What is Planet Nine? Find out more about a possible new planet in our solar system.
Everyone likes planets. They鈥檙e familiar. We live on one. Ask your Aunt Lucie to name a few of the solar system鈥檚 Moons or to recite five stars, and you鈥檒l probably get a blank stare. But ask her to name all the planets, and no problem.
It鈥檚 been a while since anyone found a new planet in our solar system. The world was amazed at the discovery of Uranus in 1781 and Neptune in 1846.
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Pluto鈥檚 discovery in 1930 also generated global excitement. It didn鈥檛 hurt when Walt Disney named his only nonspeaking character after it a year later. (The dog had been 鈥淩over鈥 in an earlier cartoon).
But as we all know, Pluto was demoted in 2006鈥攐fficially designated a 鈥渄warf鈥 like so many other Disney characters. .
Image: NASA. Dwarf planets Pluto and Eris orbiting through the Kuiper Belt, beyond Neptune.
We鈥檙e ready for a new one. And we may get it. Researchers recently discovered that the weird orbits of six very distant icy objects can be explained if they鈥檙e being tugged by a huge unseen world far away.
IF a planet is discovered, it would have to be several times larger than Earth. And achingly distant.
If Earth鈥檚 distance from the Sun is 1 astronomical unit or AU, and Pluto averages 40 AUs from the Sun, a new planet would have to have a highly eccentric non-round orbit that comes as close as 200 and goes as far away as at least 500 AUs. That鈥檚 way out there.
Image: NASA. If Planet X exists its orbit might exist in the frozen Kuiper Belt region of our outer solar system, counterbalancing the orbits of the other Kuiper objects with its gravitational pull.
Hypothetically, it would be at its farthest away right now. That would make it incredibly dim, something like magnitude 22, or a thousand times fainter than Pluto. Tough to find. So far, it鈥檚 being called Planet Nine. No doubt, if it exists, it will be named after some Roman god, to match the other planets.
Image: The imaginary Planet Nine.
At a time when all the naked-eye planets are visible at the same time, it鈥檚 exciting to think that our solar system might have a large, mysterious new member. Aren鈥檛 we all kind of rooting for Planet Nine?
Bob Berman
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As of current regulations, planets are required to be named after Gods. I personally really like either Hekate, Persephone, or Ishtar for planets.
I pick Janus or Bellona!!
How about naming this planet Destiny?
Advances in space technology will eventually become Earth's destiny.
Please name the planet 9 Renee. It means rebirth or born again. It would be in honour of my sister Renee who passed away at the young age of 18.
Thank you,
Kim
GENESIS
..the Web of Destiny Dark Planet
My pick is Janus, the God of beginnings, doorways, transitions and time.
Atlas. The Titan God of Astronomy and Navigation
Aphrodite
MNEMOSYNE was Titan goddess of memory and remembrance and the inventress of language and words.
As a Titan daughter of Ouranos (Heaven), Mnemosyne was also a goddess of time. She represented the rote memorisation required, before the introduction of writing, to preserve the stories of history and sagas of myth. In this role she was represented as the mother of the Mousai (Muses), originally patron goddesses of the poets of the oral tradition.
Finally Mnemosyne was a minor oracular goddess like her sister-Titanes. She presided over the underground oracle of Trophonios in Boiotia.
The Titanis Mnemosyne was sometimes described as one of three Elder Titan Mousai (Muses), who preceded the nine daughters of Zeus as goddesses of music.
Since most have been named in the either Roman or Greek pantheons, this one, from the Greek, seems to fit for the next one.
Since it is undiscovered, unseen , I suggest "Voldemort" the one that cannot be named.
