That's a nice one.MoonGlow said:(As a silly aside, I am switching my forum browser to the black motif with the comet in honor of this thread. )
That would be great, because the companion gives pretty large gravity potential trace, so it can be easy to locate her if some data are available.MoonGlow said:It may be of some interest to you to know that the spaceship New Horizon is in flight, and will reach the Kuiper belt in 2015. We'll know a lot more about the subtle nuances of the gravitational fields affecting the Kuiper objects, and we'll have a wealth of new data to play with.
Actually, for 2015 only Pluto-Charon system encounter is scheduled, Kuiper belt objects exploration is expected in 2018-2022, so good luck with waiting...MoonGlow said:It may be of some interest to you to know that the spaceship New Horizon is in flight, and will reach the Kuiper belt in 2015. We'll know a lot more about the subtle nuances of the gravitational fields affecting the Kuiper objects, and we'll have a wealth of new data to play with.
I ain't waiting that long, it might be already everything over then.MrEightFive said:Actually, for 2015 only Pluto-Charon system encounter is scheduled, Kuiper belt objects exploration is expected in 2018-2022, so good luck with waiting...MoonGlow said:It may be of some interest to you to know that the spaceship New Horizon is in flight, and will reach the Kuiper belt in 2015. We'll know a lot more about the subtle nuances of the gravitational fields affecting the Kuiper objects, and we'll have a wealth of new data to play with.
A: Yes but not massive in stellar terms.
Q: (L) Well, okay, so just massive relative to the earth.
(Perceval) Well, is it massive relative to the earth?
(L) I think it is.
(Pierre) We asked that question about the size of Nemesis, and it was 0.56 the mass of the sun.
(Andromeda) Half the sun.
(Pierre) Yeah, relative to human beings, it's quite large.
(L) Relative to the size of the earth, that's quite a bit.
Where did Pierre get to this number?
(Ark) Gravitational anomalies.
(L) Well, what do you mean?
(Ark) I mean Pioneer trajectory has anomaly, all kinds of rotating galaxies have anomalies...
(L) But you just said it was all predictable.
(Ark) Oh, it's predictable on a more or less... I mean, they are small anomalies, not big anomalies. I want to ask about my numbers. So, I put numbers. We were asking for these numbers years ago, you were evasive, and you even admitted that you are evasive for a good reason. Nevertheless, I did calculations with what I could - of course garbage in/garbage out as everyone knows. So, I put for the period 26 million years. Is it approximately true?
A: Very close 28.2 million years.
Q: (Ark) Then I had to put another number which was not told to us. I was asking about the mass of this companion star, and I was told that it was "much less than the sun". So, in my calculations, I put half a percent of the mass of the sun. Is it approximately true?
A: 3.4, closer
Q: (Ark) 3 percent?! And not half a percent?? That would mean that when it approaches, it will induce perturbation of the solar system.
A: Indeed!
Q: (Ark) Hmm.
A: It already has done so in the past. Just check the record.
Q: (Joe) It's already perturbed in the past?
(L) So in other words, you can examine the record and find out what kind of perturbations it does. Like the geological record, historical record, archaeology, etc.
(Ark) I will do this. Now, just one other question to check. I calculated from these data - the difference in the mass between what I thought. And what we just learned will not influence these calculations - it has to do with perturbations - so, I calculated what we call a semi-major axis. So there is the binary system, there is the sun and there is this companion. And they circulate around each other. But the sun moves only a little bit because it's heavy. So I calculated the semi-major axis. It's a flat elliptical orbit. So we know the semi-minor axis because we were told it's around Pluto distance. So I calculated the semi-major axis and I got the answer like 87,000 astronomical units, which is about 1.3 light years, a the semi-major axis of this elongated ellipse. Is this 1.3 light years more or less the right answer?
A: 1.7
Q: (Ark) Okay. Thank you very much. That's enough for me to go back to my calculations and use cleverly what I just got.
So now I am puzzled as to where the truth is.
Palinurus said:So now I am puzzled as to where the truth is.
It has been a persistent confusion all along, I would say. Maybe Pierre's book has more clues you could use?
I personally think that the 56 % is too much.