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Hypothesis: computer models using well established physics show that the chances are extremely high a large planet explains the orbits of Kuiper Belt objects. Is this testable? Yes.
Experiment: use existing telescopes or existing observational data to detect the planet in the orbit that's predicted. If it's detected, the hypothesis is likely a good one for now, if it isn't, it's falsified unless there are mitigating factors (it's too faint to be detected etc). But the latter is very unlikely.
Does this then become a theory? Possibly, it depends on what happens next. Theory requires substantial evidence and lots of testing. Is it a detection if it isn't seen? No.
The discovery of Pluto is a good example of what might have seemed an exceptional piece of detective work, and it was, except it eventually turned out to be a serendipitous discovery of a dwarf planet.
At this point we're still at the hypothesis stage.
Edited to add that last sentence.
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Lockmart has announced the next generation of telescopes that make the old, only known method of large mirrors and lenses, obsolete. This means that space based telescopes become much cheaper and much easier to launch. It is called SPIDER since it uses a large array of small "eyes" to gather light. It is also much cheaper and easier to manufacture, employing established electronic nanoscale fabrication technologies. This advancement is going to make Earth-bound telescopes go obsolete much sooner than expected.
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/innovat...pider.html
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"Lockmart has announced the next generation of telescopes that make the old, only known method of large mirrors and lenses, obsolete. This means that space based telescopes become much cheaper and much easier to launch. It is called SPIDER since it uses a large array of small "eyes" to gather light. It is also much cheaper and easier to manufacture, employing established electronic nanoscale fabrication technologies. This advancement is going to make Earth-bound telescopes go obsolete much sooner than expected."
Not sure what this has to do with proposed 9th planet, but the technology Lockheed Martin are developing is aimed at relatively small imaging telescopes used to take images of the Earth (not something ground-based telescopes do anyway), and, as the article says, other planets. If you want the resolving and light collecting power of a 30-meter telescope, you would still need to launch a 30-meter diameter telescope into space which has the optical precision of a ground-based telescope. That technology is decades away.
Also, since much of the work that ground-based telescopes do is spectroscopy, and since spectral information is lost in the process of forming interference fringes, then I hardly see how this will make ground-based telescopes become obsolete.
Now, back to planet 9...
Posts: 10,212
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Posts: 10,212
Threads: 344
Joined: Apr 2009
Is there or is there not a new planet 9? There's a possible alternative explanation for the few Kuiper Belt objects' unusual orbits that doesn't require a massive planet 9:
http://www.space.com/31817-planet-nine-e...stion.html
This is actually a nice example of the scientific process. We don't know the answers yet, but experiments will tell us which is the likeliest hypothesis and then it will be taken on from there.
