Cosmos a écrit:Bonjour à tous,
je ne suis pas d'accord avec vous. Il y a des scientifiques qui affirment que quelque chose de très dangereux s'approche de la Terre. Par exemple, des scientifiques ont parlé de la Planète X en 1983 dans le Washington Post.
Bonsoir,
Visiblement vous êtes très mal documenté sur cette affaire. Rapidement, car c'est lourd quand quelqu'un passe 5 mn à écrire une "connerie" de passer deux heures à démystifier le mensonge. C'est même fatiguant... Mais tellement confortable que "d'affirmer que", sans jamais faire effort de vérification... (tout en indiquant l'avoir fait et "nous" reprocher d'être mal informés...). Huuuu !
En avant la charrue !
L'article en question :
Possibly as Large as Jupiter;
Mystery Heavenly Body Discovered
By Thomas O'Toole, Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 30, 1983 ; Page A1
A heavenly body possibly as large as the giant planet Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth
that it would be part of this solar system has been found in the direction of the constellation
Orion by an orbiting telescope aboard the U.S. infrared astronomical satellite.
So mysterious is the object that astronomers do not know if it is a planet, a giant comet, a
nearby "protostar" that never got hot enough to become a star, a distant galaxy so young that
it is still in the process of forming its first stars or a galaxy so shrouded in dust that none of the
light cast by its stars ever gets through.
"All I can tell you is that we don't know what it is," Dr. Gerry Neugebauer, IRAS chief
scientist for California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and director of the Palomar Observatory
for the California Institute of Technology, said in an interview.
The most fascinating explanation of this mystery body, which is so cold it casts no light and
has never been seen by optical telescopes on Earth or in space, is that it is a giant gaseous
planet as large as Jupiter and as close to Earth as 50 trillion miles. While that may seem like a
great distance in earthbound terms, it is a stone's throw in cosmological terms, so close in fact
that it would be the nearest heavenly body to Earth beyond the outermost planet Pluto.
"If it is really that close, it would be a part of our solar system," said Dr. James Houck of
Cornell University's Center for Radio Physics and Space Research and a member of the
IRAS science team. "If it is that close, I don't know how the world's planetary scientists
would even begin to classify it."
The mystery body was seen twice by the infrared satellite as it scanned the northern sky from
last January to November, when the satellite ran out of the supercold helium that allowed its
telescope to see the coldest bodies in the heavens. The second observation took place six
months after the first and suggested the mystery body had not moved from its spot in the sky
near the western edge of the constellation Orion in that time.
"This suggests it's not a comet because a comet would not be as large as the one we've
observed and a comet would probably have moved," Houck said. "A planet may have moved
if it were as close as 50 trillion miles but it could still be a more distant planet and not have
moved in six months time."
Whatever it is, Houck said, the mystery body is so cold its temperature is no more than 40
degrees above "absolute" zero, which is 456 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. The telescope
aboard IRAS is cooled so low and is so sensitive it can "see" objects in the heavens that are
only 20 degrees above absolute zero.
When IRAS scientists first saw the mystery body and calculated that it could be as close as
50 trillion miles, there was some speculation that it might be moving toward Earth.
"It's not incoming mail," Cal Tech's Neugebauer said. "I want to douse that idea with as much
cold water as I can."
Then, what is it? What if it is as large as Jupiter and so close to the sun it would be part of the
solar system? Conceivably, it could be the 10th planet astronomers have searched for in vain.
It also might be a Jupiter-like star that started out to become a star eons ago but never got hot
enough like the sun to become a star.
While they cannot disprove that notion, Neugebauer and Houck are so bedeviled by it that
they do not want to accept it. Neugebauer and Houck "hope" the mystery body is a distant
galaxy either so young that its stars have not begun to shine or so surrounded by dust that its
starlight cannot penetrate the shroud.
"I believe it's one of these dark, young galaxies that we have never been able to observe
before," Neugebauer said.
"If it is, then it is a major step forward in our understanding of the size of the universe, how the
universe formed and how it continues to form as time goes on."
The next step in pinpointing what the mystery body is, Neuegebauer said, is to search for it
with the world's largest optical telescopes. Already, the 100-inch diameter telescope at Cerro
del Tololo in Chile has begun its search and the 200-inch telescope at Palomar Mountain in
California has earmarked several nights next year to look for it. If the body is close enough
and emits even a hint of light, the Palomar telescope should find it since the infrared satellite
has pinpointed its position.
(ITEM 123)December 31, 1983, Saturday, Final Edition
(ITEM 127)The distance from earth of a mysterious object in space was reported incorrectly
in some editions yesterday. The correct figure is 50 billion miles.
Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not
include subsequent corrections.
quelques réactions :
This article is used as the main piece of "evidence" of Planet-X
Although the author clearly sensationalized a bit, the specifics of
the article are clear. Every Planet X book and website proclaims
"they spotted it in 1983!"
Other than the attention grabbing headline and the exciting lead
paragraph, the facts of the article are fairly routine.
The article tells us something was found that could be "a planet,
a giant comet, a nearby "protostar" that never got hot enough to
become a star, a distant galaxy so young that it is still in the
process of forming its first stars or a galaxy so shrouded in dust
that none of the light cast by its stars ever gets through."
"All I can tell you is that we don't know what it is," Dr. Gerry
Neugebauer, IRAS chief scientist for California's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory and director of the Palomar Observatory for the
California Institute of Technology, said in an interview.
<later in article>
"I believe it's one of these dark, young galaxies that we have
never been able to observe before," Neugebauer said.
Not very concrete evidence of a mystery planet, just a scientific
mystery that astronomers couldn't identify at the time. Mark
Hazlewood in his book Blindsided even thanked Neugebauer for
coming forward saying: "he publicly spoke to 6 daily newspapers
informing everyone they had found the 10th planet, the last day
in 1983." This is definitely not what Neugebauer said, but is normal
for the badly pieced together book Blindsided. Hazlewood did not
even know the date of the press conference and as Zetatalk had an
incorrect date for the article (12/31/83), Hazlewood was sure to
make the same mistake.
Others talk about the conspiracy to cover-up IRAS. What
cover-up you ask? 18 years of silence after the 1983 announcement
of course! They actually consider no follow-up story as a cover-up.
What is really zany is that the article states that the object IRAS
spotted was extremely cold, "no more than 40 degrees above
"absolute" zero". The proposed Zeta planet is supposed to be a
brown dwarf, definitely not a cold object.
Also the object IRAS spotted did not move in the 6 months
between images. The Zeta planet is a moving object as illustrated
by a map on the Zeta web site. IRAS would have easily detected
this much movement over a 6 month period.
Zeta Map
Zany Zeta logic, IRAS spotted something unknown, extremely
cold and not moving that could be a planet, and this is proof of
the Zeta hot, moving planet/brown dwarf.
Analysis of Washington Post IRAS Story by Bill Owen
> ARTICLE: Mystery Heavenly Body Discovered
>
> A heavenly body possibly as large as the giant planet Jupiter and
> possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this solar system
> has been found in the direction of the constellation Orion by an
> orbiting telescope aboard the U.S. infrared astronomical satellite.
"Possibly". Twice. IRAS (it should have been capitalized!) was launched in
'83 and made all sorts of discoveries in its 11-month lifetime: IR-bright
"cirrus clouds" of interstellar matter, stars that are brighter in the IR
than in the visual, several comets (notably IRAS-Araki-Alcock), etc. Its
infrared photometry of the main-belt asteroids proved invaluable for getting
their diameters and albedos.
> So mysterious is the object that astronomers do not know if it is a
> planet, a giant comet, a nearby "protostar" that never got hot enough
> to become a star, a distant galaxy so young that it is still in the
> process of forming its first stars or a galaxy so shrouded in dust that
> none of the light cast by its stars ever gets through.
That was the story at the end of 1983. Has there been further study?
Undoubtedly. What did it turn out to be? I haven't heard -- but the
very fact that it has NOT been in the news for the last dozen years is a
good indication that it turned out to be something fairly mundane, e.g. an
infrared galaxy or a particularly thick wisp of cirrus. (Just because I
haven't heard myself doesn't mean that nobody else knows either, of course.)
> "All I can tell you is that we don't know what it is," Dr. Gerry
> Neugebauer, IRAS chief scientist for California's Jet Propulsion
> Laboratory and director of the Palomar Observatory for the California
> Institute of Technology said in an interview.
And that's the bottom line as of 12/31/83.
> The most fascinating explanation of this mystery body, which is so cold
> it casts no light and has never been seen by optical telescopes on
> Earth or in space, is that it is a giant gaseous planet, as large as
> Jupiter and as close to Earth as 50 billion miles. While that may seem
> like a great distance in earthbound terms, it is a stone's throw in
> cosmological terms, so close in fact that it would be the nearest
> heavenly body to Earth beyond the outermost planet Pluto.
And here's where the author begins speculating. Probably asked various people
for possible explanations, and something like this can't immediately be ruled
out. A giant gas ball that far away would indeed be nearly invisible in the
optical and yet give off IR.
> "If it is really that close, it would be a part of our solar system,"
> said Dr. James Houck of Cornell University's Center for Radio Physics
> and Space Research and a member of the IRAS science team. "If it is
> that close, I don't know how the world's planetary scientists would
> even begin to classify it."
Notice the first word in each of Houck's sentences: IF. Both these sentences
are logically true: given that such an object is that close, then indeed
a) it would be part of the solar system and b) there would be huge debates
over its classification. But Houck does NOT state that the object IS that
close or that he believes it might be.
> The mystery body was seen twice by the infrared satellite as it scanned
> the northern sky from last January to November, when the satellite ran
> out of the supercold helium that allowed its telescope to see the
> coldest bodies in the heavens. The second observation took place six
> months after the first and suggested the mystery body had not moved
> from its spot in the sky near the western edge of the constellation
> Orion in that time.
Ah, some hard data! No motion is evident in six months.
> "This suggests it's not a comet because a comet would not be as large
> as the one we've observed and a comet would probably have moved," Houck
> said. "A planet may have moved if it were as close as 50 billion miles
> but it
> could still be a more distant planet and not have moved in six months
> time.
"Suggests" indeed. "Probably have moved" indeed. Even if the object were
fixed in space 50 billion miles away, it would have moved a fifth of a degree
-- a *huge* amount -- simply because IRAS's vantage point changed as it moved
from one side of the earth's orbit to the other! Yes, it's *possible* that we
saw it at a "crossing point" in its apparent path -- where its retrograde loop
intersects itself -- but *extremely unlikely*. The fact that this is possible
(although highly improbable) means that Houck couldn't rule it out absolutely;
hence the weasel words.
> Whatever it is, Houck said, the mystery body is so cold its temperature
> is no more than 40 degrees above "absolute" zero, which is 459 degrees
> Fahrenheit below zero. The telescope aboard IRAS is cooled so low and
> is so sensitive it can "see" objects in the heavens that are only 20
> degrees above absolute zero.
>
> When IRAS scientists first saw the mystery body and calculated that it
> could be as close as 50 billion miles, there was some speculation that
> it might be moving toward Earth.
"Speculation" is exactly the right word.
> "It's not incoming mail," Cal Tech's Neugebauer said. "I want to douse
> that idea with as much cold water as I can."
This is presented near the end of the article! Almost as if it were a minority
opinion. Neugebauer is using language as forceful as I've ever seen coming
out of the mouth of a scientist. Stop the rumors! It just ain't so.
> Then what is it? What if it is as large as Jupiter and so close to the
> sun it would be part of the solar system? Conceivably, it could be the
> 10th planet astronomers have searched for in vain. It also might be a
> Jupiter-like star that started out to become a star eons ago but never
> got hot enough like the sun to become a star.
"What if?" "Conceivably" "Might be" -- all speculation, probably on the part
of the article's author.
> While they cannot disprove that notion, Neugebauer and Houck are so
> bedeviled by it that they do not want to accept it. Neugebauer and
> Houck "hope" the mystery body is a distant galaxy either so young that
> its starts have not begun to shine or so surrounded by dust that its
> starlight cannot penetrate the shroud.
That's right -- they couldn't disprove it then. But that doesn't mean that
it's therefore more likely to be close to us. They "'hope'" it's distant?
Who said "hope"? The word is in quotes in the article. What was the context?
> "I believe it's one of these dark, young galaxies that we have never
> been able to observe before," Neugebauer said.
And indeed, this was the most likely explanation at the time -- that's why
Neugebauer believes it.
> "If it is, then it is a major step forward in our understanding of the
> size of the universe, how the universe formed and how it continues to
> form as time goes on."
>
> The next step in pinpointing what the mystery body is, Neugebauer said,
> is to search for it with the world's largest optical telescopes.
> Already, the 100-inch diameter telescope at Cerro del Tololo in Chile
> has begun its search and the 200-inch telescope at Palomar Mountain in
> California has ear-marked several nights next year to look for it. If
> the body is close enough and emits even a hint of light, the Palomar
> telescope should find it since the infrared satellite has pinpointed
> its position.
True enough. At the time this article was written (12/31/83), that's all
they knew. Meanwhile, 12-plus years have passed. What's the end of the
story? If the object turned out to be just another IR galaxy like all the
others that IRAS found, you won't see a newspaper article about it. You might
not even find a journal article about it. The object would be buried in the
IRAS source catalog along with the millions of others -- identified, catalogued,
and promptly forgotten since there would be nothing special about it.
I'm not an infrared astronomer. I don't generally keep up with that subfield.
But if anyone out there can say for certain what Nancy's mystery object turned
out to be, I know that I for one would like to hear it!
Bottom line -- it's much ado about very little, a classic case of speculation
being treated as the most likely scenario.
http://planet-x.150m.com/owenwpiras.html
http://planet-x.150m.com/iras.html
En 1983, un télescope spatial IRAS embarqué à bord d'un satellite américain repéra dans l'espace lointain un objet inconnu ce qui fut rapporté dans le Washington Post du 30 décembre 1983 où fut publiée l'entrevue du responsable d'IRAS qui déclara qu'un corps céleste pouvant atteindre la taille de la planète Jupiter et pouvant être orienté vers la Terre au point de faire partie du système solaire avait été découvert vers la constellation d'Orion par ledit télescope en orbite[3]. Toutefois, une analyse plus approfondie a révélé que, parmi les dix objets non-identifiés, neuf furent des galaxies lointaines tandis que le dixième était un intergalactic cirrus.[4]Aucun de ces objets n'a été identifié comme étant un objet céleste appartenant au système solaire.[4
Je vous invite à lire l'article suivant :
http://web.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/tchester/iras/no_tenth_planet_yet.html
extraits :
Several times per year, IPAC gets the same question about:
Is there any truth to the rumor that IRAS discovered a very distant mystery celestial body beyond Pluto about 4 times the size of earth and moving in our Direction?
The short answer is "no", no one has demonstrated that IRAS observed any solar system body at a distance beyond the known planets.
However that evidence was finally shown to be due to hysteresis (the after effect on the detectors of crossing bright sources) due to the nucleus of M31; the hysteresis caused the effect to occur in different directions on scans passing over M31 at different angles. IPAC's John Fowler is the person who followed up this peculiar object and provided this information. The study was never published.
Joyeuses Pâques, Cosmos, et bons rêves
J'espère vous avoir invité, Cosmos, sur ce long reply à revoir les "on m'a dit que", donc c'est vrai.
Si non, et bien tant pis, Vous êtes dans le "je veux y croire quand même", et je ne connais pas de remède, autre que de vous renseigner
objectivement auprès d'astronomes sur cette question (au moins).