Pluto & Dwarf Planets

Could it be possible that Pluto and all the other Dwarf Planets are just satellites of a much larger planet?

The possibilities of space discovery is endless, there could definitely be a large planet out there, it could also be a micro black hole. who knows?

thinking about all the possibilities provides me with hours of entertainment

They could be I guess but, I think they are all just from the oort Cloud. The oort cloud is a huge mass of comets I believe.
Correct me if im wrong...


PEACE!!!






[edit on 07/16/2009 by Lichter daraus]

reply to post by muse7


Well that would sure be a strange combination of celestial mechanics. I think that the planetoids are just the remnants left over from the solar system formation. They never accreted into a planet so they all just dance around on the outer edge of the system. There are many Kuiper Objects, many are very small, basically the Kuiper Belt is like another Asteroid Belt, only MUCH LARGER. As far as the Oort Cloud goes..... It is only hypothetical but likely does exist and would account for long period comets. There have been hypothesis for years of either a Brown Dwarf or gas giant planet lurking in the Oort Cloud, that certainly could be the reason for many of the odd perturbations seen in the Kuiper Belt, but it is unknown at this time. When the new NASA probe, New Horizons arrives at Pluto in 2015 we should know A LOT more about our outer solar system. In fact it was a NASA Astrophysicist I believe, that started the whole "Nemisis" theory about Planet X, Nibiru, whatever you want to call it. I personally think it is highly unlikely but who knows.

Originally posted by muse7
Could it be possible that Pluto and all the other Dwarf Planets are just satellites of a much larger planet?

None of the named Dwarf Planets / Plutoids are satellites of other planets. They've all been confirmed to be in heliocentric orbits...Ceres in a fairly normal one in the asteroid belt, Pluto, MakeMake, and Eris in long-period, fairly eccentric ones.

The odds of an undiscovered satellite of sufficient size around one of the known planets is next to zero at this point.

In short, none of the Dwarf Planets are planetary satellites, and it's highly unlikely that we'll find one that is in the future, since we'd have to find a new planet (Planet IX, I suppose we'll have to call it), then find a dwarf planet orbiting it.

reply to post by Brother Stormhammer


Quite true........But it is believed that some of these planetoids may orbit each other. So while they themselves are not orbiting some other planet, some of the odd perturbations may be attributed to a large unknown body in the Oort Cloud. I am just throwing this out there since we do not know yet it is not to wise to make such assertive assumptions.

Gravity is the weakest force so if a large object but not too large was in the oort cloud it could go undetected and only the anomalies would show up on small nearby objects. The only problem is that the object would need to reflect neglible amounts of EM Radiation so that we wouldn't have been able to of detected it already. There is still a remote possibility even if it is extremely unlikely.

[edit on 24/7/2009 by Persicoana]

[edit on 24/7/2009 by Persicoana]

If Pluto was a satellite of another planet, don't you think it would be pretty obvious? The parent planet would be considerably brighter than Pluto, so how is it possible that we haven't seen it?

The same is true of all the other dwarf planets.

Of course, there is every possibility that a reasonably large, undiscovered planet is lurking in the distant realms of the outer solar system. In fact, I think it is highly likely. Many of the "scattered disk" objects (those objects that are orbiting the Sun beyond the main Kuiper Belt) have very high orbital inclinations, and this is very difficult to explain unless they have been perturbed by a considerably more massive object.

[edit on 27-7-2009 by Mogget]

I don't think pluto is a satellite form another planet. Regardless, i disagree with the changing of pluto to a non planet. its round and orbits the sun and has 3 satelites ibelive. I saw a pic of pluto the hubble space telescope took a while back, showing 2 new confimred moons. It orbits retrograde(backwards) around the sun, a good 4.3 billion miles form the sun, placing it a good 1 billion miles from Neptune. We dont even know enough about pluto to really say much. We cant realisticaly say its a solid surface, gasy like the other outer planets, in my opinion. Thier is that spacecraft, New horizons, on its way to fly past pluto...Personaly, i think its kinda a waist to just flyby. Would have been much more interesting, to have the spacecraft orbit around pluto, like the galieo and cassini spacecrafts did/do. learn MUCH more that way...guess the problem is fudning a mission like that for, lets say a year orbiting around pluto.

Pluto orbits the Sun in a prograde direction (like the major planets). The only differences are the relatively high inclination (17.2 degrees) and eccentricity (0.248). It is in a 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune (Pluto orbits the Sun twice for every three orbits of Neptune), so it never gets anywhere near that planet. In fact, it can actually get closer to Uranus!