Beyond Pluto

By second grade, I could tell you the name of all nine (9) planets, and the number of their then-known moons.  So could a lot of other kids.  (I didn't know much about dinosaurs, however, with which so many of today's tykes are familiar.)

Who likes to see the verities of their early childhood destroyed in adulthood?  Not me.  It broke my heart when Pluto was voted off the planetary island, giving us only eight true planets.

But now it appears that something else is out there.  Something big.  Something so big that no one will deny it's a planet, if in fact it really is there.  Michael E. Brown at Caltech has observed behavior in a number of small objects, traveling in elliptical orbits that suggest they are under the influence of a much larger body. 

Much larger.  To cause the effect on the small bodies that he has observed, the large body would have to be at least as massive as the Earth, and probably up to ten times as massive.  This body -- I'll call it "Eko-Pluto" for present lack of a better temporary name -- has not yet been observed, but its existence seems strongly suggested.  And if it exists, no one will challenge its status as a planet.

Don't expect to visit Eko-Pluto anytime soon.  We finally got to see a close-up of Pluto, thanks to the New Horizons space probe, nine and a half years after the probe was launched.  Pluto's that far away.  But Pluto is, at its fartherst distance, "only" 4.6 billion miles from the sun.  Dr. Brown estimates that Eko-Pluto would be somewhere between 20 and 100 billion miles away; it would,take 10 thousand to 20 thousand Earth years to circle the sun just once. 

That's a long way for you to travel, and you're going to be a chilly tourist once you get there.  And, of course, so far we don't know for sure whether there's actually any "there" there, once you do get there. 

And you might feel a tad lonely.  As one reader eruditely commented, after reading the New York Times's article,

"Le silence eternel de ces espaces infinis m'effrait."
--Pascal

(The eternal silence of these infinite spaces is terrifying.)  You got that right, mister.  But, for me sitting in my armchair, it would be warm and comforting to know that our sun once more had nine planets.

Like it's supposed to.