Ware The Goblin Planet!

As if Nibiru wasn't bad enough... Now we have a planet of Goblins to worry about... Wait... Did I read that right?

The hypothetical, massive outer Solar System body Planet X is still proving elusive, but the hunt for it has yielded up a different find: a tiny dwarf planet, roughly 2.5 times Pluto's distance at the time it was found. It's called 2015 TG387 and nicknamed "the Goblin". Also, it's pretty small even for a dwarf planet - barely 300 kilometres (186 miles) across.

Awe man... I was hoping for more news on Nibiru.

Worry not!!!

But we're pretty excited, because the Goblin is on an extraordinary orbit. According to the researchers, this still suggests that Planet X is somewhere out there, in the cold and dark.

So what's the Goblin telling us? According to Sheppard and colleagues, there's something out there. Something massive - up to 10 times the mass of Earth. Something tugging the orbits of these trans-Neptunian objects into elongated shapes with its immense gravity.

Yay!!! Happy again!

When it was discovered, the Goblin was at around 80 astronomical units (AU, the distance between Earth and the Sun). For context, Pluto's distance is an average of 39.5 AU - although this varies a little because its orbit is elliptical, coming in as close as 29.7 at perihelion and going out as far as 49.3 AU at aphelion.

At any rate... Want to learn more? Go to one Source!

Does that mean GOBLIN METAL????

So, where is "Planet X" supposed to located? Beyond the Kuiper Belt?

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan
So, where is "Planet X" supposed to located? Beyond the Kuiper Belt?

That's the idea - what if the size distribution of planets is a mirror reflection centred on the Kuiper belt? Two small planet(oids) of Pluto and the Goblin, then Niburu or Planet X is a beyond the Kuiper belt at the same distance of Jupiter.

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan
So, where is "Planet X" supposed to located? Beyond the Kuiper Belt?

Yep. Pretty far out there, with an elliptical orbit that brings it as close as 200 Astronomical Units (AU) at its closest point and 1200 AU at its farthest point (all hypothetical, but based on calculations of orbits of other known bodies -- other bodies whose orbits seem to be suggesting the existence of this hypothetical planet.)

It should be noted that Pluto is, at its farthest, just 50 AU away. So Planet Nine (or "Planet X", but most of the astronomers searching for it are calling it "Planet Nine") is 400% farther than Pluto at Planet Nine's closest point, and 2400% farther than Pluto at Planet Nine's farthest point in its hypothetical orbit.

Here's what that orbit looks like:



Below is a link to the source article for that graphic. The article is very good, and is about Mike Brown and Konstitin Batygin, who were two of the astronomers who first suggested the existence of this Planet Nine, based on the aforementioned orbits of other Kuiper belt objects; they developed the hypothetical orbit, but they don't know where exactly along that orbit it might be. Brown and Batygin are on the forefront of astronomers search for this planet.

Mike Brown, incidentally, is the same Mike Brown who discovered Eris, which was poised to become the tenth planet after Pluto, but was also the reason Pluto (and Eris) were eventually reclassified under the new term "dwarf planet", specifically created because of the discovery of Eris and the idea that 100s of other similar bodies probably exist. So Mike Brown is known as "Pluto Killer".

Astronomers say a Neptune-sized planet lurks beyond Pluto

Wait a second, its uphelion is estimated at 2037 AU??? Holy moly.