So, there may be a giant planet we don’t know about in our solar system, way the heck out there. Or there may not be. We don’t really know, one way or the other, but there’s data that indicates there might be.
It goes like this: two astronomers, John Matese and Dan Whitmere, have done some work indicating it might be possible that there’s a big planet we don’t know about affecting the orbit of comets through our solar system. Their data is interesting, and argues they might be right, but for most astronomers, it’s not a done deal, especially since we haven’t seen this theoretical planet yet. But it’s not out of the realm of possibility; astronomers have observed planets in distant orbits around stars before.
What Matese and Whitmere are hoping is that this theoretical planet, which they’ve named Tyche, has shown up on NASA’s huge infrared scan of the sky, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. But that’s going to take two years to determine. Until then, we’ll just imagine it’s real. And full of dinosaurs.
[ via the good astronomers at Bad Astronomy ]