Editing 1633: Possible Undiscovered Planets
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Now this planet could be called Planet IX (and is labeled ''Planet nine?'' on the chart), as {{w|Pluto}}, the previously "planet 9" has been degraded to a dwarf planet. The "X" did, however, not only refer to the roman numeral! Note that Mike Brown is the astronomer that {{w|How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming|killed Pluto}}, or at least reduced Pluto to a dwarf planet, something that has been a subject in [[xkcd]] before; see for instance [[473: Still Raw]]. | Now this planet could be called Planet IX (and is labeled ''Planet nine?'' on the chart), as {{w|Pluto}}, the previously "planet 9" has been degraded to a dwarf planet. The "X" did, however, not only refer to the roman numeral! Note that Mike Brown is the astronomer that {{w|How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming|killed Pluto}}, or at least reduced Pluto to a dwarf planet, something that has been a subject in [[xkcd]] before; see for instance [[473: Still Raw]]. | ||
− | This was the first of two | + | This was the first of two time within a month where a new astronomical announcement (of something discovered months before the actual announcement) resulted in a related comic. The second being [[1642: Gravitational Waves]]. But in that case Randall seemed to know about it in advance, as he even changed the normal release schedule to post the comic on the day of the announcement, unlike here, where he seems to have been forced to make a new comic up on the fly. |
Stating the obvious, this {{w|log–log plot}} shows that for an object to be an unknown planet it has to be very far away, since planets are big, to explain why we haven't seen it yet. With the log scale it is possible to go from a diameter of less than 1 mm to an {{w|astronomical unit}} (AU) on the Y-axis and from a distance of just 1 cm up to thousands of AU on the X-axis. | Stating the obvious, this {{w|log–log plot}} shows that for an object to be an unknown planet it has to be very far away, since planets are big, to explain why we haven't seen it yet. With the log scale it is possible to go from a diameter of less than 1 mm to an {{w|astronomical unit}} (AU) on the Y-axis and from a distance of just 1 cm up to thousands of AU on the X-axis. |