The Sun's 10th Planet..Sedna?

[$cirisme]

SCIENTISTS have found a new world orbiting the solar system – more than 3 billion kilometres further away from the Sun than Pluto and 40 years away from Earth in a space shuttle.

NASA is expected to announce today the discovery of the space object, which some experts believe could be a new planet. It is provisionally known as Sedna, after the Inuit goddess of the sea.

The discovery of Sedna – 10 billion kilometres from Earth – is a testament to the new generation of high-powered telescopes.

Measurements suggest Sedna's diameter is almost 2000km – the biggest find in the solar system since Pluto was discovered 74 years ago. It is believed to be made of ice and rock, and is slightly smaller than Pluto.

Full article here.


I had always read that scientists expected to find another planet larger than Pluto(Planet X) because scientists felt that Pluto was too small to shift orbits with Neptune as it does.


Is this it, even though it's smaller than what would be expected, or are supporters of the Planet X theory just plain wrong?

[$cirisme]

Search conclusion Pluto was originally thought to be Planet X, but Pluto's mass was not sufficient to explain Neptune's orbit, so the search continued. However these apparent discrepancies were resolved when the Voyager 2 space probe discovered that Neptune's mass had been badly miscalculated; with Neptune's newly discovered mass taken into account, there was no longer a need for any new planet to explain Neptune's orbit.

I see that the books I read about Planet X in were badly out of date.

[Leroy]

Could this be Kolob?

[djnoz]

I did a bit of quick clicking around. The orbit of this thing is extremely elliptical and its orbital span is about ten times that of Plutos (just from looking at pictures). I'd say it's probably a captured object, its orbit looks just like a comet's.

The people who made this discovery have put up a website here, which offers a very nice in-depth analysis.

[sylas]

The people who made this discovery have put up a website here, which offers a very nice in-depth analysis.

Very interesting... and relevant to discussions in this forum in several ways.

Sedna is currently at its closest approach to the Sun, and has an orbital period of about 10,500 years. Its finders hypothesize that it is a body from the inner Oort cloud. They predict there will be many more similar objects.

I started to write a longer article considering this find in the light of various models and ideas relating to the Oort cloud; including criticisms supplied at Answers in Genesis. Sedna does not resolve this as easily as a direct observation of the cloud. Even the most distant part of its orbit from the Sun is still closer than most of the Oort cloud. The finders of Sedna suggest that the cloud comes closer in towards the Sun than previously thought. They expect many more objects similar to Sedna to exist.

I do wonder how young earth creationists picture in their mind the formation of the solar system. If the Sun and moon and planets were formed in the fourth day, what did the universe look like in the third day, with the formation of the oceans and dry land? Was the Earth alone in space?

In a young earth model, what could one expect about Sedna's formation? There has not been enough time for even one orbit to complete; and not enough time for major interactions with other bodies to perturb its orbit. Can we think of Senda being called into existence from nothing, already in its orbit and on the outward leg from the Sun? (It is presently fairly near its point of closest approach to the Sun.) Is this any substantially different to the model in which we hypothesize light created in transit?

Cheers -- Sylas

[DunnySaze]

I do wonder how young earth creationists picture in their mind the formation of the solar system. If the Sun and moon and planets were formed in the fourth day, what did the universe look like in the third day, with the formation of the oceans and dry land? Was the Earth alone in space?

Good question.

I wonder when the Earth started to revolve about the Sun. Was it stationary until the Sun formed and then it started to move; was it already moving through 1/365^th of an arc as if the Sun was already there even though it wasn't; or was it moving in a straight line and 'captured' by the Sun as the Sun suddenly came into existance? I wonder what the YE model is for this and what is the physical basis for it.

[CobraA1]

Not that it matters, since the most common theories about creation usually involve miracles - now could we please get back on subject? First, the Hubble Telescope thread almost gets ruined by people wanting to debate - now this. Sheesh.

Interesting discovery. I suppose the question is now whether to really classify it as a planet - even Pluto has sometimes been questioned . . .

[Roy]

Sedna is currently at its closest approach to the Sun, and has an orbital period of about 10,500 years.

You want to watch that uniformitarianism.

Sedna does not resolve this as easily as a direct observation of the cloud.

I see a potential problem here - the Oort cloud hypothesis doesn't really describe a cloud - the Oort bodies aren't expected to be in close proximity to each other. Thus I don't think it will ever be possible to have a direct observation of the Oort cloud as a cloud. The best we'll ever have is direct observations of the individual bodies, and experience suggests that the creationist organisations will sieze on this to claim 'Where's the cloud? Just because there's 1 [or 2, or 10, or 1000] object out there doesn't mean there's a cloud.'

In a young earth model, what could one expect about Sedna's formation? There has not been enough time for even one orbit to complete; and not enough time for major interactions with other bodies to perturb its orbit. Can we think of Senda being called into existence from nothing, already in its orbit and on the outward leg from the Sun? (It is presently fairly near its point of closest approach to the Sun.) Is this any substantially different to the model in which we hypothesize light created in transit?

I think it is. The main problem with the light-in-transit model is that it results in creating images of events which never took place. Creating Sedna in orbit doesn't have this problem unless there's something about it that suggests it has already approached the sun at least once, and I can't think of anything that would qualify.

Roy

[Roy]

Interesting discovery. I suppose the question is now whether to really classify it as a planet - even Pluto has sometimes been questioned . . .

As I understand it the astronomic definition requires the object in question to have formed from the solar disk and be sufficiently massive that it's own gravity has pulled it into a sphere. There may be no way to tell for certain until we can get more information on the physical nature of Pluto and Sedna.

Roy

[SteveF]

Not that it matters, since the most common theories about creation usually involve miracles - now could we please get back on subject?

I suggest you stop posting on the Natural Science board.

[CobraA1]

I suggest you stop posting on the Natural Science board.

Quite amusing, to say the least. Please note that:

a) I referred to "most common theories" - I didn't state waht I believed myself.

b) I was merely trying to got the thread back on track .

c) Thanks for the suggestion. I'll put it in the circular file.

[learning]

Anyone here ever read the book "The Tenth Planet" I read it a long time ago, and it was supposedly about how some ancient peoples of our earth had diagrams of our solar system with a tenth planet. It got into some strange things about Nephilim, and this person believed they were from this planet etc. so I threw it out, but just wondered if anyone here ever heard of it?

[$cirisme]

Dumb question--what is the Oort cloud?

[grmorton]

Dumb question--what is the Oort cloud?

No question trying to learn something is dumb. The Oort cloud is an outer cloud of icy objects which supply long period comets to the inner solar system. Inside of it is the Kuiper clouds which also supplies shorter period comets to the inner solar system.

YECs have claimed that neither cloud exists, but today, the Hubble and other scopes have detected many many objects in the Kuiper belt and Sedna is probably an inner member of the outer, Oort Belt.

both belts are named for astronomers who postulated that they existed.

[A Beautiful Truth]

Anyone here ever read the book "The Tenth Planet" I read it a long time ago, and it was supposedly about how some ancient peoples of our earth had diagrams of our solar system with a tenth planet. It got into some strange things about Nephilim, and this person believed they were from this planet etc. so I threw it out, but just wondered if anyone here ever heard of it?

If it mentioned Nephilim, be assured nobody here as read it.

....Except maybe those that read Henry Morris' explaination of the craters on the moon.

~Charleen