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Hubble finds cosmic twin of Solar System's mysterious Planet Nine
Scientists find an exoplanet whose strange behavior may lead to the Solar's System hidden ninth planet.

Artist's impression of Exoplanet HD 106906b
- NASA's Hubble Telescope provides 14 years of data on the exoplanet HD106906 b.
- It exhibits strange behavior along its orbit 336 light-year away from Earth.
- Scientists think data from the exoplanet may explain what happened to the possibly hidden Planet Nine in our Solar System.
How many planets are in our Solar System? You may think there's an obvious answer you learned in kindergarten, but the number has fluctuated between 8 and 9, depending on whether you accept Pluto as being large enough for a planet. But there's another mysterious planet that may be lurking at the edge of the Solar System – the so-called "Planet Nine". All we know about it is through inference, arrived at by judging the effects this potential planet may be having on its surroundings. Now, for the first time, scientists measured the motion of a massive exoplanet, in a different solar system, that may be exhibiting behavior similar to that of the hypothesized Planet Nine.
The exoplanet HD106906 b is 336 light-year away from Earth. With the mass of as much as 11 Jupiters, it orbits a double star system. Scientists first discovered it in 2013 but have now been able to get much better information about its orbit thanks to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In fact, Hubble has collected 14 years worth of precise data about the exoplanet, allowing for a wealth of new insight.
The exoplanet is located very far from its host stars, 730 times as far as it is from the Earth to the Sun. While its slow 15,000-year-long orbit would ordinarily not allow for very conclusive observation in just 14 years, the Hubble team found that its orbit is extreme, both very inclined and elongated, staying on the outside of a debris disc surrounding the twin stars.
Meiji Nguyen of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study, commented on how unusual the exoplanet's orbit is:
"To highlight why this is weird, we can just look at our own Solar System and see that all of the planets lie roughly in the same plane," shared Nguyen. "It would be bizarre if, say, Jupiter just happened to be inclined 30 degrees relative to the plane that every other planet orbits in. This raises all sorts of questions about how HD 106906 b ended up so far out on such an inclined orbit."
The Strange Exoplanet That Resembles the Long-Sought “Planet Nine”
How did this planet develop such an orbit? The scientists think it likely formed much closer to the host stars, but the drag from the system's gas disc might have affected its orbit. This could have pushed it closer to the twin stars, whose gravitational force then threw it out into an eccentric orbit, nearly all the way into interstellar space. As the Hubble team's press release explains, a passing star then possibly corrected the exoplanet's orbit and stopped it from leaving the home system altogether.
This explanation is similar to what scientists predict could have pushed the potential Planet Nine to the edges of our Solar System, past the Kuiper belt. Jupiter might have affected its orbit, kicking it out from the inner Solar System. Planet Nine could have kept going past Pluto but a passing star possibly stopped it by altering its orbit.
Paul Kalas of the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the Hubble team, commented that analyzing what happened to exoplanet HD106906 b is like investigating our own past.
"It's as if we have a time machine for our own Solar System going back 4.6 billion years to see what may have happened when our young Solar System was dynamically active and everything was being jostled around and rearranged," elaborated Kalas.
This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows one possible orbit (via the dashed ellipse) of the exoplanet HD 106906 b.
Credits: NASA, ESA, M. Nguyen (University of California, Berkeley), R. De Rosa (European Southern Observatory), and P. Kalas (University of California, Berkeley and SETI Institute)
Of course, none of this means we actually found Planet Nine, if it even exists. Evidence for its corporeality includes the strange behavior of small space bodies past Neptune, whose inexplicable orbits might be the result of being affected by the gravitational pull of an unseen planet.
Further investigations into the formation and debris system of the exoplanet HD106906 b will be carried out by the James Webb Space Telescope, slated to launch in October 2021. It promises to shed more like on the exoplanet's unusual system and, by extension, on our own mystery Planet Nine.
Check out the team's paper, published in The Astronomical Journal.
Artist's impression of the possibly hidden "Planet Nine"
Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser
‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle may finally be solved
Meteorologists propose a stunning new explanation for the mysterious events in the Bermuda Triangle.
One of life's great mysteries, the Bermuda Triangle might have finally found an explanation. This strange region, that lies in the North Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico, has been the presumed cause of dozens and dozens of mind-boggling disappearances of ships and planes.
Astrophysicists find unique "hot Jupiter" planet without clouds
A unique exoplanet without clouds or haze was found by astrophysicists from Harvard and Smithsonian.
Illustration of WASP-62b, the Jupiter-like planet without clouds or haze in its atmosphere.
- Astronomers from Harvard and Smithsonian find a very rare "hot Jupiter" exoplanet without clouds or haze.
- Such planets were formed differently from others and offer unique research opportunities.
- Only one other such exoplanet was found previously.
Munazza Alam – a graduate student at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Credit: Jackie Faherty
Jupiter's Colorful Cloud Bands Studied by Spacecraft
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8a72dfe5b407b584cf867852c36211dc"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GzUzCesfVuw?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Lair of giant predator worms from 20 million years ago found
Scientists discover burrows of giant predator worms that lived on the seafloor 20 million years ago.
Bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois)
- Scientists in Taiwan find the lair of giant predator worms that inhabited the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- The worm is possibly related to the modern bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- The creatures can reach several meters in length and famously ambush their pray.
A three-dimensional model of the feeding behavior of Bobbit worms and the proposed formation of Pennichnus formosae.
Credit: Scientific Reports
Beware the Bobbit Worm!
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f9918e77851242c91382369581d3aac"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_As1pHhyDHY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>FOSTA-SESTA: Have controversial sex trafficking acts done more harm than good?
The idea behind the law was simple: make it more difficult for online sex traffickers to find victims.
