The Space Thread: Diablo's Home Planet Found

[CLR-GTR]

Mighty Saturn, and more stunning shots of the nearly-at-its-end Cassini:

 

 

Source: NASA

[CLR-GTR]

For those who might be interested, SpaceX is doing another launch-and-return this evening. Their Falcon 9 is gonna bring a new ocean-monitoring satellite in orbit. After that it will return to earth again, this time it will be another attempt to land on that sea platform they have instead of on land.

 

Will be broadcast on NASA's live stream, around half past 6 GMT UK time or half past 7 west-european time.

[Camel]

Here's a link to the live stream for those lazy Ducks. The stream has just started and the landing will be at 1842GMT so the launch will presumably be before that. Keep those eyes peeled!

 

Ustream.Tv

 

I will try to watch this and hope that this one is a great success!

 

[TIMELESS]

 

So this is pretty amazing. When I was a kid there was nine planets, poor Pluto, but it looks like there might be a ninth after all. We just haven't discovered it yet. Exciting :D

[CLR-GTR]

I can imagine distance is playing against its discovery.... 20 times as far from the Sun as Neptune!!!!! The Solar System is by far no more the 'compact and cozy' star+9 planets system as I remember it from my 90's pocket guide to the universe. Also, with the actual scale of the picture below, the full size of the solarsystem would be 4,5 km.... Oh dear.

 

[CLR-GTR]

In other news, gravitational waves have been measured for the first time. Big breakthrough in the world of observing and detecting the universe, since it will open up the possibility to ''see'' things which don't emit light, such as black holes, and perhaps also dark matter (which is said to make up the vast majority of the universe). They discovered this by measuring an extremely small distortion in laser setups, casued by a merger of 2 black holes 1.3 billion years ago.

 

And less good news, comet lander Philae has been declared dead. Scientists sent a wake-up signal which was literally meant to shake the lander a bit so it could get some solar rays onto its panels again, but it didn't work. The comet is speeding away from the sun, it's getting too cold for the lander to function correctly. :(

[Eudemon]

Einstein was a seriously smart individual. To have the foresight and belief that this is going on without having the proper means of testing really blows my mind.

 

And that's a shame about Philae but to be honest, the fact it even managed to land on the comet is a feat in itself, and it did do well with what it managed to send back helping us understand more about these lumps of rock, that no doubt deliver life throughout the universe to planets who have the right set of ingredients to do so, but just need that little bit extra to kickstart the reaction.

[CLR-GTR]

Ye, we should have been lucky it managed to do anything at all, considering it bounced off a few times when it tried to land.

[CarMadMike]

SES-9 MISSION | SpaceX

 

They're attempting (for the third time) to launch the SES-9 mission, they'll also be trying the weird landing thing again. This time with some upgrades to the Falcon-9.

 

The launch will happen in less than 6 minutes from now, so be quick :D Might get cancelled within 2 mins of launch like past time.

[CLR-GTR]

So, planet number 9 with its rumored size of 10 times Earth, was discovered by a team of scientists who studied orbits of 6 Kuiperbelt objects. The probability that their orbits were nót formed by this ninth planet was 0.007%. And now, one of the scientists announced this:

 

Hey Planet Nine fans, a new eccentric KBO was discovered. And it is exactly where Planet Nine says it should be.

 

I haven't done the statistics yet, but I suspect this takes the probability of this being a statistical fluke down to ~.001% or so.

 

:nuts: :D

[Ryzza5]

I wonder how long the orbit takes, and if it's not more than a few decades, why we haven't noticed it before when close to the sun.

[Andreas¹]

Space is a seriously fascinating place.

[Eudemon]

Planet Ten surely? :p #TeamPlanetPluto

 

That is cool though, is this the one that's supposedly way out there or is that another I'm thinking of? :think:

[Ozzmcom]

I wonder how long the orbit takes, and if it's not more than a few decades, why we haven't noticed it before when close to the sun.

 

well Neptune's orbit takes around 160 earth years to complete so go figure. We are talking huge AUs here.

[Ryzza5]

Yep, I knew it took a while, just couldn't recall from 20 years ago if it was quite that long, haha.

[Eudemon]

Holy crap, space is just too way out there to comprehend at times for me. The distances and figures are - if you pardon the pun - astronomical!!

[Ozzmcom]

Holy crap, space is just too way out there to comprehend at times for me. The distances and figures are - if you pardon the pun - astronomical!!

yes well it is often the problem with space. No one can really comprehend the size. We are not evolved to make sense of such vast numbers so even when you start to go above thousands or millions the true meaning of the scale is lost in our brains. It took more than 9 years for the fastest man-made object to reach the inner circle of kuiper belt, and that's just the backyard of our solar system.

[Eudemon]

It's more with the Voyager craft where I am in disbelief at the vastness of the distances. Those things have been travelling close to 40 years and have only just escaped the outer solar system I believe.

 

And those images where it shows you the supergiants; VY Canis Majoris and chums.

[Ozzmcom]

well not quite, voyager 1 is traveling through sun's magnetic field voyager 2 is far behind on a completely different trajectory. I guess it depends on how you define the boundaries of the solar system. NASA reckons It'll be another 40,000 years before any of the voyagers make a flyby to another star system. And we're talking just a few light years at this rate. The milky way alone is more than 100,000 light years across.

But we do have 5 interstellar spacecrafts as of now, voyager 1 is the only one that is directly heading towards the middle of the galaxy.

[Eudemon]

Ah yeah maybe it's the outer reach of the sun's winds (edit: Heliosphere) I was thinking of then. I do remember last year they said something about detecting a drop of solar winds that told them the craft had entered what they called 'Interstellar space'.

 

edit: Quick search shows they expect Voyager 2 to do the same this year.

[Ozzmcom]

It's just mind blowing what those 2 spacecrafts have done for the mankind. We're still using their reference images and their collected data of the outer planets they flew by even after almost 50 years. To think that they have traveled for years endlessly and from billions of miles away they have sent pictures of our system's planets is just something else. We take so many things we know about the solar system for granted but to think that astronomers didn't even know what neptune or uranus looked like before the voyager program gives you the idea.

[CLR-GTR]

@Diablo: its orbit is extreme yes. How extreme, is what I posted earlier:

 

 

I can imagine distance is playing against its discovery.... 20 times as far from the Sun as Neptune!!!!! The Solar System is by far no more the 'compact and cozy' star+9 planets system as I remember it from my 90's pocket guide to the universe. Also, with the actual scale of the picture below, the full size of the solarsystem would be 4,5 km.... Oh dear.

 

 

[Ryzza5]

Indeed, although they have found certain other planets in other systems, i.e. the earth 2.0's and that Jupiter cousin that's as close to its star as Mercury.

[CLR-GTR]

Plus those were all found through old-fashion redundant steampunk machines compared to the Ferrari-esque James Webb Telescope and other new-generation space searchers. That Mike Brown mister says we should have a confirmation of the planet existing within 5 years.

[CLR-GTR]

Have a Mercury transit:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ4AwsmuQXk

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaT2Nqv8m64