The Brute-Force Search for Planet Nine
Scott Lawrence, Zeeve Rogoszinski
A recent proposal for the detection of a hypothetical gravitating body 500 AU from the Sun (termed Planet 9) calls for a fleet of near-relativistic spacecraft, equipped with high-precision clocks, to be sent to a region where the object is suspected to be. We show that the technological constraints of such a mission can be relaxed somewhat, while improving the sensitivity: high-precision clocks can be avoided when the transverse displacement induced by Planet 9 is measurable with Earth-based, or near-Earth, telescopes. Furthermore, we note that in the absence of Planet 9, these spacecraft still yield useful data by mapping gravitational perturbations in the outer parts of the solar system.
Comments: 5 pages
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:2004.14980 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2004.14980v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Scott Lawrence
[v1] Thu, 30 Apr 2020 17:29:36 UTC (8 KB)
