarf
If Murray's proposed object were several times more massive than Jupiter, it could possibly be a brown dwarf, a massive star-like object that fell just short of the required mass and energy to stimulate stellar processes. Still, brown dwarfs are huge, and Murray argues that if the object that seems to be deflecting comets were a brown dwarf, it is more likely it would have been detected already.
Matese, the University of Louisiana professor who proposes there is a brown dwarf out there, did similar research on comets from the Oort cloud.
Matese calls the possible brown dwarf a companion to the Sun. He estimates its mass at three times that of Jupiter and puts it at 25,000 AU from the Sun (roughly in the middle of the range of Murray's estimate.)
In the analysis of highly accurate orbits of 82 Oort cloud comets, Matese and his colleagues detected a pattern connecting the orientation and shape of a comet's orbit path. They suggest that this can best be explained if there is an object approximately 3 times as massive as Jupiter orbiting in the vicinity of Oort cloud comets.
Matese says he can't predict the object's exact location, but says it is potentially observable by radio telescopes and next-generation infrared telescopes. He told explorezone.com that it is possible that his brown dwarf and Murray's possible planet are in fact the same object, but that he had not yet studied Murray's results thoroughly.
At an Oct. 11 meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Italy, Matese and his colleagues will explain that if the brown dwarf is confirmed to exist it will "play a major role in our understanding of how comets get into the Oort cloud and how they return. Comets from the Oort cloud are important contributors to the impact history of the Earth and are often claimed to be the cause of mass extinctions like the one in which the dinosaurs, and many other species, disappeared from the fossil record 65 million years ago."
What's next?
Before either object might be added to any lists, it would have to be observed directly.
"It needs to be confirmed by pictures taken with the largest telescopes on Earth," Murray said of his possible planet. "The problem is that it will be very faint (about 10 million times fainter than the faintest star visible to the naked eye) and will move very slowly, so two photographs taken about six months apart would be best to show the movement, though most of the movement would be due to the Earth moving in its orbit. There is also a big area to search, as there is a good bit of uncertainty in its predicted position."

http://www.msnbc.com/news/320182.asp
SPECULATION ABOUT the existence of unseen celestial companions dates back far before the discovery of Pluto in 1929 — and even figures in more recent fringe phenomena such as the 1997 “Heaven’s Gate” tragedy and talk of a new “Planet X.” This latest hypothesis, however, is aimed at answering nagging scientific questions about how particular types of comets make their way into the inner solar system.
Some comets, like Halley’s Comet, follow relatively short-period orbits — circling the sun in less than two hundred years. These comets are thought to originate in the Kuiper Belt, a disk of cosmic debris that lies beyond Neptune’s orbit.
The best way to think of the distances involved is in terms of Astronomical Units. One AU is the distance from Earth to the sun (93 million miles or 149.6 million kilometers). Pluto, the most distant of the planets, is at 39 AU. The Kuiper Belt extends from 30 AU to perhaps 1,000 AU.
Even further out is the Oort Cloud, a spherical haze of comets surrounding the solar system at distances between 10,000 AU and more than 50,000 AU. That’s where long-period comets such as Hale-Bopp are thought to come from. For some time, astronomers have noticed that the directional patterns of these comets are not completely random. And after years of study, some researchers are reporting that the patterns hint at something big out there perturbing the cometary paths.

WHAT COULD IT BE?
No telescope has yet detected this object. But on the basis of its gravitational effect, John B. Murray, a planetary scientist at Britain’s Open University, speculates that the object could be a planet larger than Jupiter, the biggest of the solar system’s known planets. Murray puts the object’s orbit at 32,000 AU, or 2.98 trillion miles from the sun. His proposal appears in the Oct. 11 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette say the object could be a planet or brown dwarf — that is, a dark, failed star — roughly three times the size of Jupiter and orbiting at 25,000 AU. The researchers, led by physicist John Matese, say their paper is to be published by the journal Icarus.
Both studies acknowledge that other factors could influence the pattern seen in long-period comets: for example, the Milky Way’s gravitational tidal effects. But the Louisiana researchers say the cometary patterns are best explained by the existence of “a perturber, acting in concert with the galactic tide.”
Matese said the proposed object should make one orbit around the sun every 4 million to 5 million years. Murray said the object he had in mind would make one orbit every 6 million years, circling the sun in a direction counter to that followed by the nine traditional planets.
The two researchers said they were familiar with each other’s work but hadn’t taken a close look at each other’s studies. They acknowledged that their estimates for the mass and orbit of a mysterious object were similar, but couldn’t say whether they were talking about the same object.

MORE QUESTIONS
How could such a massive object exist so far from the sun? The researchers say a planet or dark star could have coalesced during the formation of the solar system billions of years ago, but more probably would be a passing celestial body that was captured by the sun’s subtle gravitational pull. Another question: Why hasn’t such an object been seen? Murray says that even a Jupiter-scale planet could not be observed at the immense distances involved. Matese and his colleagues say that their hypothetical brown dwarf wouldn’t have been detected even by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, which surveyed the heavens in 1983 — but that the yet-to-be-launched Space Infrared Telescope Facility just might be able to pick it up.
All this may sound like science fiction, but an expert in the field notes that the hypothesis has been a subject of serious speculation for years.
“We’ve all wondered whether there was something out there,” said Brian Marsden, who heads the International Astronomical Union’s Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams as well as the Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
However, Marsden also expressed some skepticism about the evidence behind the latest research.
“I’m not convinced it is not due to chance,” he told MSNBC in an e-mail message. “In any case, the data may not be as good as one would like.”

SPECULATIVE SCENARIO
If the research holds up, it could open the door for renewed speculation on even spookier questions: Some theorists have proposed that the gravitational effect of a massive unseen object in a distant orbit — nicknamed “Nemesis” or the “Death Star” — could set off periodic cometary

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