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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault. This time it's going

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Speaker 1: to be part two of the episode we ran last Saturday.

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Speaker 1: This is the second part of the Lost Daughters of

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Speaker 1: Oton series. This originally published March nineteen. And uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: if you were here last Saturday, you know what you're

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Speaker 1: in for. All right, let's jump right in. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,

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Speaker 1: you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Can we're back

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Speaker 1: for part two? Or is this part two? Or does

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Speaker 1: it kind of stand alone to a large time? I

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Speaker 1: think this one stands alone. Yeah, okay, so well last time,

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Speaker 1: if you were with us in the last episode, we

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Speaker 1: were exploring what we were sort of calling the Lost

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Speaker 1: Daughters of Aton, the the planets that once were thought

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Speaker 1: to exist somewhere in the Solar System, whether in ancient

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Speaker 1: times or in recent centuries, but we later found out

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Speaker 1: probably never existed or definitely never existed in some cases.

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Speaker 1: So examples we talked about included Antikathon and the Central Fire.

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Speaker 1: What was the deal with that? Oh, well, you just

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Speaker 1: have to go back and listen to the episode. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: this complex notion where, um, the Sun is not the

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

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Speaker 1: of the universe, but something called the Central Fire is

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Speaker 1: at the center, and Earth is actually closer to the

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Speaker 1: Central Fire than the Sun. So it's you know, this

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Speaker 1: sort of complex uh model of the cosmos based on uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, the best observational data of the day of

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Speaker 1: like ancient times, ancient Greece. Yeah, combined with certain religious

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Speaker 1: mythological ideas. Yeah, Pythagorean cosmology sort of. But then also

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Speaker 1: we talked about the scientific thinking that to the belief

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Speaker 1: in such a thing as the planet vulcan, a planet

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Speaker 1: believed to be inside the orbit of Mercury super close

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Speaker 1: to the Sun, as was proposed by Urban la Verier.

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Speaker 1: And of course we also talked about Phaeton, the the

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Speaker 1: Phaeton or Phaeton the the best subject of a Renaissance

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Speaker 1: painting of all time. Yes, but for the purposes of

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Speaker 1: main purposes of our discussion, the the idea that that

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Speaker 1: they thought, well, the asteroid belt maybe used to be

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Speaker 1: a planet and maybe this is this is what we

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Speaker 1: would call that planet if it were still a whole

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Speaker 1: exactly right. So today we wanted to carry this discussion

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Speaker 1: forward to talk about other ideas about planets that are

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Speaker 1: thought to maybe exist somewhere in the Solar System but

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Speaker 1: haven't yet been confirmed. In the last episode, all the

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Speaker 1: planets that we talked about, we're pretty sure now have

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Speaker 1: never existed at any time. I mean, with two of them,

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Speaker 1: were quite sure, but there are still questions. For example,

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Speaker 1: there has long been a question about what lies at

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Speaker 1: the further stretches we we talked about. You know, what

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Speaker 1: happens when you go down as far as you can

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Speaker 1: into the Solar System, like the Sun, is this pit

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Speaker 1: this well where you go all the way down? Are

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Speaker 1: there are things that are hard to see because they're

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Speaker 1: so close to the Sun. When you think about the

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Speaker 1: opposite end, could there be things that are hard for

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Speaker 1: us to see because they're so far And of course

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Speaker 1: we have to realize how how confusing this may seem

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Speaker 1: at first, because it's easy to think that we have

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Speaker 1: our Solar system pretty much figured out at this point, right,

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

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Speaker 1: grew up memorizing the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Urinous, 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 that. Well,

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Speaker 1: 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 continue really spotting new exo planets that are

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

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

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Speaker 1: then 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 size a ble beach house, and they tend

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Speaker 1: to be you know, with lots of lots of beds

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Speaker 1: for multiple families or groups to stay and at the

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Speaker 1: same time, so you're in one beach house, and then

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Speaker 1: you're adjacent to another beach house and you you you

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Speaker 1: gaze out at the other beach house. You see some

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Speaker 1: lights on and you ask yourself, I wonder if anyone

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Speaker 1: is staying there, and you observe it until you find

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Speaker 1: definite signs that there is an individual in that house,

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Speaker 1: and then then maybe you can count how many individuals

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Speaker 1: are in that house. But then if you ask the

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Speaker 1: same question about your own beach house, well then you can.

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Speaker 1: There are ways to try and figure that out, but

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Speaker 1: not the same, not the same ways. Right. You might

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Speaker 1: do a bit of listening. You might do a bit

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Speaker 1: of roaming around, of of rattling the curiously locked doors

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Speaker 1: that go who knows where. That's a really good analogy.

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Speaker 1: I like that a lot. And so by running around

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Speaker 1: within our own house, we have discovered by say the

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Speaker 1: early nineteen hundred, late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, we

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Speaker 1: had discovered a lot stuff. We discovered eight planets at

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Speaker 1: that point. The first six planets Mercury, Venus, of course, Earth, Mars, Jupiter,

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

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Speaker 1: ancient astronomers with the naked eye could see them in

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Speaker 1: the night sky and charted their movements and all that.

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Speaker 1: Then in seventeen eighty one you had Uranus or Uranus.

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Speaker 1: We still have to decide which one we truly prefer.

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Speaker 1: Uranus was found by Sir William Herschel with a telescope.

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Speaker 1: He wanted to name it after King George, and fortunately

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Speaker 1: that didn't happen. Uh. Then Laveryer, the French astronomer, predicted

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Speaker 1: the placement of Neptune by the wobble in Uranus um

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Speaker 1: and he said, I predict there's another planet here and

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Speaker 1: you can find it. And then they went and looked

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Speaker 1: for it and they did find it. And that was

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Speaker 1: in the eighteen forties. So we're up to seven planets

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Speaker 1: at this point by the eighteen forties. By the way,

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Speaker 1: as long as we're snickering at at the planetary name Uranus,

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Speaker 1: I do want to throw in to call back to

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Speaker 1: an older episode that I hope that one day someone

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Speaker 1: writes a science fiction tale in which a starship is

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Speaker 1: headed towards Uranus and it's called the Guy a Bolga.

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Speaker 1: That would be a great ship title there. That is brilliant.

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Speaker 1: That is absolutely brilliant. Wait a minute, I think I said.

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Speaker 1: Did I say a minute ago that Neptune was the

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Speaker 1: seventh planet. I feel like I've got that ringing in

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Speaker 1: my head for some reason. If I said that, that's

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Speaker 1: entirely wrong. Neptune is the eighth planet. Obviously. Uh So,

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Speaker 1: I apologies if I misspoke. If not, this is just

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Speaker 1: maybe something we can edit out. Sorry I had to

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Speaker 1: say that before I forgot, But yes, the Guy Bolga,

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Speaker 1: that that should be the ship to Uranus. Absolutely much

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Speaker 1: more evocative and resonant than Voyager two or whatever they've

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Speaker 1: previously used. But let's pull it back and meet a guy.

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Speaker 1: You ready to meet a guy A mustachio gentleman. Yes, okay,

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Speaker 1: so it is time to meet a fellow by the

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Speaker 1: name of Perceval Lowell. I think we visited this guy

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Speaker 1: on the podcast before. That mustache does look familiar. So

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Speaker 1: Perceval Lowell was born to a wealthy, prominent family in

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Speaker 1: Boston in eighteen fifty five, the Lowell family. So he

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Speaker 1: was brother of a Lawrence Lowell, who was a lawyer

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Speaker 1: who ended up becoming president of Harvard University. He was

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Speaker 1: also the brother I didn't realize this until recently of

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Speaker 1: the poet Amy Lowell, who I guess is considered a

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Speaker 1: modernist poet. She sometimes called an imagist. Um. But I

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Speaker 1: picked out one of her poems because it had an

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

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Speaker 1: The poem is called Balls. I'm not gonna quote the

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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 a

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Speaker 1: Sagan point 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 loll. 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 lot of

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Speaker 1: international 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, Perceval

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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 canally, 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 in 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 the 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 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? The Martian threat? Exactly. So,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: idea 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: astro comical station proved that Mars was inhabited. Professor Lowell

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: requisites for human life exists on the planet water, heat,

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Speaker 1: and atmosphere. His positive proof of the existence of human

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Speaker 1: life on Mars is the network of lines which marks

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Speaker 1: certain areas of the planet's face, indicating the digging of

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Speaker 1: artificial canals, which would require an intelligence and engineering skill

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Speaker 1: as great or greater than possessed by the inhabitants of

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Speaker 1: this Earth. 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 the nineteen seventies which showed yeah, definitely not nothing there,

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Speaker 1: right and and uh and you know we talked about

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Speaker 1: this before in the show, and you know, dealing with

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Speaker 1: early observations, there is a there's more room to see

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Speaker 1: things that are not there, especially if you don't have

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Speaker 1: the ability to really kept being a 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 you're very easy to maybe think you see

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: said they saw during the days of earlier optical telescopes

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Speaker 1: without modern instruments and modern uh telephotography, where like the

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Speaker 1: ash 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 off but if you know,

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: believed this until we had a Mars probe, Like take

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Speaker 1: photos of the surface from up close. Right, though, certainly

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: the idea that would show up in more headlines and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: which would have been showing him images of the blood

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Speaker 1: vessels within his own eyeball. Oh my goodness, and you

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Speaker 1: included an image and in our notes here for me

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Speaker 1: to look at here, and it does line up rather

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Speaker 1: well with the arteries of the eye. Yeah, but it

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Speaker 1: doesn't stop there either. So Lowell was also in the

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Speaker 1: planet predicting business. And we'll discuss his planet predictions when

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Speaker 1: we get back from a break. Thank alright, we're back.

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Speaker 1: So thus far we've talked about Lowell's thoughts concerning um Mars,

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Speaker 1: a known planet, but now we're gonna get into the unknown.

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Speaker 1: We get into into the study and the prediction of

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Speaker 1: of of hypothetical planets. Yeah, and remember how the eighth

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Speaker 1: planet Neptune had been discovered. Again, uh Laveryer looked at

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Speaker 1: the orbit of Uranus and said, Okay, by the way

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Speaker 1: it's moving, we can tell something is influencing it. It's

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Speaker 1: not moving based on what our predictions should be. So

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Speaker 1: what if we pause it another another object out there

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Speaker 1: of a certain mass and a certain position, Then we

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Speaker 1: could explain why Uranis moves the way it does. And

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Speaker 1: so he posited Neptune, and it turned out Neptune was there.

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Speaker 1: He was correct, and so this is a fantastically useful

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Speaker 1: and successful prediction based on the laws of physics. So,

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

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Speaker 1: the orbits of the outer gas, giants like Uranus and Neptune,

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Speaker 1: Lowell tried to do the same thing. He concluded that

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Speaker 1: there was another planet yet to be found based on

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Speaker 1: those orbits. Something out there is messing with Uranus and Neptune.

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Speaker 1: And yet again, like with the correct prediction of Neptune

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Speaker 1: and the incorrect prediction of Vulcan by la Verier, this

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Speaker 1: was on that basis, on the basis of inferred gravitational

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Speaker 1: influences on the orbits of these known objects. So in

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Speaker 1: nineteen o five or nineteen o six, Percival Lowell initiated

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Speaker 1: a massive hunt for this ghost planet. The project was

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Speaker 1: initially called the Invariable Plane Search, and the ghost planet

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Speaker 1: was called Planet X. And this project went on for

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Speaker 1: many years. It proceeded in stops and star throughout several phases,

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Speaker 1: even after Perceval Lowell himself actually passed away in nineteen sixteen.

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Speaker 1: So Perceval Lowell never got to see how this project

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Speaker 1: turned out, though he wrote books about He wrote a

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Speaker 1: book called I Think Like a Memoir of the trans

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Speaker 1: Neptunian Planet. But on February eighteenth, nineteen thirty fourteen years

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Speaker 1: after Lowell's death, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory named Clyde

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Speaker 1: Tombo actually did discover a massive object beyond Neptune with

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Speaker 1: the help of the with the help of a loaned

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Speaker 1: sum of money that I think they used to buy

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Speaker 1: new instruments from personal Lowell's brother who had been the

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Speaker 1: head of Harvard, and this object was Pluto. Though Pluto

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Speaker 1: was not nearly as massive as the planet that Lowell

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Speaker 1: had predicted out there and later actually turned out more

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Speaker 1: accurate measurements of the orbit and massive Neptunes, such as

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Speaker 1: by the Voyager two mission, basically obviated the need for

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Speaker 1: a planet X to explain our observation. So you actually

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Speaker 1: looking at Uranus and Neptune, there was no need to

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Speaker 1: to to infer a planet X. So it seems there's

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Speaker 1: just no planet out there, right, and now we can

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Speaker 1: conclude there's no need to explain anything. It is probably

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Speaker 1: there's probably nothing. I mean, we have Pluto to be sure,

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Speaker 1: and uh and and again, like we discussed earlier, you

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Speaker 1: can go back and forth on exactly how we should

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Speaker 1: classify Pluto. But here's the thing. There's no question that

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Speaker 1: there are other objects in our Solar system beyond Pluto.

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Speaker 1: Pluto is not the stop sign for our Solar system. There,

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Speaker 1: there's plenty of other objects out there. Yeah. The Solar

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Speaker 1: system kind of has a shell of icy debris floating

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

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Speaker 1: would get to Pluto and there would essentially be a

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Speaker 1: sign saying like last stop tell Alpha Centauri. Uh No.

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Speaker 1: There there's the possibility for other other things, and we

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

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Speaker 1: there's the general category of trans Neptunean 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, the 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, ETCETERA

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Speaker 1: 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 can 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're still beyond

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Speaker 1: the Kuiper Belt, which lies thirty to fifty AU from

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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 UH one one three a k A.

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: named about not an asteroid an object in space named

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Speaker 1: after them? Is it Biden? It might be Biden? And

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Speaker 1: then the third one of note here, discovered in twenty

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Speaker 1: fifteen is t G three seven. The t G stands

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

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Speaker 1: just the goblin. I mean, if it's Cheddar or not,

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Speaker 1: it's too far away. It might be monster so Seddon

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Speaker 1: is the largest, the Goblin is furthest away, and all

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Speaker 1: of them have really weird orbits. So their distance from

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Speaker 1: the center of things from our son varies greatly. And

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Speaker 1: if you look at a chart of their of their orbits,

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Speaker 1: I really get the sense of imagine, imagine a typical

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Speaker 1: orbit that has been stretched out like a rubber band. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so pretty much all the planets I think have have

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

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Speaker 1: their orbits are pretty close to circular. You know, there're

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Speaker 1: only a few percent off from being circular, but these

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

426
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:27,160
Speaker 1: super stretched out ovals. And one of the weird things

427
00:23:27,160 --> 00:23:29,520
Speaker 1: I noticed in at least one of the pictures you've

428
00:23:29,520 --> 00:23:31,639
Speaker 1: got here early on, Robert, is that they almost kind

429
00:23:31,640 --> 00:23:35,280
Speaker 1: of like look like they're there. Their parahaliens are kind

430
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:38,360
Speaker 1: of aligned almost in the same direction. I wonder why

431
00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:40,080
Speaker 1: that might be. Will come back to Yeah, we'll come

432
00:23:40,080 --> 00:23:42,480
Speaker 1: back because that's that's definitely leads to a few different

433
00:23:42,520 --> 00:23:46,240
Speaker 1: mysteries here. Uh. In additional to having just weird orbits, again,

434
00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:50,000
Speaker 1: they are so far away from from the Sun um

435
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:52,800
Speaker 1: certainly when you look at their their extremes, but even

436
00:23:52,800 --> 00:23:56,440
Speaker 1: at their parahaliens are pretty extreme. The Goblin, for instance,

437
00:23:56,480 --> 00:23:59,080
Speaker 1: has an estimated orbital period what we can think of

438
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:02,960
Speaker 1: as a year of thirty two thousand, one hundred and

439
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 1: seventeen point twenty nine Earth years. That's how long it

440
00:24:06,119 --> 00:24:09,600
Speaker 1: takes for for the Goblin to go around the Sun.

441
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:13,560
Speaker 1: And to put that in context, a year on Pluto

442
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:15,800
Speaker 1: is two forty eight Earth years. That's how long it

443
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:18,240
Speaker 1: takes Pluto to go around the Sun. And this thing

444
00:24:18,359 --> 00:24:21,639
Speaker 1: is that much further away. The goblins distance from the

445
00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 1: Sun ranges from sixty five point one AU to one thousand,

446
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:29,400
Speaker 1: nine hundred and fifty five AU. Wow, that is crazy

447
00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:33,560
Speaker 1: far away. Yeah, and their additional sadnoid candidates and suspected

448
00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 1: to be many more. We're talking eighty to ninety of

449
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:40,760
Speaker 1: these critters, and they're distant and weird orbits can't be

450
00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:45,359
Speaker 1: fully explained by the influences of known Solar System objects either.

451
00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:49,159
Speaker 1: So for starters, they're too far from the Sun to

452
00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:53,680
Speaker 1: be influenced by the gas giants, and they're too close

453
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:57,560
Speaker 1: to the Sun to be influenced by other distant stars.

454
00:24:58,359 --> 00:25:01,840
Speaker 1: So something else is influence and seeing them. But what so,

455
00:25:01,920 --> 00:25:05,560
Speaker 1: there are a few reasonable candidates to consider here. Uh.

456
00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:07,600
Speaker 1: The big one, the main one that we're most interested

457
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:10,480
Speaker 1: here with is uh that there might be an undiscovered

458
00:25:10,560 --> 00:25:15,239
Speaker 1: giant planet comparable to Uranus or Neptune still orbiting our

459
00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:18,040
Speaker 1: Sun somewhere out there in the dark. So there could

460
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:22,320
Speaker 1: maybe be a planet X after all exactly. Another idea

461
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:26,000
Speaker 1: is that a lost giant planet was ejected from our

462
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:29,640
Speaker 1: Solar system a long time ago, disrupting orbits on its

463
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:33,080
Speaker 1: way out of our Solar system. So that would that

464
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:35,280
Speaker 1: would explain why they all seem sort of skewed in

465
00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:39,680
Speaker 1: the same direction, because some like a massive planetary object

466
00:25:39,760 --> 00:25:44,399
Speaker 1: just came ripping through, pulling everybody out of place. And

467
00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 1: then a final of reasonable theory is that back in

468
00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:50,880
Speaker 1: the stellar nursery days of our Solar system, the Sun's

469
00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:55,080
Speaker 1: fellow proto suns nudged everything out of whack okay, so

470
00:25:55,119 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 1: it could be sort of a relic of something that

471
00:25:57,119 --> 00:25:59,880
Speaker 1: happened in the past, kind of like the planet being

472
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:02,119
Speaker 1: a jected or something moving by. So if I can

473
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:04,159
Speaker 1: come back to Pluto for a second, I hope that

474
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 1: for one thing, the idea of the said nooids makes

475
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:10,760
Speaker 1: everyone feel better about losing or potentially losing pet Pluto

476
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:13,440
Speaker 1: is a full fledged planet, because ultimately, wouldn't you rather

477
00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:18,199
Speaker 1: just drop Pluto from the list as opposed to just

478
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 1: adding all these other additional things like no, you don't

479
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 1: actually want to memorize a bunch of saidnoids. Um. So, also,

480
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 1: you didn't lose Pluto. Pluto is still there. It's still

481
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:29,919
Speaker 1: it's still a dwarf planet. You can still include it

482
00:26:29,920 --> 00:26:33,520
Speaker 1: on the list. Like people get way, people get people

483
00:26:33,560 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 1: like to get bit out of shape over this when

484
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:36,640
Speaker 1: there's really nothing to get bent out of shape over.

485
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:39,240
Speaker 1: There's a reason Pluto is not considered a planet. It's

486
00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:41,520
Speaker 1: in order to make it consistent with the definition of

487
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:43,760
Speaker 1: a planet that we use for all the other planets.

488
00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 1: And that means that planets have to dominate their orbital area.

489
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:51,200
Speaker 1: They have to gravitationally dominate their orbital area, and Pluto

490
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 1: does not. Right, And if you just decide Nope, we're

491
00:26:53,800 --> 00:26:56,200
Speaker 1: gonna count Pluto, then you you have to be open

492
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:59,120
Speaker 1: to letting other things join the list as well. There

493
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:01,879
Speaker 1: is dwarf planets and whatnot. So trust this is this

494
00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:04,959
Speaker 1: is the best way, is the best approach forward. Um,

495
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:07,239
Speaker 1: But again this comes back to the question. All right,

496
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:10,919
Speaker 1: if there is let's let's assume that first theory is correct.

497
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:13,240
Speaker 1: If there is a giant planet out there in our

498
00:27:13,240 --> 00:27:17,200
Speaker 1: Solar system. Uh, and it's it's it's monkeying with the

499
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:20,199
Speaker 1: orbits of these said noids. Then why don't we know

500
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:22,560
Speaker 1: about it for sure? Why? And did all these you know,

501
00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:26,960
Speaker 1: the continual classification of exo planets, things as far away

502
00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 1: as Sweeps eleven, which is twenty seven thousand, seven D

503
00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:33,240
Speaker 1: and ten light years away. Why would we miss something

504
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:36,440
Speaker 1: so relatively close to home. All Right, we're gonna take

505
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:38,119
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we come right back, we

506
00:27:38,119 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 1: will explore more about the possibility of planet nine a

507
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: K a planet x a K a planet ten. But

508
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:47,920
Speaker 1: actually it's planet nine a K a planet d M X.

509
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:54,359
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back, Robert. Wasn't there an X themed

510
00:27:54,359 --> 00:27:56,879
Speaker 1: wrestler or is he not really X themed? I'm thinking

511
00:27:56,920 --> 00:27:59,800
Speaker 1: of Uh he had an X in his name? Well

512
00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:02,920
Speaker 1: they was there was an X pox wrestling? Yes? Yeah,

513
00:28:02,960 --> 00:28:05,840
Speaker 1: Sean Waltman, Yeah he's still around. I believe there was

514
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:08,840
Speaker 1: a luchador Doctor X because you know, the X X

515
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:11,080
Speaker 1: looks so good on a mask. You've got to you've

516
00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:13,320
Speaker 1: got to roll that out eventually. It's the coolest letter,

517
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 1: I guess. So xpox is not like X themed then no,

518
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:19,679
Speaker 1: not really no, nor does he have any relation to

519
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:22,720
Speaker 1: Planet X. So we're full on talking about planet X now.

520
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:26,400
Speaker 1: Though this is confusing because yeah, you mentioned that planet

521
00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:28,800
Speaker 1: x X as the Roman numeral for ten, but this

522
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the tenth planet. This would be the ninth planet,

523
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:35,120
Speaker 1: would be the planet after the eighth planet, neptune um,

524
00:28:35,240 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 1: so it would really be planet nine. And when actual

525
00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:41,120
Speaker 1: astronomers an astrophysicists these days talk about this planet, they

526
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:43,600
Speaker 1: don't usually call it planet X. They call it planet nine.

527
00:28:43,960 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 1: That's especially uh necessary, I think, because the Internet is

528
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 1: just overflowing with Planet X conspiracy theories that I don't

529
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: think we need to get into today. But man, I

530
00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:57,080
Speaker 1: I if you just do a I don't know if

531
00:28:57,120 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 1: I recommend this there, do a YouTube search for planet X,

532
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: and there is some apocalyptic, bonkers nonsense out there. I

533
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:06,840
Speaker 1: think it's all about how Planet X is coming to

534
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:09,280
Speaker 1: get us. Well, you know, yeah, we're, like you said,

535
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 1: we're not gonna really get into that today. But the

536
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:15,280
Speaker 1: great thing is that all of the the actual scientific

537
00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: ideas concerning a potential planet nine are far more interesting.

538
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. So, so one of the things that we

539
00:29:21,840 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 1: should mention is that crucial for the demotion of Pluto

540
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 1: was a Caltech researcher named Mike E. Brown, a colleague

541
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:33,560
Speaker 1: of a another astronomer named Constantine Batigon. And for several

542
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:37,720
Speaker 1: years now that these astronomers, Constantine Batigan and Mike Brown,

543
00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:41,720
Speaker 1: have been talking about the possibility that they suspect there

544
00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:44,920
Speaker 1: is an object out there beyond Neptune, out there in

545
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 1: the dark shepherding the trans neptuney and objects we've been

546
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:51,600
Speaker 1: talking about, so that they are aligned in roughly the

547
00:29:51,680 --> 00:29:55,320
Speaker 1: same direction, and they're aligned across multiple axes, by the way,

548
00:29:55,360 --> 00:29:57,680
Speaker 1: So that's kind of interesting. Like if you look at

549
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:00,400
Speaker 1: all of their orbits from the north pole looking down,

550
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:03,840
Speaker 1: they're all lined up in this one weird direction, as

551
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:06,960
Speaker 1: if something's pulling them all in the same place. Who

552
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 1: a giant blind shepherd in the darkness? Yes? What was

553
00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:14,000
Speaker 1: the name of the Cyclops in the Odyssey? And does

554
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:19,080
Speaker 1: he have an astronomical body named after him? Probably so,

555
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:23,000
Speaker 1: but he's probably already taken Polyphemus I don't know it's

556
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:27,760
Speaker 1: Polyphemus up for grabs. I don't know of anything called Polyphemus. Okay,

557
00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:30,040
Speaker 1: I just did a Google search and the only thing

558
00:30:30,080 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 1: that came up was that somebody wanted to name a

559
00:30:32,360 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 1: moon of Neptune Polyphemus. But I don't think they did.

560
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 1: All right, Well, well maybe we can keep that one

561
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:39,240
Speaker 1: clear just in case, because I think that would be

562
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:42,120
Speaker 1: that would be a really awesome name for one of

563
00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 1: these planets, if I can have any say so. So,

564
00:30:44,440 --> 00:30:47,640
Speaker 1: when the aliens from that planet contact us and they

565
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:50,040
Speaker 1: say help, someone's attacking me, and we radio back and

566
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:52,240
Speaker 1: say who's attacking me? And they say, no, one is

567
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 1: attacking me, you can know they've been tricked by a

568
00:30:54,800 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 1: cosmic Odysseus told them his name was no One say so,

569
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:00,440
Speaker 1: Disseas is the worst, such a trickster. All right, Well,

570
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:02,080
Speaker 1: I have derailed us a little bit here. Let's get

571
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:04,800
Speaker 1: back to this idea of planet nine the blind, a

572
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: potential blind shepherd of the of these distant objects. All right, yeah,

573
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:11,720
Speaker 1: we'll bring it back. So one thing I should mention

574
00:31:11,840 --> 00:31:14,040
Speaker 1: is that I actually listened to an interesting interview with

575
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: the Caltech astronomer and Professor of planetary science is Constantine

576
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 1: Batiguan and Uh and and so this this shed some

577
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:24,720
Speaker 1: light on what he was thinking. Essentially, Uh, Constantine Batiguan,

578
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 1: and Uh and Mikey Brown have been doing research to

579
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:32,040
Speaker 1: show there is possible there is a way of explaining

580
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: some of the strange coincidences that we see in the

581
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:38,480
Speaker 1: structure of the outer Solar System, in the structure of

582
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:42,000
Speaker 1: these like saidnoids, hyper belt objects, these objects that are

583
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:44,959
Speaker 1: way out there. Then when we track their orbits, they

584
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 1: seem to line up in this bizarre way where they're

585
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:50,640
Speaker 1: all sort of pointing in the same direction at one

586
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:53,840
Speaker 1: end at their parahelion, they're all like it's like they're

587
00:31:53,880 --> 00:31:56,600
Speaker 1: they're just lining up. And then also a strange thing

588
00:31:56,640 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: is that they're not only lining up in that dimension,

589
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 1: but if you like look directly at the solar plane

590
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 1: instead of down on it, they're all sort of elevated.

591
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:07,840
Speaker 1: They're tipped up across the solar plane in a fairly

592
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 1: consistent or at least close to consistent way. And that's

593
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 1: really odd, Like Batiguan talks about how that really wouldn't

594
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:17,440
Speaker 1: be something you'd expect to see just by chance. So

595
00:32:17,480 --> 00:32:20,600
Speaker 1: the idea here is that what if something has pushed

596
00:32:20,600 --> 00:32:22,680
Speaker 1: them there. It's like, why are all the sheep standing

597
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:26,080
Speaker 1: in this area? Well, maybe it's because the the the

598
00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:29,000
Speaker 1: shepherd dog or the wolf is standing over here, right,

599
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 1: And so the problem is we don't know exactly where

600
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:36,200
Speaker 1: to look for this object if it is out there.

601
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: So lavery A could say, hey, you know, I think

602
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:41,239
Speaker 1: I know where Neptune is. I'm going to give you

603
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:44,200
Speaker 1: within one degree of of where to look, and of

604
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:46,880
Speaker 1: course when they look forward, they found it with the telescope.

605
00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:50,040
Speaker 1: You can't quite do the same thing with this planet

606
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: nine because even the people who think it exists, they're

607
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 1: inferring it from its influence on objects who have orbital

608
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:00,560
Speaker 1: periods of like ten thousand years or something, so it

609
00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 1: takes them so long to go around. So we are

610
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 1: sort of lacking in data to to get the full

611
00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: arc to pinpoint exactly where the planet would be to

612
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:12,360
Speaker 1: cause what we see. But constantin Batiguan thinks that right now,

613
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 1: the best place to look for this planet is probably

614
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:20,080
Speaker 1: at an average distance of somewhere around five hundred astronomical units.

615
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 1: So yeah, five hundred times the distance between the Earth

616
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:27,080
Speaker 1: and the Sun and so for comparison, you know, Earth

617
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 1: is one Mars is one point five a U, Jupiter

618
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: is five point to Neptune is about thirty a U.

619
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:35,400
Speaker 1: So that's starting to get way out there. But the

620
00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 1: distance from Neptune to the ninth planet would be gigantic.

621
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: It would be many times the distance from the Sun

622
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:44,760
Speaker 1: to Neptune. So it's way way out there in the dark.

623
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:47,720
Speaker 1: The best estimates say that it would probably have a

624
00:33:47,800 --> 00:33:51,240
Speaker 1: roughly ten thousand year orbit, and also it would probably

625
00:33:51,280 --> 00:33:56,240
Speaker 1: have a very elliptical orbit compared to the inner planets.

626
00:33:56,280 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: Like the inter planets are elliptical, but they're pretty close

627
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:01,920
Speaker 1: to circular. This planet would be more like these these

628
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:04,560
Speaker 1: objects we've been talking about, these Kuiper Belt objects and

629
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:08,279
Speaker 1: setenoids that have these long ovals, but not quite as

630
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 1: long as the setonoid, no longer, but not quite that long.

631
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 1: So we've got good reasons to think that there's something

632
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 1: out there with mass. There. There could be another large

633
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:21,080
Speaker 1: planet out there with mass that's causing these objects that

634
00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:23,040
Speaker 1: we can see to behave in the way they do.

635
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 1: But we don't know much about this object itself, right

636
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 1: because all we have to go on is what it's

637
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:32,800
Speaker 1: mass would have to be and roughly what its orbit

638
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:35,480
Speaker 1: is to cause the effects we're seeing. We can't We

639
00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 1: haven't been able to look at it. We don't know

640
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:39,840
Speaker 1: exactly for sure what it would be made of, exactly

641
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: how big it would be. Um the the estimates I've

642
00:34:43,080 --> 00:34:45,160
Speaker 1: seen tend to think that it's going to be bigger

643
00:34:45,200 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: than Earth, but it would be sort of like a

644
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 1: an icy super Earth, with a with an atmosphere kind

645
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:54,880
Speaker 1: of like the gas giants and an upper atmosphere like

646
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:58,760
Speaker 1: Neptune or something, but with an icy core, maybe roughly

647
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:01,480
Speaker 1: five Earth mat us is. I've also seen an older

648
00:35:01,600 --> 00:35:04,520
Speaker 1: estimate that was more like roughly ten Earth masses. I

649
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:07,479
Speaker 1: don't know if it's been if those represent different points

650
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:09,600
Speaker 1: of view, or if it's been scaled down since then,

651
00:35:09,640 --> 00:35:11,719
Speaker 1: but the more recent one I saw from Batigan was

652
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:14,719
Speaker 1: five Earth masses. But as for the makeup, like the

653
00:35:14,920 --> 00:35:17,319
Speaker 1: icy core with the atmosphere on the outside, that's just

654
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:19,640
Speaker 1: something we have to guess. We don't know for sure.

655
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:22,840
Speaker 1: And so with an object with an orbit this long

656
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 1: way out there in the dark, obviously it probably would

657
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 1: be possible for us to see it with our telescopes

658
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 1: if we know where to look and what to look for.

659
00:35:32,920 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 1: But it's not going to be something that just shows

660
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:38,440
Speaker 1: up in an obvious way. It's gonna take like difficult

661
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:42,200
Speaker 1: analysis of uh doing, you know, comparing photos of the

662
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: night sky with deep detail across different nights to see

663
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:48,279
Speaker 1: what moves. And part of the problem is there's a

664
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 1: lot of stuff out there, a lot of things moved,

665
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:53,120
Speaker 1: and so like, if you take a super high res

666
00:35:53,160 --> 00:35:55,760
Speaker 1: photograph with great magnification of a patch of the sky

667
00:35:56,160 --> 00:35:58,719
Speaker 1: across a few different nights and then see what moves there,

668
00:35:58,960 --> 00:36:02,280
Speaker 1: you might get tons of hits, maybe thousands of hits,

669
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:04,400
Speaker 1: And then you've got to look at those and say, Okay,

670
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:07,640
Speaker 1: is this a new is this an Kuiper Belt object

671
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:09,840
Speaker 1: we know about? Is this a Main Belt asteroid we

672
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: know about? Is this a new Kuiper Belt or Main

673
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:15,320
Speaker 1: Belt object that we did that we didn't know about,

674
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:17,759
Speaker 1: or is this maybe a planet that we should be

675
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:19,800
Speaker 1: looking for, right, Because I mean it's you see this

676
00:36:19,840 --> 00:36:21,880
Speaker 1: happen from time to time where it's still think that

677
00:36:21,960 --> 00:36:24,480
Speaker 1: new objects has been discovered, but it's actually an object

678
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:27,120
Speaker 1: that has already been charted. So there's duplication that can

679
00:36:27,120 --> 00:36:29,480
Speaker 1: take place. Yeah, and so one of the things that

680
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:32,680
Speaker 1: we can do to help figure out where we should

681
00:36:32,680 --> 00:36:35,080
Speaker 1: look is to rule out certain areas of the sky.

682
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:38,120
Speaker 1: And that's something that Batigan has been talking about doing.

683
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:40,440
Speaker 1: Is you can say, Okay, there's no point in looking

684
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 1: for the planet here. No one wouldn't be here. There's

685
00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 1: no point looking for it here. We know it wouldn't

686
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: be here. And then also you can use other data

687
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: to in for places where it probably shouldn't be. For example,

688
00:36:51,640 --> 00:36:54,680
Speaker 1: we know that it's uh, probably not in in a

689
00:36:54,719 --> 00:36:58,400
Speaker 1: certain sector because if it were, it may it probably

690
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:02,040
Speaker 1: would have affected the movements in a detectable way of

691
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 1: the Cassini spacecraft when Cassini was in orbit around Saturn.

692
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 1: So that tells us probably it's not really close to

693
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:11,799
Speaker 1: its parahelion right now, right, it's not close enough to

694
00:37:11,800 --> 00:37:14,880
Speaker 1: be having an effect on the inter planet's It's probably

695
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:17,719
Speaker 1: somewhere a little bit further out if it exists. So

696
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:20,440
Speaker 1: to come back to my my beach house, uh okay

697
00:37:20,880 --> 00:37:24,200
Speaker 1: metaphor from earlier, Uh, it's like you. They're the rooms

698
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:26,839
Speaker 1: that you can see and you can you can look

699
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:28,719
Speaker 1: to them from where you are and see there is

700
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:32,800
Speaker 1: no mystery stranger in that room. There are rooms where

701
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:35,440
Speaker 1: you would be able to detect maybe there's a you

702
00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 1: know there, you're right beneath it, and you would be

703
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:39,640
Speaker 1: able to hear them surely if they were creaking around

704
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:40,920
Speaker 1: up there. But there are other rooms that you just

705
00:37:41,040 --> 00:37:43,440
Speaker 1: you don't know at this point. Yeah, and so the

706
00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: question of whether there is actually a planet nine out there,

707
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 1: it does remain unsolved, though. Constantine Batiguan seems very confident.

708
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:53,920
Speaker 1: And the interview I listened to, you know, the host

709
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:57,239
Speaker 1: asked him, how confident are you that this thing is

710
00:37:57,280 --> 00:37:59,200
Speaker 1: out there? And he's like, well, I used to say

711
00:37:59,280 --> 00:38:03,920
Speaker 1: I was six trillion percent confident um, But then he said, actually,

712
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:07,279
Speaker 1: you can calculate a good confidence interval by saying, what's

713
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:10,600
Speaker 1: the probability as far as we know that all of

714
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 1: these Kuiper Belt objects would have their orbits line up

715
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 1: the same way like this by chance without some big

716
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:20,240
Speaker 1: massive object out there to shepherd them into these orbits.

717
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:22,800
Speaker 1: And according to him, the chance of this happening by

718
00:38:23,080 --> 00:38:27,040
Speaker 1: coincidence is zero point two percent. So by subtraction, he

719
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:31,400
Speaker 1: says he's nine eight percent confident that planet nine exists.

720
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 1: So that's very confident. I'm sure plenty of other astronomers

721
00:38:35,480 --> 00:38:38,480
Speaker 1: wouldn't be that level of confident. But it's inspiring to

722
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 1: even think about the possibility that there's this, this, this

723
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:44,719
Speaker 1: additional planet out there in our own Solar System and

724
00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:49,959
Speaker 1: our own relatively local neck of the cosmic woods, and

725
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:53,040
Speaker 1: we just merely suspect that it's there, that it's out

726
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:56,520
Speaker 1: there roaming up through the darkness. Well, I mean, this

727
00:38:56,600 --> 00:38:58,920
Speaker 1: is a this is a great sort of science hunt

728
00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:01,920
Speaker 1: game to play, right. Uh, you know, you you have

729
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:04,399
Speaker 1: to use the laws of physics as you know them

730
00:39:04,440 --> 00:39:06,399
Speaker 1: and try to figure out what's another way we could

731
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:09,400
Speaker 1: get data that nobody's thought of before. And so like

732
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 1: the idea of using the perturbations of the movement of

733
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:15,480
Speaker 1: a spacecraft. That's that's a smart way to look for

734
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:18,759
Speaker 1: new data that might not have appeared to you otherwise. Um,

735
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:21,360
Speaker 1: and and so this is really cool, But at the

736
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: same time, I'm sure really frustrating, especially if you're like

737
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: pretty confident that you think, yeah, we really know, it's

738
00:39:27,560 --> 00:39:30,800
Speaker 1: probably got to be out there, because nobody has discovered

739
00:39:30,800 --> 00:39:34,080
Speaker 1: a planet in the Solar System arguably since either Clyde

740
00:39:34,080 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 1: Tombo in the nineteen thirties or since Lavery A and uh,

741
00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:41,360
Speaker 1: and uh McAdams or I think McAdams was the other

742
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:43,920
Speaker 1: guy who discovered it in the eighteen forties. I mean

743
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:47,120
Speaker 1: that's been a long time. Yeah, totally, because again we've

744
00:39:47,120 --> 00:39:49,080
Speaker 1: all grown up with this map of the Solar System

745
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:52,320
Speaker 1: in our our heads. And uh, and you kind of you,

746
00:39:53,160 --> 00:39:55,239
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't remember being taught. Hey, this is

747
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:59,399
Speaker 1: all subject to change, but but clearly it is. Well,

748
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:01,839
Speaker 1: you would think that if there is a planet nine

749
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:04,440
Speaker 1: out there to be discovered, it's also probably going to

750
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:07,280
Speaker 1: be the last one we're going to discover, because there's

751
00:40:07,400 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 1: there's only a limited range of space where planets could

752
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:15,120
Speaker 1: actually be without without violating what else we know about space. Right,

753
00:40:15,320 --> 00:40:18,839
Speaker 1: It couldn't be closer than where we're thinking this planet is,

754
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 1: because otherwise we would interfere with the inner planets and

755
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:24,840
Speaker 1: we would know about it. It couldn't really be farther

756
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: away than where we're thinking this thing is, or else

757
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:29,520
Speaker 1: it probably would have been like stripped away by a

758
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:32,359
Speaker 1: passing star as we move through the galaxy. Right, because

759
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 1: it still needs to be under the power of our son,

760
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:40,760
Speaker 1: it within the thrall of our Son to be considered

761
00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:43,279
Speaker 1: part of our Solar System, and that's the whole point. Yeah,

762
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:46,520
Speaker 1: so there's not like opportunities to just discover unlimited more

763
00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:49,760
Speaker 1: planets in the Solar system. Solar system doesn't go on forever.

764
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:53,800
Speaker 1: Eventually the domain of gravitational dominance of our son ends,

765
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:56,839
Speaker 1: and other stars become more powerful in their in their

766
00:40:56,840 --> 00:41:00,880
Speaker 1: gravitational influence. So so there's only so much space where

767
00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:03,359
Speaker 1: there could be more planets. And it looks like if

768
00:41:03,400 --> 00:41:06,960
Speaker 1: we discover one more planet out there, that's that's probably

769
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:08,839
Speaker 1: about it. I don't know, maybe there could be one,

770
00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: but it's not like you know that we're gonna find

771
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:14,480
Speaker 1: ten more planets, and certainly nothing you know, large like that.

772
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:18,280
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a tantalizing mystery. I love the idea

773
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: that there's still mysteries about our Solar system, not just

774
00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:25,280
Speaker 1: space in general, but local mysteries, mysteries inside the house,

775
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:29,040
Speaker 1: right right. And of course that's not to gloss over

776
00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:33,800
Speaker 1: the many, you know, unsolved problems related to each individual planet.

777
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 1: I mean just just every just about every optics in

778
00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:39,840
Speaker 1: our Solar system, there's something about it we're still trying

779
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:42,399
Speaker 1: to figure out. And uh, and and that's just dealing

780
00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 1: with the problems that we know about that's the unknowns

781
00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 1: that we're aware of. Personally, I'm excited. I hope they

782
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: discover another planet in our lifetime. That would be really cool.

783
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:53,560
Speaker 1: That would that would be cool. And it seems like

784
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:56,040
Speaker 1: now there's I don't it's not a lock. I wouldn't.

785
00:41:56,040 --> 00:41:58,279
Speaker 1: I don't know if i'd go to nine percent, but

786
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:01,080
Speaker 1: it seems like there's pretty good evidence. Yeah, and then

787
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:03,920
Speaker 1: then what will we name it? I like your polyphemous idea,

788
00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:06,879
Speaker 1: the blind Shepherd out there. Yeah, it's a good name. Yeah,

789
00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:10,440
Speaker 1: assuming nothing else has has has snagged it already. Yeah,

790
00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:14,600
Speaker 1: and assuming that it doesn't attempt to space so disseas

791
00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:18,400
Speaker 1: to come along and screw everything up. That's true. All right, Well,

792
00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:21,160
Speaker 1: we're going to close out this episode, you know we

793
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:24,720
Speaker 1: we didn't even get into any examples from science fiction,

794
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:28,880
Speaker 1: though I do believe in Doctor Who the Cyberman home

795
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:34,399
Speaker 1: world of Manda's is both a ninth planet as well

796
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: as a former counter Earth's at once. Yeah, I think

797
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:39,839
Speaker 1: it's too at once. I I could have that wrong.

798
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:42,520
Speaker 1: So I'd love to hear from from our Who fans

799
00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:45,040
Speaker 1: out there. I know we have some Who listeners out

800
00:42:45,080 --> 00:42:47,399
Speaker 1: there listening to the show. You know, you can set

801
00:42:47,440 --> 00:42:49,719
Speaker 1: it right in this Plus there have to be there

802
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:52,160
Speaker 1: have to be plenty of other science fiction properties that

803
00:42:52,200 --> 00:42:55,400
Speaker 1: have have utilized this idea of a mysterious ninth or

804
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 1: tenth planet out there in our solar system. Robert I

805
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 1: think they're called uvoids to voids, Okay, well who who

806
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:04,759
Speaker 1: voids right in about it? Uh, and everybody else feel

807
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:07,640
Speaker 1: free to write in as well. Uh. We're gonna hopefully

808
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:10,719
Speaker 1: come back with more episodes in this series because there

809
00:43:10,719 --> 00:43:16,120
Speaker 1: are additional phantom planets phantom objects uh that that line

810
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:20,160
Speaker 1: up under the mission statement of of these episodes. So

811
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:24,160
Speaker 1: uh look forward to that in the future. And in

812
00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to check out old episodes

813
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:27,360
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over to

814
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's our mothership.

815
00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:32,160
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find all of them. You'll find links

816
00:43:32,200 --> 00:43:34,840
Speaker 1: out to our social media accounts. Uh, you can go

817
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:39,840
Speaker 1: and follow us there. Likewise, there's a little merchandise a

818
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:41,759
Speaker 1: little store button at the top of the page. You

819
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 1: can go pick up a T shirt or a sticker

820
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:47,600
Speaker 1: with our logo or some sort of design that's related

821
00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:50,120
Speaker 1: to a past episode. It's a cool way to support

822
00:43:50,120 --> 00:43:52,080
Speaker 1: the show, but the absolute best way to support the

823
00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:54,839
Speaker 1: show is to tell people about it and to rate

824
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:57,879
Speaker 1: and review it. Wherever you get your podcast, make sure

825
00:43:58,120 --> 00:44:00,640
Speaker 1: you've subscribed, and if you haven't our already, check out

826
00:44:00,640 --> 00:44:04,399
Speaker 1: our other show, Invention. It's an invention by invention exploration

827
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:07,680
Speaker 1: of human techno history. Absolutely are you not listening to

828
00:44:07,719 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 1: Invention yet? If you like this show, you'll probably like

829
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:12,359
Speaker 1: that one too, so we really advise you go check

830
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:16,800
Speaker 1: it out subscribe anyway. Huge thanks to our wonderful audio

831
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:20,120
Speaker 1: producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If you would like

832
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback about this

833
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

834
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:28,600
Speaker 1: to suggest a name for Planet nine, or just to

835
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:31,320
Speaker 1: say hello or to let us know you're a Hovoid,

836
00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how

837
00:44:34,160 --> 00:44:47,440
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

838
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:49,799
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.

839
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:09,600
Speaker 1: The Decimation Duate f f Fart Part far f