Strong Evidence Suggests a Super Earth Lies Beyond Pluto
So maybe we’re back up to nine planets?
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Hello Beaglelady,.
Nancy and I saw that on the news. That was amazing. I can imagine that it is rather cold there. I still feel sorry for poor little Pluto. 
If this planet is found it will have a elliptical orbit around the Sun that takes 15,000 years to complete. It going to be interesting to see how Danny Faulkner at AiG is going to spin this?
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I do not know Danny Faulkner is, but it will be hard for YEC to justify. Oh, how are you, Patrick?
Charles,
I doing well. Thanks for asking. How is the diabetes control going? Hope you are not cheating to much with an occasional Snickers bar. 
Take care of yourself and bundle up as a big snowstorm is coming your way.
Danny Faulkner is Answers in Genesis’ resident astronomer. He is a long time YEC but is not too crazy on his convolutions of the data coming out of Cosmology like others at AiG are. I predict that he will say that there has been no discovery yet, which is true. He will punt until the actual discovery is made and only then come up with some cockamamie explanation of why a planet with an 15,000 years orbit is in-line with a literal read of Genesis.
It is good to hear from you, Patrick. The diabetes has been doing better. Thanks for asking. Yes, the big storm is coming. It is like living somewhere in New England rather than in a Mid-Atlantic State. Take care my friend.
The term “super earth” is misleading but has become common in articles to catch the eye of readers. It makes one think that the object is like earth, which must include life. Not likely out there.
For decades, astronomers have predicted finding hundreds to thousands of large objects in orbit around the sun. The problem is seeing a dim lump at such a great distance. We have only found a few, and they have all been smaller then earth. But finding one bigger is not a surprise. It is a joyful, FINALLY!
Who has predicted finding large objects in orbit around the sun? Are you talking about asteroids, which we know about already? btw, some planets in our own solar system are larger than earth, such as Jupiter.
I agree: It’s joyful! To clarify, though: According to the press coverage, what’s so surprising is that this would be not a dwarf planet or an asteroid but a true planet, because it’s big enough to clear the area around it and to influence the orbits of other objects nearby. I’m no astronomer, but from what the articles say, that really is pretty surprising! If you have different information, I’d love to learn more about what you know about the matter.
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Sorry, I cant quote names, just read lots of articles. My statement was meant in general. Per definition, asteroids can be any size up to about 600 miles wide. They all come from the asteroid belt inside Jupiter’s orbit. Pluto is just a bit bigger than that and is FAR outside Jupiter’s orbit. The object recently “found” would be much farther out than that. Kuiper belt and Oort cloud objects are difficult to see because of distance and the fact they do not radiate their own light. One as big as Jupiter may be too small to see if the object has a non reflective surface. However, if astronomers had not been guessing something large enough could be found, then they would not be looking to find what they have found. What may be found is still guesses.
The article I read said they have not found this large object yet. They are seeing orbit anomalies of known objects that suggest the influence of an object with a mass 10 times that of earth. They are now looking for that object.
Anything big enough will eventually “clear” its orbit. That is just physics. The change in defining the word planet came about because of trying to classify the different objects being found out in the Kuiper belt. How a writer emphasizes this new object’s standing as a planet is primarily to gain readership, not how the astrological society will respond when its size and orbital parameters are known.
Planets reflect the sun’s light, not their own.
Not sure why you said
All I can guess is it relates to my statement
Planets do reflect starlight, some better than others. Planets do not radiate visible spectrum light, though some do radiate other wavelengths because they have heat. Does anything actually reflect its own light? Hum…
I was told that this is incorrect. If I had mentioned fusion or fission it would have been okay. But, planets do radiate visible spectrum light. They generate lightning, aurora, and lava (plus others ways). It might not be much but they do.
Same person told me this is possible, but unlikely outside a lab. You need mirrors and reflect a light source’s (star?) photons around and back into the light source just right for them to bounce back out. Bit far fetched but “possible.”
I had a similar thought. “I wonder how the Young Earthers are going to try and spin this one?”
What I find most fascinating is that this planet, if it exists, would not have come close enough to earth for anybody to observe it in the last 10 to 20,000 years. It’s last semi-close flyby would have been before most of recorded human history. It just reinforces to me how little we know about the universe and how little we know about the past.
Even given the tools we have and the discoveries being made among archaeologists, we still know next to nothing about the deep history of our planet and the solar system and the universe.
That is true. I cannot see how the YEC will try to explain this. I wonder.
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