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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,

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Speaker 1: and we're back or part two or is this part

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Speaker 1: two or does it kind of stand alone to a

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Speaker 1: large time. I think this one stands alone. Yeah. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So well, last time, if you were with us, in

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Speaker 1: the last episode, we were exploring what we were sort

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Speaker 1: of calling the lost Daughters of autun the planets that

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Speaker 1: once were thought to exist somewhere in the schlore system,

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Speaker 1: whether in ancient times or in recent centuries, but we

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Speaker 1: later found out probably never existed or definitely never existed

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Speaker 1: in some cases. So examples we talked about included Antikathon

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Speaker 1: and the Central Fire. What was the deal with that?

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, you just have to go back and listen

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Speaker 1: to the episode. But yeah, this complex notion where, um,

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Speaker 1: the Sun is not the center of the universe, the

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Speaker 1: Earth is not the center of the universe, but something

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Speaker 1: called the Central Fire is at the center, and Earth

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Speaker 1: is actually closer to the Central Fire than the Sun.

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Speaker 1: So it's you know, this sort of complex uh model

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Speaker 1: of the cosmos based on uh, you know, the best

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Speaker 1: observational data of the day of like ancient times, ancient Greece. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: combined with certain religious mythological ideas yea Pythagorean cosmology sort of.

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Speaker 1: But then also we talked about the scientific thinking that

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Speaker 1: led to the belief in such a thing as the

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Speaker 1: planet Vulcan, a planet believed to be inside the orbit

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Speaker 1: of Mercury, super close to the Sun, as was proposed

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Speaker 1: by Urban la Verier. And of course we also talked

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Speaker 1: about Phaeton, the the Phaeton or Phaeton the the best

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Speaker 1: subject of a Renaissance painting of all time. Yes, but

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Speaker 1: for the purposes of main purposes of our discussion, the

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Speaker 1: the idea that that they thought, well, the asteroid belt

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Speaker 1: maybe used to be planet, and maybe this is this

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Speaker 1: is what we would call that planet if it were

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Speaker 1: still a whole exactly right. So today we wanted to

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Speaker 1: carry this discussion forward to talk about other ideas about

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Speaker 1: planets that are thought to maybe exist somewhere in the

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Speaker 1: Solar System but haven't yet been confirmed. In the last episode,

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Speaker 1: all the planets that we talked about, we're we're pretty

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Speaker 1: sure now have never existed at any time. I mean,

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Speaker 1: with two of them were quite sure, but there are

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Speaker 1: still questions. For example, there has long been a question

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Speaker 1: about what lies at the furthest reaches we we talked about,

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Speaker 1: you know what happens when you go down as far

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Speaker 1: as you can into the Solar system, like the Sun,

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Speaker 1: is this pit this well where you go all the

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Speaker 1: way down? Are there are things that are hard to

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Speaker 1: see because they're so close to the Sun. When you

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Speaker 1: think about the opposite end, could there be things that

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Speaker 1: are hard for us to see because they're so far

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Speaker 1: And of course we have to realize how how confusing

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Speaker 1: this may seem at first, because it's easy to think

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Speaker 1: that we have our Solar system pretty figured out at

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Speaker 1: this point, right, I mean mostly if you're listening to this,

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Speaker 1: you probably grew up memorizing the planets Mercury, Venus, with Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

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Speaker 1: And then there's the whole issue of Pluto, and some

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Speaker 1: of us get a little bit out of shape, right

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Speaker 1: when when someone tells us actually, Pluto isn't a full

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Speaker 1: fledged planet, it's more of a dwarf planet, etcetera. And uh,

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Speaker 1: you know when when maybe don't roll with change all

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Speaker 1: that well, but it's easy to think Okay, but that's it, right,

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Speaker 1: there's nothing new to discover in the Solar System, because meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: we are continually spotting new exo planets that are light

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Speaker 1: years upon light years away, like far distant reaches of

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Speaker 1: the observable universe. So if we're figuring that out, then

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Speaker 1: surely we've got everything squared away in our immediate neighborhood. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it only makes sense that that's the way it should go, right,

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Speaker 1: Why are we seeing exo planets when there's still a

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Speaker 1: question of whether there could be a planet in our

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Speaker 1: own Solar system we don't know about. And unfortunately that's

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Speaker 1: just a side effect of the different ways we have

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Speaker 1: of detecting things. It actually may be much easier to

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Speaker 1: detect the presence of a planet orbiting a distant star

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Speaker 1: because you can definitely see that star, and you can

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Speaker 1: tell by certain things. You can tell by if the

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Speaker 1: star wobbles, if there are other gravitational influences on that star.

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Speaker 1: You can tell by the what's known as the transit method,

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Speaker 1: if something is passing in front of the star from

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Speaker 1: our perspective and causing it too dim. Yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: I was thinking about it this way. Um, I was

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Speaker 1: thinking of beach houses. Imagine you're staying in one beach house,

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Speaker 1: you know, sizeable beach house, and they tend to be

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Speaker 1: you know, with lots of lots of beds for multiple

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Speaker 1: families or groups to stay and at the same time,

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Speaker 1: so you're in one beach house and then you're adjacent

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Speaker 1: to another beach house and you you you gaze out

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Speaker 1: at the other beach house. You see some lights on,

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Speaker 1: and you ask yourself, I wonder if anyone is staying there,

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Speaker 1: and you observe it until you find definite signs that

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Speaker 1: there is an individual in that house, and then then

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Speaker 1: maybe you can count how many individuals are in that house.

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Speaker 1: But then if you have the same question about your

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Speaker 1: own beach house, well then you can. There are ways

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Speaker 1: to try and figure that out, but not the same

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Speaker 1: not the same ways, right. You might do a bit

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Speaker 1: of listening, you might do a bit of roaming around,

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Speaker 1: of rattling the curiously locked doors that go who knows where.

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Speaker 1: That's a really good analogy. I like that a lot.

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Speaker 1: And so by running around within our own house, we

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Speaker 1: have discovered, by say the early nineteen hundred, late eighteen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, we had discovered a lot of stuff.

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Speaker 1: We discovered eight planets at that point. The first six

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Speaker 1: planets Mercury, Venus, of course, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn

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Speaker 1: have been known about since ancient times. The ancient astronomers

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Speaker 1: with the naked eye could see them in the night

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Speaker 1: sky and charted their movements and all that. Then in

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Speaker 1: seventeen eighty one you had Uranus or Uranus. We still

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Speaker 1: have to decide which one we truly prefer. Uranus was

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Speaker 1: found by Sir William Herschel with a telescope. He wanted

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Speaker 1: to name it after King George, and fortunately that didn't happen. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Then Laveryer, the French astronomer, predicted the placement of Neptune

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Speaker 1: by the wobble in Uranus um and he he said,

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Speaker 1: I predict there's another planet here and you can find it.

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Speaker 1: And then they went and looked for it and they

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Speaker 1: did find it. And that was in the eighteen forties.

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Speaker 1: So we're up to seven planets at this point by

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Speaker 1: the eighteen forties. By the way, as long as we're

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Speaker 1: snickering at at the planetary name Uranus, I do want

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Speaker 1: to throw in to call back to an older episode

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Speaker 1: that I hope that one day someone writes a science

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Speaker 1: fiction tale in which a starship is headed towards Uranus

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Speaker 1: and it's called the Guya Bolga. That would be a

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Speaker 1: great ship title there. That is brilliant. That is absolutely brilliant.

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Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I think I said. Did I say

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Speaker 1: a minute ago that Neptune was the seventh planet? I

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Speaker 1: feel like I've got that ringing in my head for

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Speaker 1: some reason. If I said that, that's entirely wrong. Neptune

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Speaker 1: is the eighth planet. Obviously. Uh So, apologies if I misspoke.

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Speaker 1: If not, this is just maybe something we can edit out.

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Speaker 1: Sorry I had to say that before I forgot. But yes,

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Speaker 1: the guy balda that that should be the ship to Uranus.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely much more evocative and resident than Voyager two or

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Speaker 1: whatever they've previously used. But let's pull it back and

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Speaker 1: meet a guy. You ready to meet a guy, A

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Speaker 1: mustachio gentleman. Yes, okay, so it is time to meet

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Speaker 1: a fellow by the name of Perceval Lowell. And I

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Speaker 1: think we visited this guy on the podcast before. That

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Speaker 1: mustache does look familiar. So Perceval Lowell was born to

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Speaker 1: a wealthy, prominent family in Boston in eighteen fifty five.

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Speaker 1: The Lowell family. So he was brother of a Lawrence Lowell,

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Speaker 1: who was a lawyer who ended up becoming president of

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Speaker 1: Harvard University. He was also the brother I didn't realize

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Speaker 1: this until recently of the poet Amy Lowell, who I

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Speaker 1: guess is considered a modernist poet. She sometimes called an imagist. Um.

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Speaker 1: But I picked out one of her poems because it

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Speaker 1: had an image that seemed maybe a bit relevant to today. Um.

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Speaker 1: The poem is called Balls. I'm not going to quote

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Speaker 1: the whole thing, but she writes, throw the blue ball

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Speaker 1: above the little twigs of the tree tops, and cast

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Speaker 1: the yellow ball straight at the buzzing stars. All our

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Speaker 1: life is a flinging of colored balls to impossible distances.

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Speaker 1: I think the image there is that all our life

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Speaker 1: is a flinging of colored balls, like we're doing the flinging.

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Speaker 1: But you could also think of it is that everything

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Speaker 1: that human life is is being flung around on a

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Speaker 1: colored ball in the void of space. Yeah, that's that's

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Speaker 1: the whole human experience, just right there on the surface

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Speaker 1: of this weird ball among other weird balls. It's always

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Speaker 1: a weird thing to consider. I mean, I know Sagan

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Speaker 1: pointed that out about like the picture of the Earth.

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Speaker 1: When you take a picture of the Earth, everything human

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Speaker 1: there has ever been is in that picture. Yeah, that

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Speaker 1: pale blue dot that contains our beginning and may well

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Speaker 1: contain our end. But anyway, back to Amy's brother, Perceval,

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Speaker 1: so Perceval roll I think in his early days, I guess,

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Speaker 1: since he was sort of a man about town, except

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Speaker 1: town was like the whole world, and especially like the

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Speaker 1: eastern part of Asia. Like he traveled a lots inner

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Speaker 1: national fleneur maybe um and he he traveled through the

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighties and the eighteen nineties, and at one point

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Speaker 1: became Foreign Secretary to the Korean Special Mission to the

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Speaker 1: United States. But then later in the eighteen nineties, Percival

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Speaker 1: Lowell became more and more fascinated with astronomy, particularly with

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Speaker 1: the planet Mars. And there was something interesting going on

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Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds with the planet Mars. There

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Speaker 1: was this Italian astronomer named Giovanni Chaparelli who had been

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Speaker 1: studying the planet Mars through a telescope, and he perceived

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Speaker 1: what looked to him like a series of lines on

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Speaker 1: the surface of the planet that he in eighteen seventy

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Speaker 1: seven called cannally, an Italian word meaning channels. But apparently

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Speaker 1: these canally were taken by some English speaking audiences to

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Speaker 1: be canals, kind of a false cognate inference, as in

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Speaker 1: canals like in Venice, artificial structures made by intelligent tool

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Speaker 1: using creatures like us. And this idea kind of became

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Speaker 1: a sensation, right, Yeah, this, this had a tremendous effect

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Speaker 1: on on the way we perceived the planet Mars. I mean,

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Speaker 1: its effects are still felt today and the way we

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Speaker 1: think about Mars despite everything that we've learned since then. Yeah, Like,

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Speaker 1: why how come when we talk about aliens that go

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Speaker 1: to is to talk about Martians? Especially in the early

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Speaker 1: twentieth centuries, it was always Martians And when't Venusians or

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Speaker 1: anything like that. I mean, occasionally Venusians would pop up,

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Speaker 1: but it's not Santa Claus versus the Venusians. It's Santa

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Speaker 1: Claus versus the Martians. Yeah, or in War of the World,

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Speaker 1: you know why why the Martians Martian threat? Exactly? So,

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Speaker 1: the the idea of alien canals on Mars really got personal.

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Speaker 1: Lowell's gears cranking, and he decided to turn his attention

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Speaker 1: and his wealth and his resources to astronomy in the

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Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, and in doing this he founded the Lowell

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Speaker 1: Observatory and Flagstaff, Arizona, still there today. Yeah, and Flagstaff

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Speaker 1: is certainly a great place to gaze at the stars,

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Speaker 1: and just a cool place in general. I like Flagstaff

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Speaker 1: so personal. Lowell became a passionate defender of the idea

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Speaker 1: that there was or had been, intelligent civilization on Mars.

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Speaker 1: And he put this theory forward in a bunch of

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Speaker 1: published writings, using observations from the Lowell Observatory to back

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Speaker 1: up his argument. And so I want to quote from

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Speaker 1: his nineteen sixteen New York Times obituary with a few abridgements.

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Speaker 1: The author rights quote. The great controversy among astronomers, in

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Speaker 1: which he played a leading part, began in nineteen oh

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Speaker 1: seven after his announcement that the observations made by his

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Speaker 1: astronomical station proved that Mars was inhabited. Professor Lowell had

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Speaker 1: put the theory forward tentatively as early as eighteen. Many

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Speaker 1: imminent astronomers in this country in Europe accepted his conclusions

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Speaker 1: of nineteen o seven as unassailable. Others were skeptical Professor

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Speaker 1: Lowell's theory begins with the demonstration that the primary requisites

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Speaker 1: for human life exists on the planet water, heat, and atmosphere.

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Speaker 1: His positive proof of the existence of human life on

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Speaker 1: Mars is the network of lines which marks certain areas

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Speaker 1: of the planet's face, indicating the digging of artificial canals,

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Speaker 1: which would require an intelligence and engineering skill as great

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Speaker 1: or greater than possessed by the inhabitants of this Earth.

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Speaker 1: So I think he's making a few jumps here, Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean the main jump, of course is that is

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Speaker 1: that there are no such canals. And uh, and the

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Speaker 1: more we looked at Mars, and then ultimately as we

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Speaker 1: began to to send probes to the Red planet, it

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Speaker 1: became increasingly clear that there are absolutely no canals. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: when we we got photos of Mars from a probe

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Speaker 1: in in the nineteen seventies which showed yeah, definitely not

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Speaker 1: nothing there, right and and uh, and you know we

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Speaker 1: talked about this before in the show. And you know,

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Speaker 1: dealing with early observations, there is a there's more room

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Speaker 1: to see things that are not there, especially if you

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Speaker 1: don't have the ability to really cat do any photography

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Speaker 1: at all. It's so it's very observational and then very

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Speaker 1: and then very easy to maybe think you see something

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Speaker 1: or misremember something you've seen, or or in fact, the

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Speaker 1: more you look at it see faint signs of the

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Speaker 1: thing you want to see. Yeah, there's so much interesting

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Speaker 1: stuff in the history of astronomy about things people said

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Speaker 1: they saw during the days of earlier optical telescopes without

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Speaker 1: modern instruments and modern uh telephotography, where like the ash

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Speaker 1: and Light remember that episode, and the planet Vulcan itself.

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Speaker 1: You know that wasn't just predicted, like people said they

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Speaker 1: saw the planet Vulcan up there by the sun during

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Speaker 1: an eclipse. Who knows what they actually saw, but clearly

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Speaker 1: the process of astronomical observation was was much cruder back then.

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Speaker 1: But Little's Little's argument is kind of funny. So he

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Speaker 1: says astronomers can see white surfaces on the poles of Mars, right,

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Speaker 1: and he says that these are ice caps, and in

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Speaker 1: a way that he's correct about that there are ice

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Speaker 1: caps on Mars, but he said they would melt and

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Speaker 1: shrink in summer and then freeze and grow larger again

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Speaker 1: in winter. And so he observed that the Martian spring

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Speaker 1: came and the ice melted, and at that point the

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Speaker 1: dark lines or the canals would grow darker quote, even

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Speaker 1: showing straight black lines criss crossed over the surface and

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Speaker 1: over the surface of the orange ochre areas uh and

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Speaker 1: that he said, these dark lines would disappear again in

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Speaker 1: the Martian autumn. And he concluded from this that the

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Speaker 1: darkened areas around the canals were flourishing with plant life

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Speaker 1: bearing leaves and grasses during the summer, which had died

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Speaker 1: away again in the winter when the water froze up

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Speaker 1: and became scarce. And from this he argued that Mars

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Speaker 1: must have been a very parched planet where water is

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Speaker 1: in high demand, which meant that the people who lived

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Speaker 1: there would have had to make very careful use of

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Speaker 1: a highly limited water supply, or else quote would find

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Speaker 1: themselves at last face to face with the relentlessness of

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Speaker 1: a scarcity of water, constantly growing greater, until at last

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Speaker 1: they would all die of thirst, either directly or indirectly,

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Speaker 1: for either they themselves would not have water enough to drink,

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Speaker 1: or the plants or animals which constituted their diet would

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Speaker 1: perish for lack of it. An alternative of small choice

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Speaker 1: to them unless they were conventionally particular as to their

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Speaker 1: mode of death. So Lowell concluded that they had to

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Speaker 1: build canals on Mars, that only irrigation on a vast

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Speaker 1: scale could prevent the Martians from dying from a lack

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Speaker 1: of water, and thus the proof of the existence of

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Speaker 1: civilization on the surface of Mars. Well, it's a fun argument,

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Speaker 1: and I love the world building of it. If you know,

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Speaker 1: if it were just purely science fiction, that that would

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Speaker 1: be marvelous. But as we've already touched on, evidence did

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Speaker 1: not support this theory. Yeah, and there were skeptics at

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Speaker 1: the time. We should say it wasn't like everybody believed

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Speaker 1: this until we had a Mars probe, like take photos

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Speaker 1: of the surface from up close. Right, Though, certainly one

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Speaker 1: of these possibilities is far more exciting than the other.

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Speaker 1: So so you can understand why that one would be

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Speaker 1: the one that the idea of canals on Mars would

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Speaker 1: be Uh, the idea that would show up in more

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Speaker 1: headlines and would and would capture the collective imagination, right uh.

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Speaker 1: And and Lowell's career of influential, controversial, and sometimes incorrect

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Speaker 1: observations and hypotheses did not in there there was an

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Speaker 1: interesting thing I came across where Lowell also believed that

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Speaker 1: once while observing the planet Venus, he saw quote spokes

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Speaker 1: radiating from a hub within the planet Venus. But in

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Speaker 1: a two thousand three paper by Sheehann and Dobbins Uh,

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Speaker 1: the authors argued that what actually probably happened here is

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Speaker 1: that because of the way he manipulated the telescope to

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Speaker 1: look at Venus, he had accidentally converted it into a

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Speaker 1: crude opthalmoscope, which would have been showing him images of

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Speaker 1: the blood vessels within his own eyeball. Oh my goodness.

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Speaker 1: And he included an image and in our notes here

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Speaker 1: for me to look at here, and it does line

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Speaker 1: up rather well with the arteries of the eye. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: But it doesn't stop there either. So Lowell was also

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Speaker 1: in the planet predicting business. And we'll discuss his planet

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Speaker 1: predictions when we get back from a break. Thank thank alright,

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Speaker 1: we're back. So thus far we've talked about Lowell's thoughts

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Speaker 1: concerning um Mars, a known planet, but now we're gonna

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Speaker 1: get into the unknown. We get intune into the study

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Speaker 1: and the prediction of of of hypothetical planets. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: remember how the eighth planet Neptune had been discovered. Again,

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Speaker 1: uh Laveryer looked at the orbit of Uranus and said, Okay,

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Speaker 1: by the way it's moving, we can tell something is

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Speaker 1: influencing it. It's not moving based on what our predictions

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Speaker 1: should be. So what if we pose it another another

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Speaker 1: object out there of a certain mass and a certain position,

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Speaker 1: then we could explain why Uranus moves the way it does.

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Speaker 1: And so he posited Neptune, and it turned out Neptune

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Speaker 1: was there. He was correct, and so this is a

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Speaker 1: fantastically useful and successful prediction based on the laws of physics.

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Speaker 1: So in the early years of the twentieth century, after

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Speaker 1: studying the orbits of the outer gas giants like Uranus

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Speaker 1: and Neptune, Lowell tried to do the same thing. He

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Speaker 1: concluded that there was another planet yet to be found

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Speaker 1: based on those orbits, something out there is messing with

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Speaker 1: Uranus and Neptune. And yet again, like with the correct

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Speaker 1: prediction of Neptune and the incorrect prediction of Vulcan by

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Speaker 1: la Verier, this was on that basis, on the basis

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Speaker 1: of inferred gravitational influences on the orbits of these known objects,

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Speaker 1: so in nineteen o five or nineteen o six, Perceval

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Speaker 1: Lowell initiated a massive hunt for this ghost planet. The

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Speaker 1: project was initially called the Invariable Plane Search, and the

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Speaker 1: ghost planet was called Planet X. And this project went

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Speaker 1: on for many years. It proceeded in stops and starts

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Speaker 1: throughout several phases, even after Perceval Lowell himself actually passed

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Speaker 1: away in nineteen sixteen, so Perceval Lowell never got to

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Speaker 1: see how this project turned out, though he wrote books

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Speaker 1: about He wrote a book called I Think Like a

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Speaker 1: Memoir of the trans Neptunian Planet. But on February eighteenth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, fourteen years after Lowell's death, an astronomer at

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Speaker 1: Lowell Observatory named Clyde Tombo actually did discover a massive

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Speaker 1: object beyond Neptune with the help of the with the

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Speaker 1: help of a loaned sum of money that I think

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Speaker 1: they used to buy new instruments from personal Lowell's brother

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Speaker 1: who had been the head of Harvard and this object

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Speaker 1: was Pluto, though Pluto was not nearly as massive as

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Speaker 1: the planet that Lowell had predicted out there, and later

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Speaker 1: actually turned out more accurate measurements of the orbit and

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Speaker 1: massive Neptunes, such as by the voyage or two mission

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Speaker 1: basically obviated the need for a planet X to explain

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Speaker 1: our observation. So you actually looking at Uranus and Neptune,

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Speaker 1: there was no need to to infer a planet X.

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Speaker 1: So it seems there's just no planet out there right

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Speaker 1: now we can conclude there's no need to explain anything.

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Speaker 1: It's probably there's probably nothing. I mean, we have Pluto

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Speaker 1: to be sure. And uh and and again, like we

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Speaker 1: discussed earlier, you can go back and forth on exactly

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Speaker 1: how we should classify Pluto. But here's the thing. There's

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Speaker 1: no question that there are other objects in our solar

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Speaker 1: system beyond Pluto. Pluto is not the stop sign for

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Speaker 1: our solar system. There there's plenty of other objects out there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the solar system kind of has a shell of icy

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Speaker 1: debris floating around it. Yeah. And so it's not like

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Speaker 1: you you would get to Pluto and there would essentially

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Speaker 1: be a sign saying like last stop toll Alpha Centauri.

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Speaker 1: Uh No, there there's the possibility for other other things,

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Speaker 1: and we know for a fact that there are other things. First,

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Speaker 1: there's the general category of trans Neptuneian objects such as

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Speaker 1: the dwarf planet Eiris Uh between thirty seven point nine

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Speaker 1: and ninety seven point six astronomical units away from the Sun.

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Speaker 1: Is actually larger than Pluto by mass, though a little

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Speaker 1: smaller by volume. Oh and just quickly, an astronomical unit

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Speaker 1: is the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Correct. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so Earth is one a U from the Sun, et cetera.

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Speaker 1: So U is is way up. It's way out there. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Other dwarf planets include UH series, um Hamiya, and Makamaki.

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Speaker 1: And then consider the said noise. This is where it

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Speaker 1: really begins to get weird. These are trans Neptunian objects

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Speaker 1: with a parahelion. Again, this is a point of least

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Speaker 1: distance from the Sun of at least fifty a U.

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Speaker 1: So if they're closest to the Sun, they are still

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Speaker 1: beyond the Kuiper belt, which lies thirty to fifty AU

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Speaker 1: from the Sun. This is an asteroid belt like scattering

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Speaker 1: of leftover debris. And all three known you know, verified

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Speaker 1: said noise have really cool names. First of all, there's Sedna,

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Speaker 1: discovered in two thousand three, named for an Inuit sea goddess.

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Speaker 1: And that's where we get said noise, because when we

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Speaker 1: discovered earlier, it become a classification. And then there's two

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Speaker 1: thousand twelve vp H one one three a k A. Biden,

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Speaker 1: discovered in twelve and named for then Vice President of

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Speaker 1: the United States Joe Biden. So wow. And then I

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Speaker 1: wonder who is the person who has the most onion

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Speaker 1: articles written about them? Who also has an asteroid named

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Speaker 1: about not an asteroid, an object in space named after them?

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Speaker 1: Is it Biden? It might be Biden. And then the

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Speaker 1: third one of note here, discovered in twenty fifteen is

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Speaker 1: t G three seven. The t G stands for the Goblin.

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Speaker 1: The goblin, Yeah, the Cheddar Goblin. No, just the goblin.

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Speaker 1: I mean, if it's Cheddar and it's too far away,

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Speaker 1: it might be monster. So Seddon is the largest, the

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Speaker 1: Goblin is furthest away, and all of them have really

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Speaker 1: weird orbits, so their distance from the center of things

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Speaker 1: from our son varies greatly. And if you look at

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Speaker 1: a chart of their of their orbits, I really get

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Speaker 1: the sense of imagine, imagine a typical orbit that has

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Speaker 1: been stretched out like a rubber band. Yeah, so pretty

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Speaker 1: much all the planets I think have have elliptical orbits.

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Speaker 1: They're not perfectly circular, but the inner planets, their orbits

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Speaker 1: are pretty close to circular. There only a few percent

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Speaker 1: off from being circular. But these orbits are just massively

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Speaker 1: off from being circular. They are super stretched out ovals.

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Speaker 1: And one of the weird things I noticed in in

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Speaker 1: at least one of the pictures you've got here early

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Speaker 1: on Robert is that they almost kind of like look

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Speaker 1: like they're there. They're paraheliens, are kind of aligned almost

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Speaker 1: in the same direction. I wonder why that might be.

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Speaker 1: We'll come back to that. We'll come back, because that's

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Speaker 1: that's definitely leads to a few different mysteries here, uh

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Speaker 1: in additionally to having just weird orbits. Again, they are

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Speaker 1: so far away from from the Sun um of certainly

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Speaker 1: when you look at their their extremes, but even at

427
00:23:24,880 --> 00:23:28,560
Speaker 1: their parahliens are pretty extreme. The Goblin, for instance, has

428
00:23:28,600 --> 00:23:31,199
Speaker 1: an estimated orbital period what we can think of as

429
00:23:31,240 --> 00:23:35,440
Speaker 1: a year of thirty two thousand, one hundred and seventeen

430
00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:38,399
Speaker 1: point twenty nine earth years. That's how long it takes

431
00:23:38,600 --> 00:23:42,240
Speaker 1: for for the Goblin to go around the Sun. And

432
00:23:42,280 --> 00:23:45,720
Speaker 1: to put that in context, a year on Pluto is

433
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 1: two hundred forty eight earth years. That's how long it

434
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:50,200
Speaker 1: takes Pluto to go around the Sun. And this thing

435
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 1: is that much further away. The goblins distance from the

436
00:23:53,600 --> 00:23:57,359
Speaker 1: Sun ranges from sixty five point one a U to

437
00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:00,520
Speaker 1: one thousand, nine hundred and fifty five A Wow. That

438
00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:04,639
Speaker 1: is crazy far away. Yeah, and their additional sedenoid candidates

439
00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:07,600
Speaker 1: and suspected to be many more. We're talking eighty to

440
00:24:07,760 --> 00:24:12,280
Speaker 1: ninety of these critters, and they're distant and weird. Orbits

441
00:24:12,320 --> 00:24:16,120
Speaker 1: can't be fully explained by the influences of known Solar

442
00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:20,320
Speaker 1: System objects either. So for starters, they're too far from

443
00:24:20,359 --> 00:24:24,480
Speaker 1: the Sun to be influenced by the gas giants, and

444
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:28,120
Speaker 1: they're too close to the Sun to be influenced by

445
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:32,879
Speaker 1: other distant stars. So something else is influencing them. But

446
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:37,520
Speaker 1: what so, there are a few reasonable candidates to consider here. Uh.

447
00:24:37,680 --> 00:24:39,560
Speaker 1: The big one, the main one that we're most interested

448
00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:42,440
Speaker 1: here with is uh that there might be an undiscovered

449
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:47,200
Speaker 1: giant planet comparable to Uranus or Neptune still orbiting our

450
00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:50,000
Speaker 1: Sun somewhere out there in the dark. So there could

451
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 1: maybe be a planet X after all exactly. Another idea

452
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:57,919
Speaker 1: is that a lost giant planet was ejected from our

453
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 1: Solar System a long time ago, disrupting orbits on its

454
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:05,040
Speaker 1: way out of our Solar System. So that would that

455
00:25:05,040 --> 00:25:07,240
Speaker 1: would explain why they all seem sort of skewed in

456
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:11,600
Speaker 1: the same direction, because some like a massive planetary object

457
00:25:11,720 --> 00:25:16,359
Speaker 1: just came ripping through, pulling everybody out of place. And

458
00:25:16,400 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 1: then a final of reasonable theory is that back in

459
00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:22,800
Speaker 1: the stellar nursery days of our Solar System, the Sun's

460
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 1: fellow proto sons nudged everything out of whack okay, so

461
00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:29,040
Speaker 1: it could be sort of a relic of something that

462
00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:31,840
Speaker 1: happened in the past, kind of like the planet being

463
00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:34,199
Speaker 1: ejected or something moving by. So if I can come

464
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:36,399
Speaker 1: back to Pluto for a second, I hope that for

465
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: one thing, the idea of the said nooids makes everyone

466
00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:42,920
Speaker 1: feel better about losing or potentially losing Pluto is a

467
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 1: full fledged planet, because ultimately, wouldn't you rather just drop

468
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:50,760
Speaker 1: Pluto from the list as opposed to just adding all

469
00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:53,240
Speaker 1: these other additional things like no, you don't actually want

470
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:56,840
Speaker 1: to memorize a bunch of saidnoids. Um. So also, you

471
00:25:56,840 --> 00:25:59,920
Speaker 1: didn't lose Pluto. Pluto's still there, It's still it's still

472
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:02,399
Speaker 1: dwarf planet. You can still include it on the list.

473
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:05,880
Speaker 1: Like people get way, people get people like to get

474
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 1: been out of shape over this when there's really nothing

475
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: to get bent out of shape over. There's a reason

476
00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:11,679
Speaker 1: Pluto is not considered a planet. It's in order to

477
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 1: make it consistent with the definition of a planet that

478
00:26:14,040 --> 00:26:16,800
Speaker 1: we use for all the other planets, and that means

479
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:20,520
Speaker 1: that planets have to dominate their orbital area, They have

480
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:23,919
Speaker 1: to gravitationally dominate their orbital area, and Pluto does not, right,

481
00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:26,639
Speaker 1: And if you just decide nope, we're gonna count Pluto,

482
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:29,200
Speaker 1: then you you have to be open to letting other

483
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:31,920
Speaker 1: things join the list as well. There is dwarf planets

484
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:34,600
Speaker 1: and whatnot. So trust this is this is the best way,

485
00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:38,280
Speaker 1: that's the best approach forward. But again this comes back

486
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:41,160
Speaker 1: to the question, all right, if there is let's let's

487
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:43,720
Speaker 1: assume that that first theory is correct. If there is

488
00:26:43,760 --> 00:26:46,439
Speaker 1: a giant planet out there in our Solar system, uh,

489
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:50,400
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's monkeying with the orbits of these

490
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:53,400
Speaker 1: said nooids. Then why don't we know about it for sure? Why?

491
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:57,200
Speaker 1: And did all these you know, the continual classification of exoplanets,

492
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:00,439
Speaker 1: things as far away as sweeps a leathern which is

493
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:03,920
Speaker 1: twenty seven thousand, seven hundred and ten light years away.

494
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 1: Why would we miss something so relatively close to home.

495
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:09,160
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a quick break, and when

496
00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:11,679
Speaker 1: we come right back we will explore more about the

497
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:15,680
Speaker 1: possibility of planet nine a K A planet X a

498
00:27:15,840 --> 00:27:18,320
Speaker 1: K a planet ten. But actually it's planet nine a

499
00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 1: K a planet d M X. Thank alright, we're back, Robert.

500
00:27:25,080 --> 00:27:27,480
Speaker 1: Wasn't there an X themed wrestler or was he not

501
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 1: really X themed? I'm thinking of uh, he had an

502
00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:32,439
Speaker 1: X in his name? Well there was. There was an

503
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:36,520
Speaker 1: expox wrestler, Yes, yeah, Sean Waltman, Yeah he's still around.

504
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:40,000
Speaker 1: I believe there was a luchador doctor X because you know,

505
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:42,240
Speaker 1: the X X looks so good on a mask. You've

506
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: got to you've got to roll that out eventually. It's

507
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:46,800
Speaker 1: the coolest letter, I guess. So xbox is not like

508
00:27:47,119 --> 00:27:50,720
Speaker 1: X themed then no, not really no, nor does he

509
00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:53,280
Speaker 1: have any relation to planet X. So we're full on

510
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:56,880
Speaker 1: talking about planet X now though this is confusing because yeah,

511
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,920
Speaker 1: you mentioned that planet x X as the Roman numer

512
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 1: for ten, but this wouldn't be the tenth planet. This

513
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 1: would be the ninth planet would be the planet after

514
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:08,040
Speaker 1: the eighth planet, Neptune Um, so it would really be

515
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:11,560
Speaker 1: planet nine. And when actual astronomers an astrophysicists these days

516
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 1: talk about this planet, they don't usually call it planet X.

517
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:18,120
Speaker 1: They call it planet nine. That's especially uh necessary, I think,

518
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:22,840
Speaker 1: because the Internet is just overflowing with Planet X conspiracy

519
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:25,159
Speaker 1: theories that I don't think we need to get into today.

520
00:28:25,200 --> 00:28:28,800
Speaker 1: But man, I if you just do a I don't

521
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 1: know if I recommend this there, do a YouTube search

522
00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:36,119
Speaker 1: for Planet X, and there is some apocalyptic, bonkers nonsense

523
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 1: out there. I think it's all about how Planet X

524
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: is coming to get us. Well, you know, yeah, we're,

525
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:42,560
Speaker 1: like you said, we're not gonna really get into that today.

526
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:45,640
Speaker 1: But the great thing is that all of the the

527
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 1: actual scientific ideas concerning a potential planet nine are far

528
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 1: more interesting. Oh yeah. So, so one of the things

529
00:28:53,600 --> 00:28:55,720
Speaker 1: that we should mention is that crucial for the demotion

530
00:28:55,760 --> 00:28:59,480
Speaker 1: of Pluto was a Caltech researcher named Mike E. Brown,

531
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:05,160
Speaker 1: a colleague of another astronomer named Constantine Batiguan. And for

532
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: several years now that these astronomers, Constantine Patigan and Mike Brown,

533
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:13,440
Speaker 1: have been talking about the possibility that they suspect that

534
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:16,760
Speaker 1: there is an object out there beyond Neptune, out there

535
00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:20,440
Speaker 1: in the dark shepherd ng the trans Neptuneyan objects we've

536
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 1: been talking about, so that they are aligned in roughly

537
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 1: the same direction, and they're aligned across multiple axes, by

538
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:29,040
Speaker 1: the way, So that's kind of interesting. Like if you

539
00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 1: look at all of their orbits from the north pole

540
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:35,640
Speaker 1: looking down, they're all lined up in this one weird direction,

541
00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 1: as if something's pulling them all in the same place.

542
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 1: A giant blind shepherd in the darkness. What was the

543
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 1: name of the Cyclops in the Odyssey and does he

544
00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:51,680
Speaker 1: have an astronomical body named after him? Probably so, but

545
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:55,520
Speaker 1: he's probably already taken. Polyphemus. I don't know it's Polyphemus

546
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 1: up for grabs. I don't know of anything called Polyphemus.

547
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 1: I just okay. I just did a Google search and

548
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:03,480
Speaker 1: the only thing that came up was that somebody wanted

549
00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:06,480
Speaker 1: to name a moon of Neptune Polyphemus, but I don't

550
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:08,800
Speaker 1: think they did. All right, Well, well, maybe we can

551
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:10,720
Speaker 1: keep that one clear just in case, because I think

552
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:12,720
Speaker 1: that would be that would be a really awesome name.

553
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:15,320
Speaker 1: For one of these planets if I can have any

554
00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:18,760
Speaker 1: say so. So, when the aliens from that planet contact

555
00:30:18,880 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 1: us and they say help, someone's attacking me, and we

556
00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 1: radio back and say who's attacking me? And they say, no,

557
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:26,480
Speaker 1: one is attacking me, you can know they've been tricked

558
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 1: by a cosmic Odysseus told them his name was no One.

559
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:32,400
Speaker 1: Say so, Disseas is the worst such a trickster. All right, Well,

560
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:34,160
Speaker 1: I've derailed us a little bit here. Let's get back

561
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 1: to this idea of planet nine the blind, a potential

562
00:30:37,280 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 1: blind shepherd of the of these distant objects. All right, yeah,

563
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:43,680
Speaker 1: we'll bring it back. So one thing I should mention

564
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 1: is that I actually listened to an interesting interview with

565
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:48,960
Speaker 1: the Caltech astronomer and a professor of planetary science is

566
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:52,640
Speaker 1: Constantine Batiguan and Uh and and so this this shed

567
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:56,240
Speaker 1: some light on what he was thinking. Essentially, Uh, Constantine

568
00:30:56,240 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 1: Batiguan and Uh and Mikey Brown have been doing research

569
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 1: a show there is possible there is a way of

570
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:06,440
Speaker 1: explaining some of the strange coincidences that we see in

571
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 1: the structure of the Outer Solar System and the structure

572
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:13,800
Speaker 1: of these like saidnoids, hyper belt objects, these objects that

573
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 1: are way out there. Then when we track their orbits,

574
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:19,640
Speaker 1: they seem to line up in this bizarre way where

575
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 1: they're all sort of pointing in the same direction at

576
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: one end at their parahelion, they're all like it's like

577
00:31:25,600 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 1: they're they're just lining up. And then also a strange

578
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:30,760
Speaker 1: thing is that they're not only lining up in that dimension,

579
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:33,440
Speaker 1: but if you like look directly at the solar plane

580
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:36,720
Speaker 1: instead of down on it, they're all sort of elevated.

581
00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 1: They're tipped up across the solar plane in a fairly

582
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:43,080
Speaker 1: consistent or at least close to consistent way. And that's

583
00:31:43,120 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 1: really odd, Like Fatiguan talks about how that really wouldn't

584
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 1: be something you'd expect to see just by chance. So

585
00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 1: the idea here is that what if something has pushed

586
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:54,640
Speaker 1: them there. It's like, why are all the sheep standing

587
00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:58,040
Speaker 1: in this area? Well, maybe it's because the the the

588
00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:00,960
Speaker 1: shepherd dog or the wolf is standing over here, right,

589
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:05,040
Speaker 1: And so the problem is we don't know exactly where

590
00:32:05,080 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: to look for this object if it is out there.

591
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:11,360
Speaker 1: So lavery A could say, hey, you know, I think

592
00:32:11,360 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: I know where Neptune is. I'm going to give you

593
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 1: within one degree of of where to look, and of

594
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:18,840
Speaker 1: course when they look forward, they found it with the telescope.

595
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 1: You can't quite do the same thing with this planet nine,

596
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 1: because even the people who think it exists, they're inferring

597
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:30,280
Speaker 1: it from its influence on objects who have orbital periods

598
00:32:30,280 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 1: of like ten thousand years or something, so it takes

599
00:32:32,800 --> 00:32:35,320
Speaker 1: them so long to go around. So we are sort

600
00:32:35,360 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 1: of lacking in data to to get the full arc

601
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:41,360
Speaker 1: to pinpoint exactly where the planet would be to cause

602
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 1: what we see. But constantin Batigan thinks that right now,

603
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:47,600
Speaker 1: the best place to look for this planet is probably

604
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:52,040
Speaker 1: at an average distance of somewhere around five hundred astronomical units.

605
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 1: So yeah, five hundred times the distance between the Earth

606
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:59,040
Speaker 1: and the Sun. And so for comparison, you know Earth

607
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:02,520
Speaker 1: is one Mars is one point five a U, Jupiter

608
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 1: is five point to Neptune is about thirty a U.

609
00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 1: So that's starting to get way out there. But the

610
00:33:07,400 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 1: distance from Neptune to the ninth planet would be gigantic.

611
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 1: It would be many times the distance from the Sun

612
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:16,720
Speaker 1: to Neptune. So it's way way out there in the dark.

613
00:33:17,400 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 1: The best estimates say that it would probably have a

614
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 1: roughly ten thousand year orbit. And also it would probably

615
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:28,200
Speaker 1: have a very elliptical orbit compared to the inner planets.

616
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:31,320
Speaker 1: Like the interplanets are elliptical, but they're pretty close to circular.

617
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 1: This planet would be more like these these objects we've

618
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 1: been talking about, these Kuiper Belt objects and setnoids that

619
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:40,760
Speaker 1: have these long ovals, but not quite as long as

620
00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:45,080
Speaker 1: the setnoid. No longer, but not quite that long. So

621
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 1: we've got good reasons to think that there's something out

622
00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 1: there with mass. There. There could be another large planet

623
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: out there with mass that's causing these objects that we

624
00:33:53,240 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: can see to behave in the way they do. But

625
00:33:55,840 --> 00:33:59,440
Speaker 1: we don't know much about this object itself, right because

626
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:02,080
Speaker 1: all all we have to go on is what its

627
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:04,760
Speaker 1: mass would have to be and roughly what its orbit

628
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:07,400
Speaker 1: is to cause the effects we're seeing, we can't we

629
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:09,160
Speaker 1: haven't been able to look at it. We don't know

630
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:11,800
Speaker 1: exactly for sure what it would be made of, exactly

631
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 1: how big it would be. Um the the estimates i've

632
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,120
Speaker 1: seen tend to think that it's going to be bigger

633
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:19,560
Speaker 1: than Earth, but it would be sort of like a

634
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:23,640
Speaker 1: an icy super Earth with a with an atmosphere kind

635
00:34:23,680 --> 00:34:26,840
Speaker 1: of like the gas giants and an upper atmosphere like

636
00:34:26,920 --> 00:34:30,720
Speaker 1: Neptune or something, but with an icy core, maybe roughly

637
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:34,120
Speaker 1: five earth masses. I've also seen an older estimate that

638
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:36,799
Speaker 1: was more like roughly ten earth masses. I don't know

639
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,719
Speaker 1: if it's been if those represent different points of view,

640
00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:41,799
Speaker 1: or if it's been scaled down since then, but the

641
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:44,800
Speaker 1: more recent one I saw from Batigan was five earth masses.

642
00:34:45,120 --> 00:34:47,520
Speaker 1: But as for the makeup, like the icy core with

643
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 1: the atmosphere on the outside, that's just something we have

644
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:52,960
Speaker 1: to guess. We don't know for sure. And so with

645
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:55,719
Speaker 1: an object with an orbit this long way out there

646
00:34:55,719 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 1: in the dark, obviously it probably would be possible for

647
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 1: us to see it with our telescopes if we know

648
00:35:02,680 --> 00:35:05,399
Speaker 1: where to look and what to look for. But it's

649
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:07,440
Speaker 1: not going to be something that just shows up in

650
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:11,160
Speaker 1: an obvious way. It's going to take like difficult analysis

651
00:35:11,239 --> 00:35:14,400
Speaker 1: of uh doing, you know, comparing photos of the night

652
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:18,480
Speaker 1: sky with deep detail across different nights to see what moves.

653
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:20,560
Speaker 1: And part of the problem is there's a lot of

654
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:23,239
Speaker 1: stuff out there, a lot of things move, and so

655
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:25,719
Speaker 1: like if you take a super high res photograph with

656
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 1: great magnification of a patch of the sky across a

657
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:30,960
Speaker 1: few different nights and then see what moves there. You

658
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:34,759
Speaker 1: might get tons of hits, maybe thousands of hits, and

659
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:36,360
Speaker 1: then you got to look at those and say, Okay,

660
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 1: is this a new is this an Kuiper Belt object

661
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:41,799
Speaker 1: we know about? Is this a Main Belt asteroid we

662
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:44,040
Speaker 1: know about? Is this a new Kuiper Belt or Main

663
00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:47,280
Speaker 1: Belt object that we did that we didn't know about,

664
00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:49,719
Speaker 1: or is this maybe a planet that we should be

665
00:35:49,719 --> 00:35:51,759
Speaker 1: looking for right? Because I mean it's you see this

666
00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:53,800
Speaker 1: happen from time to time where it's they'll think that

667
00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:56,440
Speaker 1: new objects has been discovered, but it's actually an object

668
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 1: that has already been charted. So there's duplication that can

669
00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:01,440
Speaker 1: take place. Yeah, and so one of the things that

670
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 1: we can do to help figure out where we should

671
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:07,040
Speaker 1: look is to rule out certain areas of the sky.

672
00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: And that's something that Batigan has been talking about doing.

673
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 1: Is you can say, Okay, there's no point in looking

674
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:14,879
Speaker 1: for the planet here. You know it wouldn't be here.

675
00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:16,640
Speaker 1: There's no point looking for it here. We know it

676
00:36:16,640 --> 00:36:19,000
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here. And then also you can use other

677
00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 1: data to infer places where it probably shouldn't be for example,

678
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:26,640
Speaker 1: we know that it's uh, probably not in in a

679
00:36:26,680 --> 00:36:30,360
Speaker 1: certain sector because if it were, it may it probably

680
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:33,960
Speaker 1: would have affected the movements in a detectable way of

681
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:37,680
Speaker 1: the Cassini spacecraft when Cassini was in orbit around Saturn.

682
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:40,960
Speaker 1: So that tells us probably it's not really close to

683
00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:43,759
Speaker 1: its parahelion right now, right, it's not close enough to

684
00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:46,840
Speaker 1: be having an effect on the inner planet's. It's probably

685
00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 1: somewhere a little bit further out if it exists. So

686
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:53,240
Speaker 1: to come back to my my beach house, okay metaphor

687
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:56,480
Speaker 1: from earlier, Uh, it's like you they're the rooms that

688
00:36:56,560 --> 00:36:58,920
Speaker 1: you can see, and you can you can look to

689
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:00,920
Speaker 1: them from where you are and see there is no

690
00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:04,880
Speaker 1: mystery stranger in that room. There are rooms where you

691
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 1: would be able to detect maybe there's a you know,

692
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 1: they're right beneath it, and you would be able to

693
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:11,839
Speaker 1: hear them surely if they were creaking around up there.

694
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:13,399
Speaker 1: But there are other rooms that you just you don't

695
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:16,520
Speaker 1: know at this point. Yeah, and so the question of

696
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:18,719
Speaker 1: whether there is actually a planet nine out there it

697
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:23,120
Speaker 1: does remain unsolved, though Constantine Batiguan seems very confident and

698
00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: the interview I listened to. You know, the host asked him,

699
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: how confident are you that this thing is out there?

700
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 1: And he's like, well, I used to say I was

701
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:35,880
Speaker 1: six trillion percent confident um, But then he said, actually,

702
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:39,239
Speaker 1: you can calculate a good confidence interval by saying, what's

703
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:42,520
Speaker 1: the probability as far as we know that all of

704
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:45,640
Speaker 1: these Kuiper Belt objects would have their orbits line up

705
00:37:45,680 --> 00:37:48,479
Speaker 1: the same way like this by chance without some big

706
00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:52,200
Speaker 1: massive object out there to shepherd them into these orbits.

707
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:54,760
Speaker 1: And according to him, the chance of this happening by

708
00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:58,960
Speaker 1: coincidence is zero point two percent. So by subtraction, he

709
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:02,400
Speaker 1: says he's ninety nine point eight percent confident that planet

710
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:06,680
Speaker 1: nine exists. So that's very confident. I'm sure plenty of

711
00:38:06,680 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 1: other astronomers wouldn't be that level of confident. But it's

712
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:13,840
Speaker 1: all inspiring to even think about the possibility that there's this, this,

713
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: this additional planet out there in our own Solar system

714
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:21,200
Speaker 1: and our own relatively local neck of the cosmic woods,

715
00:38:21,680 --> 00:38:24,719
Speaker 1: and we just merely suspect that it's there, that it's

716
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:28,200
Speaker 1: out there roaming up through the darkness. Well, I mean,

717
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: this is a this is a great sort of science

718
00:38:30,600 --> 00:38:33,719
Speaker 1: hunt game to play, right, Uh, you know, you you

719
00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:36,120
Speaker 1: have to use the laws of physics as you know

720
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:38,120
Speaker 1: them and try to figure out what's another way we

721
00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 1: could get data that nobody's thought of before. And so

722
00:38:41,239 --> 00:38:44,360
Speaker 1: like the idea of using the perturbations of the movement

723
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:47,319
Speaker 1: of a spacecraft. That's that's a smart way to look

724
00:38:47,360 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: for new data that might not have appeared to you otherwise. Um.

725
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:53,920
Speaker 1: And so this is really cool, but at the same time,

726
00:38:54,200 --> 00:38:57,640
Speaker 1: I'm sure really frustrating, especially if you're like pretty confident

727
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 1: that you think, yeah, we really know it's probably to

728
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:03,239
Speaker 1: be out there, because nobody has discovered a planet in

729
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:06,960
Speaker 1: the Solar System arguably since either Clyde Tombo in the

730
00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:11,040
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties or since Lavery a and uh and uh

731
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 1: McAdams or I think McAdams was the other guy who

732
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:16,239
Speaker 1: discovered it in the eighteen forties. I mean, that's been

733
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:19,439
Speaker 1: a long time. Yeah, totally, because again we've all grown

734
00:39:19,520 --> 00:39:21,359
Speaker 1: up with this map of the Solar System in our

735
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:25,399
Speaker 1: our heads. And uh, and you kind of you, I don't,

736
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:27,840
Speaker 1: I don't remember being taught. Hey, this is all subject

737
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:31,799
Speaker 1: to change, but but clearly it is. Well, you would

738
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:34,239
Speaker 1: think that if there is a Planet nine out there

739
00:39:34,320 --> 00:39:36,719
Speaker 1: to be discovered. It's also probably going to be the

740
00:39:36,840 --> 00:39:39,759
Speaker 1: last one we're going to discover, because there's there's only

741
00:39:39,760 --> 00:39:42,840
Speaker 1: a limited range of space where planets could actually be

742
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:47,080
Speaker 1: without without violating what else we know about space. Right,

743
00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:50,759
Speaker 1: It couldn't be closer than where we're thinking this planet is,

744
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:53,640
Speaker 1: because otherwise we would interfere with the inner planets and

745
00:39:53,680 --> 00:39:56,800
Speaker 1: we would know about it. It couldn't really be farther

746
00:39:56,880 --> 00:39:59,520
Speaker 1: away than where we're thinking this thing is, or else

747
00:39:59,600 --> 00:40:01,480
Speaker 1: it probably would have been like stripped away by a

748
00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:04,319
Speaker 1: passing star as we move through the galaxy, right, because

749
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:08,719
Speaker 1: it's still needs to be under the power of our Son,

750
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:13,040
Speaker 1: within the thrall of our Son to be considered part

751
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:15,200
Speaker 1: of our Solar System. And that's the whole point. Yeah,

752
00:40:15,239 --> 00:40:18,479
Speaker 1: So there's not like opportunities to just discover unlimited more

753
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 1: planets in the Solar System. The Solar System doesn't go

754
00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:24,839
Speaker 1: on forever. Eventually the domain of gravitational dominance of our

755
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:28,560
Speaker 1: Son ends and other stars become more powerful in their

756
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:32,040
Speaker 1: in their gravitational influence. So so there's only so much

757
00:40:32,080 --> 00:40:34,680
Speaker 1: space where there could be more planets, and it looks

758
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 1: like if we discover one more planet out there. That's

759
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:40,560
Speaker 1: that's probably about it. I don't know, maybe there could

760
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:42,080
Speaker 1: be one, but it's not like you know that we're

761
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:45,319
Speaker 1: gonna find ten more planets. Yeah, and certainly nothing you know,

762
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: large like that. So yeah, it's a tantalizing mystery. I

763
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:52,760
Speaker 1: love the idea that there's still mysteries about our Solar System,

764
00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:56,719
Speaker 1: not just space in general, but local mysteries, mysteries inside

765
00:40:56,760 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: the house, right right. And of course that's not to

766
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 1: gloss over the many, you know, unsolved problems related to

767
00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: each individual planet. I mean just just every just about

768
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:10,840
Speaker 1: every object in our Solar system, there's something about it

769
00:41:10,880 --> 00:41:13,719
Speaker 1: we're still trying to figure out. And uh, and and

770
00:41:13,719 --> 00:41:15,800
Speaker 1: that's just dealing with the problems that we know about.

771
00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:19,120
Speaker 1: That's the unknowns that were aware of. Personally, I'm excited.

772
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 1: I hope they discover another planet in our lifetime. That

773
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: would be really cool. That would that would be cool.

774
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:27,040
Speaker 1: And it seems like now there's I don't it's not

775
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:28,719
Speaker 1: a lock. I wouldn't. I don't know if i'd go

776
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:32,359
Speaker 1: to NCENT, but it seems like there's pretty good evidence. Yeah,

777
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:34,600
Speaker 1: and then then what will we name it? I like

778
00:41:34,680 --> 00:41:38,120
Speaker 1: your polyphemous idea the Blind Shepherd out there. Yeah, it's

779
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:40,960
Speaker 1: a good name. Yeah, assuming nothing else has has has

780
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:45,600
Speaker 1: snagged it already. Yeah, and assuming that it doesn't attempt

781
00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:48,120
Speaker 1: to space so Disseys to come along and screw everything up.

782
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:52,560
Speaker 1: That's true. Alright, Well, we're going to close out this episode.

783
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:55,840
Speaker 1: You know, we we didn't even get into any examples

784
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 1: from science fiction, though. I do believe in Doctor Who

785
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:04,840
Speaker 1: the side Reman homeworld of Mandau's is both a ninth

786
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:09,239
Speaker 1: planet as well as a former counter Earth's at once. Yeah,

787
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:11,279
Speaker 1: I think it's two at once. I could I could

788
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:13,719
Speaker 1: have that wrong. So I'd love to hear from from

789
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 1: our Who fans out there. I know we have some

790
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:18,719
Speaker 1: WHO listeners out there listening to the show. You you

791
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 1: can set us right in this. Plus, there have to

792
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:23,440
Speaker 1: be there have to be plenty of other science fiction

793
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:26,920
Speaker 1: properties that have have utilized this idea of a mysterious

794
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:30,320
Speaker 1: ninth or tenth planet out there in our solar system. Robert,

795
00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 1: I think they're called uvoidsoids. Okay, Well, who Who voids

796
00:42:34,719 --> 00:42:36,879
Speaker 1: right in about it, uh, and everybody else feel free

797
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:39,839
Speaker 1: to write in as well. Uh. We're gonna hopefully come

798
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:42,799
Speaker 1: back with more episodes in this series because there are

799
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:48,319
Speaker 1: additional phantom planets, phantom objects UH that that line up

800
00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:52,680
Speaker 1: under the mission statement of of these episodes, So UH

801
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 1: look forward to that in the future. And in the meantime,

802
00:42:56,600 --> 00:42:58,319
Speaker 1: if you want to check out old episodes of Stuff

803
00:42:58,360 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, head and over to stuff to

804
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,440
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. That's our mothership. That's where

805
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:04,360
Speaker 1: we'll find all of them. You'll find links out to

806
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:07,320
Speaker 1: our social media accounts. UH you can go and follow

807
00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:12,400
Speaker 1: us there. Likewise, there's a little merchandise a little store

808
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809
00:43:14,840 --> 00:43:17,000
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810
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:19,719
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811
00:43:19,719 --> 00:43:22,359
Speaker 1: past episode. It's a cool way to support the show,

812
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Speaker 1: but the absolute best way to support the show is

813
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814
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:31,319
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815
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:33,759
Speaker 1: if you haven't already, check out our other show, Invention.

816
00:43:34,080 --> 00:43:38,680
Speaker 1: It's an invention by invention exploration of human techno history. Absolutely,

817
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:40,759
Speaker 1: are you not listening to Invention yet? If you like

818
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 1: this show, you'll probably like that one too, So we

819
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 1: really advise you go check it out subscribe anyway, huge

820
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:51,240
Speaker 1: thanks to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Try Harrison.

821
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:53,200
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

822
00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:55,920
Speaker 1: with feedback about this episode or any other, to suggest

823
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:58,759
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, to suggest a name for

824
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 1: Planet nine, or just to say hello or to let

825
00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 1: us know you're a Hovoid, you can email us at

826
00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:18,080
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for

827
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:20,520
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828
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:44,560
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