The 10 is a planet named 2003-UB 3 13, which is larger than Pluto and 97 astronomical units away from the sun, about14.5 billion kilometers. 1 1 to No.24, which is said to exist at a distance of 1000 astronomical units from the sun, are all larger than Mars and have not been observed by humans.
Has the "Nine Planets" Theory come to an end? How many secrets are there in the solar system we don't know? The reporter interviewed a number of scientists and explored them one by one.
Nine or twenty-four?
From 9 to 24, what happened?
The reporter interviewed Eugene Jiang, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, who predicted the existence of 24 planets in the solar system by overseas telephone. He is from China and was born in the United States.
Eugene Jiang told reporters that he had heard michael brown, an American scientist, announce the discovery of the "tenth planet"-UB 313 in 2003, but the discovery of this planet had nothing to do with his prediction, and it was not within his prediction. According to his mathematical model, there may be 200 asteroids in the solar system at the beginning, which combine with each other and collide with each other at the same time, and finally become 20 big planets. Among them, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter developed into planets in today's solar system, and the remaining 16 was thrown to a distant place on the edge of the solar system and rotated around the sun at a strange angle due to mutual attraction and the attraction of stars outside the solar system.
Even if there are 16 planets, plus 9 planets, it should be 25. Why did Eugene Jiang finally get the data of 24 planets? Eugene Chiang explained that he tends to think that Pluto is not a big planet, but belongs to the Kuiper Belt. According to this view, most scientists in China believe that it is too early to call 2003-UB 3 13 "the tenth largest planet".
According to Wang Sichao, a researcher at the Purple Mountain Observatory, the Kuiper Belt is an annular structure around the solar system, extending from Pluto's orbit, that is, 40 astronomical units away from the sun, to 1 0,000 astronomical units (1 astronomical unit equals10.50 billion kilometers). At present, hundreds of celestial bodies have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt.
Zhu Jin, director of the Beijing Planetarium, said that compared with the other eight planets, Pluto has a relatively flat orbit and a large inclination, which is more similar to the celestial bodies in the Kuiper Belt. The newly discovered 2003-UB 3 13 should also belong to this celestial belt in terms of orbital characteristics and distance from the sun. In 2003, michael brown also discovered Sedna, a celestial body with a diameter of three quarters of Pluto. At that time, it was also called "the tenth largest planet" by the media, but Brown himself thought it was just an asteroid and belonged to the Kuiper Belt.
As for whether Eugene Chiang's prediction is correct, Professor Li Xiangdong, director of the Astronomy Department of Nanjing University, thinks that this data is based on a certain theory of planetary formation and is calculated by digital simulation, which has certain scientific basis, but the results need to be confirmed or denied by observation.
China people's prediction
When American scientists announced that 2003-UB 3 13 was the "10th planet", soon, the news that "China people predicted the 10th planet 65 years ago" appeared in many domestic media.
This China native is Liu Zihua, a Sichuanese. When studying in France in the 1940s, he proposed that there was a corresponding relationship between the stars in the solar system and eight diagrams divination. Based on this, Liu Zihua calculated that the average distance of the tenth planet from the sun was 7.4 billion kilometers, and named it "Muwangxing" according to Greek mythology.
1945, after Liu Zihua returned to China, Chongqing's Central Daily reported the China native who calculated "Muwangxing" with gossip, which immediately caused a sensation in China's scientific community at that time.
Xinhua Daily published a rebuttal article, saying, "Any student who studies physics or mathematics in college will understand that without equations of motion, things like gossip can never be used to discover new planets."
Chongqing Ta Kung Pao published Yuzhe Zhang's long article "Do you know how planets were discovered?" on the front page. Yuzhe Zhang's point of view is clear: to prove the discovery of a planet, it is necessary to announce the latitude and longitude of the star in the sky, so as to calculate its orbit, its distance from the sun and its position in the future. "What does this have to do with the Eight Diagrams of the Book of Changes?"
After the case was silent for a period of time, in the 1980s, a magazine listed Liu Zihua's discovery as "the first in the China world". 198965438+In February, Sichuan Science and Technology Publishing House officially published Liu Zihua's paper. The debate about whether Liu Zihua's discovery is "pseudoscience" has been active for some time.
Today, although the domestic media once again declared that "we are 65 years ahead of Americans" with Liu Zihua's prediction, scientists interviewed by reporters tend to think that the so-called "Muwangxing" and "gossip prediction" are "without scientific basis". In fact, the characteristic data of 2003-UB 3 13 is totally inconsistent with the "Muwangxing" described by Liu Zihua. At least, Liu Zihua's prediction has not been confirmed.
Looking for planet x
Liu Zihua, michael brown and Eugene Chiang all believed that there were unknown planets in the solar system.
1846, after Adams of Britain and Levi of France discovered Neptune, they found that according to the orbital deviation between Neptune and Uranus, there should be another planet besides Neptune, which is at least one tenth of the mass of the earth. Lovel, an American astronomer, called it Planet X. In 1930, astronomer Tang Bo discovered Pluto, but the mass of Pluto is much smaller than the predicted Planet X. Of course, by this standard, the 2003-UB 3 13 discovered this time is not Planet X either.
For planet X, human beings have many imaginations. American scholars Clichy Utter and Eric described in The Mystery of the Past that Planet X was the base for aliens to mine in the solar system in ancient times, but the mining failed. Planet X exploded 600,000 to 700,000 years ago. In the science fiction novel Meeting the Tenth Planet by China writer Zhou Yukun, Planet X is a black hole and a human spaceship is sent to explore it. Finally, I successfully crossed the black hole and gained the knowledge of time travel.
Where is planet x? Niu Wei Xing, an associate professor in the Department of Science History of Shanghai Jiaotong University, believes that the position of extraterrestrial stars may be far away, and it is difficult to determine their motion laws according to their influence on other planets. Then, according to the series of planetary orbital distances given by Titius in 1766, can we find planet X? Professor Li Xiangdong told reporters that the Titius series predicted the orbits of Ceres and Uranus, but Pluto had a big error. The motion of extraterrestrial planets is more complicated, and the probability of "eccentric orbit" is higher. So it is impossible to calculate planets other than the nine planets.
Others think that Planet X may not exist at all. Voyager 2 flew over Uranus on 1986, and then arrived near Neptune on 1989, and obtained new values of their mass. Using these new data, American astronomer standish published his research results in 1993. He believes that the irregularity of Uranus' orbital motion is caused by the inaccurate mass data of Uranus used in previous theoretical calculations. As for Neptune, there is still a mismatch between the observed residual azimuth and the calculated value, which may be the reason why the calculation model is not ideal. There is no need to assume the existence of planet X.
Fly to Pluto
Just as the universe is not eternal, our solar system has a beginning, which was formed about 5 billion years ago.
Planets form later than the sun. Zhu Jin said that at present, the more recognized theory of planetary formation in astronomy is the "nebula theory". The sun captures matter from interstellar space, forming protoplanetary clouds, which later evolved into planets; It is also believed that all celestial bodies in the whole solar system are formed by the same primitive nebula, with the central part forming the sun and the peripheral part forming the planets.
Eugene Jiang introduced the theory of "oligarchic planets" to reporters: First, dust gathers, and after it can adapt to gravity, it begins to absorb small pieces of matter and gradually grows until each one becomes the size of a planet.
Planets are one of the earliest celestial bodies known by human beings. China has been studying planets since the Qin Dynasty, and there is a saying that "the sun, the moon and the five stars are collectively called the seven houses". Ptolemy, a western astronomer 2,000 years ago, also established the geometric models of Shui Mu, the sun and the moon in his classic book On Mottos, and accurately explained their laws of motion, which ruled the astronomical world for 13 centuries until Copernicus put forward the "Heliocentrism" of the earth revolving around the sun.
/kloc-At the beginning of the 7th century, the German astronomer Kepler put forward three laws of planetary motion. It not only proved the correctness of Heliocentrism's view that the earth is a planet, but also laid the foundation for Newton's work. He proposed gravity in 1687. 1846, according to the perturbation of Uranus, Adams and Levi predicted and discovered Neptune, which was a great progress in the process of planetary exploration and a theoretical breakthrough, and created a precedent for planets to be predicted first and then discovered.
1930 After Pluto was discovered, the study of planets was once silent. It was not until1August 27, 962 that humans launched the first Venus probe "Mariner 2", which awakened the study of planets. Next year, the human "New Horizon" probe will fly to Pluto, hoping to provide a new horizon for solving problems such as "Planet X".
The universe you don't know.
The last century witnessed the great development of astronomy. Cosmic explosion, neutron stars, pulsars, black holes ... new discoveries and new theories are dizzying, and the relationship between astronomy and ordinary people is gradually being opened.
In fact, the gap between the frontiers of astronomy and the general public is not new. In the Middle Ages, Ptolemy's Motto was a book open only to a few people. Copernicus's theory of celestial movement is also a difficult book to understand. The development of Newton's principle is only left to a few talented mathematicians. By Einstein, the gap had widened. 65,438+000 years after the publication of his theory of relativity, only a few people with higher education can understand it. As Hosking, head of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, said, "The technical and conceptual obstacles faced by astronomy students have steadily increased to a frightening level."
The reason is that today's astronomy, like other branches of physics, tends to be described by complex mathematical formulas. Since17th century, abstract mathematical logic has finally made science surpass primary mechanics and human intuitive experience. Most of the contents of modern physics have gone beyond our experience world. From daily experience, it is impossible for anyone to correctly imagine concepts such as the Big Bang and Singularity.
This has caused difficulties for popular science workers. It is inconceivable to explain these concepts to an ordinary person who has no advanced mathematics foundation. "We hope astronomy can be closer to the public ..." Dr. Zhao Donghai of Shanghai Observatory once expressed his wish in an interview with reporters. His Max Planck group is in an international leading position in the study of dark matter in the universe. "We are always looking for ways to convey cutting-edge theories to the public. I hope that the media can act as a good intermediary and let more people know about the universe we live in. " (Reporter You Yujie Intern Nan Zhou Tao Yingxing)