THE REAL NINTH PLANET?

Nice to see a story in the list that does not involve one on a certain British astronaut.

Not only have I seen the first, out one of, space exploration report that does not involve Tim Peake but it's a real shocker.

Well... to be honest it's one I've expected all my life up until they started spotting many other Pluto like planets. Sorry, dwarf planets. Once they found the fourth large dwarf planet that resided in the Kuiper Belt I had given up hope.

I had read and deep in the back of my mind loosely stored several reports for a case of a much larger body out there that were sound in their theorising.

I had remembered, on reading these reports, of claims that something perturbed the natural paths of distant objects in space.

Well now it seems that they have discovered the perturbed paths of enough objects to theorise that there is indeed not only another planet of some kind but a much larger one too.

An artist impression of this ninth planet have emerged with something looking like Neptune but darker.

Funny how they still do this despite how much Pluto shocked everyone.

I also wonder about some reporting of a gas giant planet?

Maybe it's possible the the pressure on a gas giant to some degree prevents said gases from being frozen? Like that on other Kuiper Belt bodies?

It's a very exciting piece of reporting and I hope that somehow they manage to spot it by telescope in the not too distant future.

I've also been of the belief that there exists planets between stellar systems without an orbit to any particular stellar object. In fact I've shared thought the universe is littered with them and think the discovery of this fact may well partly answer a long outstanding puzzle in astronomy. That of the ratio of matter in the universe, which is not quite right.

Now when I learned many years ago about where elements in the periodic table come from I realised that the planets were formed by a different star other than the sun.

In which case there must be many more out there if the sun was able to capture all that it did?

As it is being discovered that many other stellar systems are home to their own planets this is helping my long held theory.

I also had always theorised that most of the stars had their own planets. This was when you were considered a nut-job for thinking more than a few percent had planets. In fact I think it was once believed that none of the visible stars had any planets.

Today the universe is showing the narrow minded scientists that both stars and planets exist, or even exist in relation to reach other, where it was believed to be impossible. Stars measuring 150 times the mass of our sun and Super Jupiters very close to their parent star.

I also wonder what they will name these interstellar planets of they ever discovered them? Pluto being demoted the way it was does not bode well fit them being called planets.

But not being classed as planets will quite literally turn the very naming convention on its own head!

This is because and provided memory serves me correctly, the word 'planet' means wanderer due to the visible planets path across the night sky. In other words different to the stars.

Well I don't know about you but that literal term would be an exact match for homeless planets wandering interstellar space? The Kuiper Belt objects paths not following the elliptical plane, or that of the rest of the planets, also fits this naming convention.

Well all except for those that recently got to decide what a planet actually is.

In fact I think it's safe to say that of there was any argument it was to give a new name to all those currently classed as planets. Because now we understand them they have long since ceased to be the wanderers that they once were.

Wasn't much of a debate as far as I can tell. Lol.

Still I look forward to reading further reports on this new body and how it is much sooner rather than later.

Telescopes have progressed so far in recent times that you have to wonder, along with hope, that it will indeed be sooner rather than later?

Fingers crossed.

Case made for 'ninth planet' - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35365323