We have recently had the theory Planet 9 was a supernova fragment – now we have another hypothesis. At http://phys.org/print383894531.html … a computer simulation at Lund University in Sweden has claimed Planet 9 is an exoplanet. This means it is perhaps the first explanet detected in our solar system – assuming none of the planets have such an origin. The idea is that four and a half billion years ago the young Sun captured the exoplanet, stealing it from a passing star system. They don't mention the possibility it was a rogue exoplanet, unattached to a star and just drifting through space, a cosmic hobo (tramp) on the lookout for a place to settle down for the night. The exoplanet is assumed to have remained around ever since the initial capture – so perhaps rogue exoplanets don't really exist. Whatever, plnet 9 remains undetected, unseen, and almost entirely hypothetical. There is no image of planet 9 (variously X which sounds more sinister), even just a wisp of a point of light. Nothing. However, it is calculated it is ten times the size of the Earth. The article was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters (May 2016) a reputable journal.
At http://phys.org/print383898936.html … the headline here is 'What is the Great Attractor?' which appears to have a pull on the Milky Way. You may have heard something of this story as Tim Cullen has something in a similar vein but a different conclusion at https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/lawler-alignments-galactic-ro… … where he says that gravitation does not perform as Newton proposed all those years ago. This has been attributed to dark matter (unseen again) as it seems starson the outskirts of galaxies move faster than they should according to the distribution of normal matter. Galaxies with galaxy clusters show a similar pattern.
Going back to the Great Attractor we learn the speed of the Milky Way moves through the universe is apparently anomalous. According to Big Bang the universe should be flying apart from every section of itself and galaxies nearby should be moving at similar recession velocities. It is now thought something must be 'attracting' the Milky Way which begs the question on dark matter. Is the theory on the origin and mass and motion incorrect – which appears to be the most logical conclusion. The inferred direction of the missing matter is not too far in distance from the Coalsack Nebula, deep within the Milky Way itself. Is this the hiding attractor? Is the Milky Way moving through space like an edge on spinning disc? (and so on). At http://phys.org/print384086838.html … we learn that the Hubble space telescope indicates the universe is expanding faster than expected. A paper in the June issue of Astrophysical Journal (2016) may have a connection to the speed of the Milky Way and that may well undermine the earlier link.
Over at http://phys.org/print383899480.html … images of Pluto are still being beamed back to Earth from the New Horizons Mission. A close up of the mountains on Pluto is one such – see image below
