Once again we will need to junk all those text books and charts that we use to illustrate the solar system. Back in the 1930's the discovery of " Pluto " brought the number of planets in our part of the Cosmos to nine - but poor little Pluto got the bum's rush in 2006 when it was downgraded to a " dwarf planet ". In fact many scientists conjecture that it is merely one of many big rocks floating about in the Kuiper Belt and doesn't deserve the title of " planet " !
Now we are heralding a new discovery - and it seems that the theory that our Solar system has nine planets seems to be correct. If the mathematicians are right, way out there is a newly discovered planet that is about ten times bigger than the Earth and which takes twenty thousand years to make an orbit of the sun, something our planet manages in just one year.
So far it has not been given a name, but the distance involved is mind numbing. It is estimated to be eighty eight billion miles from Earth and that is twenty times the distance from here to planet Neptune. Anything that far from our sun is likely to be a little chilly when it comes to the weather on planet number Nine.
Nobody has actually sighted this new planet and it's existence is nothing more than a mathematical calculation. One of those clever balancing of theorems of gravitational pulls which means that the movement of astral bodies that we can measure would be impossible - unless this great big planet was whizzing along on the outer reach to even up the balance.
It seems inevitable that curiosity will demand that we get a look at it. Past space probes have performed way beyond our expectations and are still sending back a record of their journey decades after we expected them to wink out. There will probably be a race between the Americans, the Europeans and the Chinese to launch a probe to connect with our ninth planet, but if it ever manages to deliver pictures they will be seen by very distant relatives of those who presently populate Earth. Everybody here will be long dead, as will their children and grand children unless that theory of worm holes in the Cosmos proves to be correct and we find a few short cuts to speed up space travel.
Our understanding of space has taken giant leaps in the past hundred years, and it has been based on the ability of rocket science to launch everything from satellites to space telescopes outside the limiting factor of our atmosphere. Humans have set foot on the moon and we have a space station conducting experiments that are ever expanding our world of knowledge.
We are also leaning that space is a dangerous place. From time to time stray meteorites crash into our planet and we know that it was one of these that killed off the Dinosaurs when it raised a dust cloud that blocked the sun for years - and caused a mass extinction. We are also finding that there are great numbers of " Goldilocks " planets with Earth like conditions that could support human life. There is an uncomfortable feeling that we may not be alone in the Cosmos - and we would be wise to remember how we reacted when we gained the means to cross oceans and invade undiscovered countries ! Perhaps our new neighbours may not be friendly !
Sadly, while a new planet may excite science it pales into insignificance when measured against the problems we are still trying to sort out right here on planet Earth. We have still not managed to live in peace with one another and world finance is an unholy mess. Religion fights religion and it looks like we are in danger of over populating this planet - and exhausting it's ability to feed us all.
Lets hope that if other plants have people, they have done a better job of sorting themselves out than our lot !
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