PopSci asks the scientist who has peered around it
Posted 04.20.2009 at 9:08 am
10 Comments
Beam Us Up If a planet is hiding behind the sun, its technology is advanced far beyond our own
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The sun might seem like a pretty huge galactic blind spot, but we've already managed to glimpse behind it, and there's nothing there in the way of another Earth, says NASA scientist Michael Kaiser, "unless it's awfully tiny."
Kaiser is the project scientist for NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission, which in 2006 sent two golf-cart-size satellites into orbit around the sun to study the explosions on the solar surface that are a major factor in space weather. A few months after their launch, the two probes were angled such that they could see beyond the sun, but they found no planets lurking behind the big star.
Even if we couldn't see behind the sun, the gravitational pull of a roughly 100-mile-wide planet hiding there would noticeably affect the orbits of the other planets. And if astronomers had somehow missed that detail, Kaiser says, an unaccounted-for tug of gravity in the solar system would have disrupted the orbit of man-made satellites circling the Earth or interfered with intra-solar-system spacecraft. That hasn't happened, so unless beings on a hidden planet have invented both an invisibility cloak and a gravity-masking device, the other side of the sun is almost certainly just empty space.
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from coral gables, fl
Behind the sun? This article is tempting me to use a lot of profanity. We travel to the other side of the sun and back every year, what does behind the sun mean? Behind the sun with respect to earth? So like where the Earth would be half a year from now? Or on a different axis or what? All logic tells me is the sun doesn't have a front and behind... its pretty spherical and it rotates. Was this a search for a planet that maintains the exact orbit of earth but 180 degrees out of phase? Can someone please clarify how the sun could have "sides" and where "the other side of the sun" is?
from Wilcox, Nebraska
I'm guessing that what they mean is it revolves at the same speed as the earth but stays on the exact opposite side of the sun. Therefore, it is perpetually out of normal sight for earth. But, that's just how I read and understood it. you're right they didn't do a very good job of clarifying...
The first think in my mind when i read topic was.. the chances of having a planet moving at exact same speed as us on opposite side of the sun where we would never see it, Moving same speed same axis, etc. seems like an impossibility. There is better odds of winning the lottery..
Yea this article seems to be a bit on the goofy side to me. :) But hey, i guess you never know!!
One thing people need to realize about PopSci is that these are not scientific articles. It's similar to, say, a CNN reporter writing an article on a scientific discovery; these are written by journalists, not scientists.
That having been said, this article does seem kind of pointless... Why bother debunking a theory about a hidden planet synchronized with earth's orbit, when nobody thinks that anyhow? You may as well write an article to show that the earth isn't flat.
Lighten up. I bash PS pretty regularly, but this was not a bad article.
Yes, behind the sun -- referenced to the way it's positioned vs our beloved Earth. Not many of us will ever see it from any other coordinates.
As for why. The hidden planet has been speculated about through the ages. Probably mainly in fiction, but it has been discussed. Now we have reasonably solid evidence that no such planet exists. It's worth a few paragraphs.
Behind the sun simply means in an antipodal orbit to our own. This is from a few Old Old theorems that had no real scientific basis, but have had a long and popular life in some circles.
The use the term "other side of the sun" because very few people know what the term Antipodal means.
Hey can i write for pospci too? i got this great idea for an artical about the earth being round and not flat!!!
Mariner 10 was the first spacecraft to go "behind the Sun". It looked for such an antipodal planet and found none. A couple of movies based on a speculated counter-Earth are "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun" (1969) and "The Stranger" (1973).
from coral gables, fl
Thanks for clearing that up lol
There is no planet X and we already figure this out with nasa's probs. Kinda a waste of time with this article... but i guess if there was,This article would have been more intresting.