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Authors: Andy Lloyd
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been helped by members of the mainstream
astronomical community, sometimes talking up the failure of the IRAS study to
detect another solar system planet. This perceived failure is seen as
definitive by many, tolling the death knell for Planet X.
Tom
Chester, who worked on the IRAS project and who has a sceptical attitude
towards the existence of Planet X, once informed me that the coverage of the
inferred sky search was 95% complete. Taken on face value, this appears to
create a big problem for a potential sizable body out there. Patrick Moore
tells us that IRAS discovered no less than 200,000 infrared signatures in the
sky. 12 Given this extraordinary amount of data, it is tempting to
conclude that a thorough search for Planet X was essentially completed by IRAS.
But
the disappointment of the IRAS survey could well have been a "false
negative". John Anderson, a distinguished scientist formerly of the
Pioneer programme and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, argued that the survey
could easily have missed Planet X. He explained that there were many objects in
the sky that had infrared signatures similar to those of planets. To truly
pinpoint a possibly unseen planet, its proper motion would have to be
determined. If the motion across the sky of a distant planet were very small
over a period of weeks, or months, then IRAS could easily have missed it. 2
Recently,
I have been informed that this opinion is also shared by the renowned expert on
brown dwarfs, Professor J. Davy Kirkpatrick. He seems optimistic that a brown
dwarf could be discovered between our sun and the nearest known star, Proxima
Centauri. The IRAS survey didn’t detect such a body, of course, but that
doesn’t mean it’s not there. A fellow researcher, John Lee, often working under
the ‘handle’ of ‘Rajasun’ agreed that a dark mass with an insignificant proper
motion across the sky could not have been distinguished from a stationary
object by IRAS. More surprisingly still, he cited an article 1 that
described how any detection of a possible object with a notable motion across
the sky would have been dismissed as questionable data!
These researchers consider the best chance for the future
discovery of a binary brown dwarf to be NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey
Explorer (WISE) mission. It may surprise the reader to learn that the hoped-for
discovery of a brown dwarf closer than the sun’s nearest stellar neighbor is
actually one of its main mission goals! 14
The commitment of funds for WISE flies in the face of the general
negativity among scientists regarding the prospects for a massive solar
companion. This future mission, scheduled for launch in 2008, will be
specifically searching for such an nearby brown dwarf. It is possible that a
brown dwarf might be discovered as a free-floating object in the interstellar
space beyond the solar system, or a cold object could possibly be found
actually orbiting the sun.
Another positive remark about the potential for an undiscovered
planet orbiting relatively closely to the sun emerged when an astrophysics
group from Harvard released details of an anomalous Kuiper Belt Object known as
2000 CR105. One of the team, Dr. Matthew Holman, indicated that this object’s
bizarre orbit might be the result of a massive perturber in the comet clouds
beyond the planetary zone. He went on public record as saying that a Mars-sized
body might "easily" have evaded detection as close as 200 AU. 15 This clearly flies in the face of the opinion that the IRAS sky survey’s
failure to detect Planet X means that there is no Planet X.
So, there is a lot of scope for being open-minded about the
existence of Planet X. While it evidently does not orbit the sun as close as
the outer planets Neptune and Pluto, you don’t have to move too far away from
the sun before its existence again becomes an open question. There are
theoretical considerations of course, because many astronomers dismiss the
existence of a massive planet out there,
astronomical community, sometimes talking up the failure of the IRAS study to
detect another solar system planet. This perceived failure is seen as
definitive by many, tolling the death knell for Planet X.
Tom
Chester, who worked on the IRAS project and who has a sceptical attitude
towards the existence of Planet X, once informed me that the coverage of the
inferred sky search was 95% complete. Taken on face value, this appears to
create a big problem for a potential sizable body out there. Patrick Moore
tells us that IRAS discovered no less than 200,000 infrared signatures in the
sky. 12 Given this extraordinary amount of data, it is tempting to
conclude that a thorough search for Planet X was essentially completed by IRAS.
But
the disappointment of the IRAS survey could well have been a "false
negative". John Anderson, a distinguished scientist formerly of the
Pioneer programme and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, argued that the survey
could easily have missed Planet X. He explained that there were many objects in
the sky that had infrared signatures similar to those of planets. To truly
pinpoint a possibly unseen planet, its proper motion would have to be
determined. If the motion across the sky of a distant planet were very small
over a period of weeks, or months, then IRAS could easily have missed it. 2
Recently,
I have been informed that this opinion is also shared by the renowned expert on
brown dwarfs, Professor J. Davy Kirkpatrick. He seems optimistic that a brown
dwarf could be discovered between our sun and the nearest known star, Proxima
Centauri. The IRAS survey didn’t detect such a body, of course, but that
doesn’t mean it’s not there. A fellow researcher, John Lee, often working under
the ‘handle’ of ‘Rajasun’ agreed that a dark mass with an insignificant proper
motion across the sky could not have been distinguished from a stationary
object by IRAS. More surprisingly still, he cited an article 1 that
described how any detection of a possible object with a notable motion across
the sky would have been dismissed as questionable data!
These researchers consider the best chance for the future
discovery of a binary brown dwarf to be NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey
Explorer (WISE) mission. It may surprise the reader to learn that the hoped-for
discovery of a brown dwarf closer than the sun’s nearest stellar neighbor is
actually one of its main mission goals! 14
The commitment of funds for WISE flies in the face of the general
negativity among scientists regarding the prospects for a massive solar
companion. This future mission, scheduled for launch in 2008, will be
specifically searching for such an nearby brown dwarf. It is possible that a
brown dwarf might be discovered as a free-floating object in the interstellar
space beyond the solar system, or a cold object could possibly be found
actually orbiting the sun.
Another positive remark about the potential for an undiscovered
planet orbiting relatively closely to the sun emerged when an astrophysics
group from Harvard released details of an anomalous Kuiper Belt Object known as
2000 CR105. One of the team, Dr. Matthew Holman, indicated that this object’s
bizarre orbit might be the result of a massive perturber in the comet clouds
beyond the planetary zone. He went on public record as saying that a Mars-sized
body might "easily" have evaded detection as close as 200 AU. 15 This clearly flies in the face of the opinion that the IRAS sky survey’s
failure to detect Planet X means that there is no Planet X.
So, there is a lot of scope for being open-minded about the
existence of Planet X. While it evidently does not orbit the sun as close as
the outer planets Neptune and Pluto, you don’t have to move too far away from
the sun before its existence again becomes an open question. There are
theoretical considerations of course, because many astronomers dismiss the
existence of a massive planet out there,
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