• @[email protected]
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    275 months ago

    This same group has been pushing this theory for a decade with no direct evidence. Each paper is just confirmation bias in action.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      145 months ago

      Some amateur types have been pushing this for decades with zero evidence, but as the article says, a legit pair from Caltech finally found some circumstancial evidence it could be possible, and this expanded group is just throwing more on the pile. I think it’s just one of those “Well…let’s say it’s possible, here’s what we’d be looking at for evidence…” kind of deals.

    • @[email protected]
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      95 months ago

      Because back in my (our) day Pluto was number, so Planet X worked. Planet VIIII doesn’t look as good.

        • @[email protected]
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          95 months ago

          That means “Boy who is not able to satisfactorily explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven”. I don’t see how that applies here.

        • @[email protected]
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          5 months ago

          VIIII is a valid way to write 9, though antiquated. If you look at very old clocks, you’ll see they all use this notation.

          • swim
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            65 months ago

            Didn’t realize homie was an antiquated clock. (Assumed the usage of Roman numerals, like in the references being made, in which case I don’t believe the clumsy VIIII only used on old clocks would really be valid.)

            • @[email protected]
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              15 months ago

              VIIII wasn’t exclusive to clocks, that’s the only long-lasting example we still have access to.

              • swim
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                5 months ago

                Your point is that VIIII was ever used in history? Happily conceded.

          • @[email protected]
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            5 months ago

            The reason clocks use it, is to not make it look visually unbalanced. Most often they write 4 as IIII. I find it infuriating to break such a simple rule though.

            But also, I’ve never ever seen VIIII.

            • @[email protected]
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              25 months ago

              Julius Caesar’s memoir of war in Gaul makes use of VIIII, for instance. You’re right that it’s much rarer, but was still used contemporarily and in modern times.

    • FenrirIII
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      15 months ago

      I remember that from my childhood! My mother convinced me it was probably a bad science fiction movie

  • subignition
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    125 months ago

    A new planet in a distant orbit, you say?
    In before the signal is older than the universe itself.

    • massive_bereavement
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      35 months ago

      Wouldn’t we then confuse it with Pluto’s moon? Imagine a family of poor future Solar system travellers realizing they got the tickets for the moon, not the planet.

  • @[email protected]
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    5 months ago

    I find it amusing that we can prove the existence of black holes thousands of light years away and glean the state of the universe at its earliest moments, but we can’t decide whether there’s a rock big enough to count as a planet floating around the inside rim of the Oort Cloud.

    • @[email protected]
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      115 months ago

      It might be a miscalculation of orbital body models, which has happened before. Urbain Le Verrier was able to predict Neptune’s existence. Then he tried to predict a planet between Mercury and the Sun, because the current Newtonian physics wasn’t lining up to observations, a similar situation to how Neptune was found. Then Einstein’s work on gravity modeled the orbital bodies more accurately, ending the debate if there was another planet closer to the sun than Mercury. Just a different food-for-thought point of view, as I don’t know what the answer is obviously.

  • @[email protected]
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    35 months ago

    Science and history are fun because we keep adding new information and proving / disproving theories.

  • @[email protected]
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    5 months ago

    The team acknowledges that other forces could be at play that might explain the behavior that they simulated but suggest they are less likely.

    Space Whales

    • Tarquinn2049
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      165 months ago

      Unfortunately, Pluto was a victim of how hard it is/was for us to detect planets and other objects at that distance. It was the first one we saw for a while, but once we got a clearer picture, there was no way we could keep calling it a planet.

        • @[email protected]
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          65 months ago

          But then why isn‘t Ceres also a Planet? Or Eris? Or Quaoar? Or any of the other objects classified as dwarf planets

          The answer is easy: Besides their size, they all behave very differently from the actual Planets. Doesn’t mean they’re any less important, they’re just something slightly different.