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Article: <[email protected]>
From: [email protected](Nancy )
Subject: Re: 12th Planet - any photos ?
Date: 7 Mar 1997 16:19:07 GMT
In article <[email protected]> Lamont
Granquist writes:
>> You didn't prove anything. After stating that a
comet/planet
>> would either go at the same steady slow pace when
>> approaching the Solar System and passing through it, or
>> alternatively going at the same high speed upon approach
>> that it has when passing through the Solar System, you
then
>> made a pronouncement.
>> [email protected]
>
> I simply calculated the maximum velocity that any object
> bound to the solar system could have if it was due at the
> Earth's orbit in 6 years. ... I then came up with the 50 AU
> limit on the distance to the 12th planet.
>
> They work for metallic man-made probes, they work for
comets,
> they work to describe the motions of stars, they work to
describe
> the motions of the gas giants, the icy planets like pluto
and the
> rocks like the Earth. They describe the motions of the
asteroids.
> They describe all terrestrial gravitational forces. And they
> describe your bloody 12th planet.
> [email protected]
So spake Lamont, know-it-all of the Universe. You've NO experience with the motion of large planets operating as comets. NONE. A year ago it was the "rule" that planets could not have long elliptical orbits, and now we hear that they've been discovered. Your "rules" are broken everyday, but you're too pompous to admit that.
........
A CNN article by Associated Press
dated October 23, 1996.
New rebel planet found outside solar system
It's roller-coaster orbit stuns scientists
A new planet that breaks all the rules about how and where planets form has been identified in orbit of a twin star about 70 light years from Earth in a constellation commonly known as the Northern Cross. The new planet has a roller-coaster like orbit that swoops down close to its central star and then swings far out into frigid fringes, following a strange egg-shaped orbit that is unlike that of any other known planet. "We don't understand how it could have formed in such an orbit," said William D. Cochran, head of University of Texas team that discovered the planet at the same time that a group from San Francisco State found it independently. ...
The eccentric orbit of the new planet adds a new dimension that astronomers will have to consider in theories about planetary formation, Cochran said. ... And there were skeptics even of the Cochran discovery. "It is a really nice piece of work" said David Black of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. "But I really question whether this is a planet or a brown dwarf." A brown dwarf is a failed star, an object that never collected enough mass to start stellar burning. Black said it is possible that most of the recently discovered planets are really brown dwarfs.