The Hunt for Planet X

Schilling, Govert

doi:10.1007/978-0-387-77805-1

Cited by 35 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…As an example coming from the recent history of astronomy, near the end of the eighties of the past century the rumor spread about alleged 'unexplained residuals' in the orbit of Uranus. 1,2 Actually, their size-a fraction of an arcsecond-was just comparable with that of many known sources of systematic errors in the observations themselves; nonetheless, they were used to predict the position of a so far unseen distant planet in the remote peripheries of our Solar system: [3][4][5][6][7] the time-honored Planet X scenario 8 which has often resurfaced so far for disparate, more or less sound theoretical and/or observational reasons. It was later pointed out 9 that an inaccurate value of the mass of Neptune was used in the dynamical models used to calculate the path of Uranus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gravitational anomalies in the solar system?

Iorio

2015

Int. J. Mod. Phys. D

100

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Mindful of the anomalous perihelion precession of Mercury discovered by U. Le Verrier in the second half of the nineteenth century and its successful explanation by A. Einstein with his General Theory of Relativity in the early years of the twentieth century, discrepancies among observed effects in our Solar system and their theoretical predictions on the basis of the currently accepted laws of gravitation applied to known matter-energy distributions have the potential of paving the way for remarkable advances in fundamental physics. This is particularly important now more than ever, given that most of the universe seems to be made of unknown substances dubbed Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Should this not be directly the case, Solar system's anomalies could anyhow lead to advancements in either cumulative science, as shown to us by the discovery of Neptune in the first half of the nineteenth century, and technology itself. Moreover, investigations in one of such directions can serendipitously enrich the other one as well. The current status of some alleged gravitational anomalies in the Solar system is critically reviewed. They are: a) Possible anomalous advances of planetary perihelia; b) Unexplained orbital residuals of a recently discovered moon of Uranus (Mab); c) The lingering unexplained secular increase of the eccentricity of the orbit of the Moon; d) The so-called Faint Young Sun Paradox; e) The secular decrease of the mass parameter of the Sun; f) The Flyby Anomaly; g) The Pioneer Anomaly; and h) The anomalous secular increase of the astronomical unit

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gravitational anomalies in the solar system?

Iorio

2015

Int. J. Mod. Phys. D

100

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“…It is a long time (Lowell 1915;Pickering 1928Pickering , 1931Schuette 1949) that such questions−still well alive (Lykawka and Mukai 2008;Iorio 2010;Matese and Whitmire 2011;Fernández 2011)−are well rooted in the astronomical community, having often resurfaced in different contexts and with changed forms;. For a recent, popular review, see Schilling (2009). Here we limit ourselves to recall that • The hypothesis of a stellar-like companion object (Nemesis) orbiting the Sun was postulated for explaining terrestrial extinction periodicity (Raup and Sepkoski 1984), thought to be mediated by comet showers (Whitmire and Jackson 1984;Davis et al 1984;Hills 1984;Hut 1984;Vandervoort and Sather 1993;Muller 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraints on the location of a putative distant massive body in the Solar System from recent planetary data

Iorio

2011

Celest Mech Dyn Astr

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We analytically work out the long-term variations caused on the motion of a planet orbiting a star by a very distant, pointlike massive object X. Apart from the semi-major axis a, all the other Keplerian osculating orbital elements experience long-term variations which are complicated functions of the orbital configurations of both the planet itself and of X. We infer constraints on the minimum distance d X at which X may exist by comparing our prediction of the long-term variation of the longitude of the perihelion to the latest empirical determinations of the corrections ˙ to the standard Newtonian/Einsteinian secular precessions of several solar system planets recently estimated by independent teams of astronomers. We obtain the following approximate lower bounds on d X for the assumed masses of X quoted in brackets: 150-200 au (Mars), 250-450 au (0.7 m ⊕ ), 3500-4500 au (4 m Jup ).

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Bibliography of space policy publications. July 2009–June 2010

Baranes¹

2011

Yearbook on Space Policy

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The Hunt for Planet X

Cited by 35 publications

References 0 publications

Gravitational anomalies in the solar system?

Gravitational anomalies in the solar system?

Constraints on the location of a putative distant massive body in the Solar System from recent planetary data

Bibliography of space policy publications. July 2009–June 2010

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