Do you believe...

[Ragsnstitches]

Seeing as we know about all the other planets, asteroids, comets etc in our solar system, and other far beyond, if there was another planet on the other side of the sun, we would have known it was there LOOOOOONG ago.

Actually, the space beyond Neptune, but still within our system, are largely unexplored.

Also there has been speculation that another planet might be closer to the sun (closer then mercury), but solar forces make it impossible to see. Though funnily enough, anomalies within these forces are what gives rise to these speculations.

Light curves around the Sun because of it's gravity, even that close there would be times when we would be able to capture some radiation.

Your thread is bad and you should feel bad.

He should feel bad for being curious? Or feel bad about not having encyclopaedic knowledge of astronomy/physics?

Heck, I was under no illusion that you had to know everything to ask questions or even make an assumption. This comes as a shock to me.

Given the simplified (and even downright wrong) information taught to us in early education, I'm not going to shame people for not being omniscient.

 

[DeimosMasque]

...In Heaven above? Do you believe in love? Don't be false or untrue, it all comes back to you.

Open fire on my-- (cough) Sorry, got a bit off track there.

So you don't want me to send you an angel... right now?

 

[chadachada123]

'Fraid not. As others have said, we noticed Pluto's practically-infinitesimal effect on the orbit of Neptune (and subsequently discovered Pluto), and those are far more apart than Earth would be from its twin, even if this twin was the size of Pluto or smaller.

 

[thedoclc]

No, I just believe in the tea pot that orbits the Earth undetected.

With all the junk in orbit around earth that's more plausible them you might think.

Well it would have to be in the right spot not to drift away or come crashing down XP

You, sir, should be lauded for bringing Bertrand Russell into this conversation. And you should be raspberried as all those who would understand the reference would also already agree with you.

I'd call the net total a big plus.

And hopefully, a few folks would go Google Russell's Teapot, including the original poster.

Edit: Clarity

 

[Navvan]

As others have already mentioned our vision of the universe isn't limited to linear points outward from our planet. We've sent numerous probes around this solar system of ours and its unlikely that we would miss something like that. Even without that the likely hood of another planet on the exact same orbit as earth but perfectly or near perfectly half a phase off is extremely unlikely to the point I'd be comfortable saying no regardless.


Captcha: No Dice

Sums up my thoughts well enough.

 

[thedoclc]

I can't see that it's been mentioned, so here we go:

The two STEREO-sattelites have disbuted the claim that there's a planet on the other side of the sun. They have the same orbit as Earth, but one is behind earth in its orbit, and one is in front, thus being able to see what's on the other side of the sun:

Here's the site. STEREO Official Site [http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/]

No such statement has ever been issued by NASA. No such claim has been made by researches working with those satellites. You can go through all their news releases on their site. It's cool stuff.

Unfortunately, a lot of psuedoscientists will reach out and link to real science, especially if it's something that is very technical and complex, in order to attempt to leach credibility from the real scientists/researchers.

I will also pre-empt an objection: no, no one would ever hide discovering something so cool. I won't appeal to the obvious principles of academic integrity and discovery shared by scientists and other scholars. I'll appeal to simple greed. Discovering a new planet would mean government and grant money poured by the bucketful onto NASA and their collaborators. It would give NASA more prestige that it has had since touching down on Luna. No way such a thing would ever be hidden.

 

[Innegativeion]

This theory presupposes that inter-planetary spacecraft/satellites have not been launched, and that the human race is incapable of extra-terrestrial travel.

...

It is not.

 

[LauriJ]

As others have already mentioned our vision of the universe isn't limited to linear points outward from our planet. We've sent numerous probes around this solar system of ours and its unlikely that we would miss something like that. Even without that the likely hood of another planet on the exact same orbit as earth but perfectly or near perfectly half a phase off is extremely unlikely to the point I'd be comfortable saying no regardless.


Captcha: No Dice

Sums up my thoughts well enough.

I am still sure that there is something hiding behind the sun. If it's not a planet then it has to be some kind of a spacecraft. And they most likely have some kind of a cloaking device on so that we can't spot it.

 

[Vuliev]

I am still sure that there is something hiding behind the sun. If it's not a planet then it has to be some kind of a spacecraft. And they most likely have some kind of a cloaking device on so that we can't spot it.

Well, that's quite a bit different than a planet, isn't it? If you say "well it's using technology much father beyond our own" it's kinda obvious that we're not going to detect it outside of some massive fluke.

 

[DoPo]

This isn't going to be some sort of bullshit where you then try to claim that it's God, is it?

God here. No, it's certainly not me. I have far better things to do than hide behind the sun.

I'll go appear in food now.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Snip

Science and everything we know about physics and gravitation say no, OP, but my Lovecraft-obsessed self wants to go with "OH, GOD, YES. OH, DEAR LORD, YES! WE'RE DOOMED! SQUID PEOPLE ON EARTH TWO! WE'RE ALL DOOMED!"

*ahem*

Sorry for adding to the pile of trolls, but this was just too good to pass up. With all due respect, of course.

As others have said before:

a) we'd have found it by now, if it existed;
b) another planet mirroring our orbit around the Sun could have catastrophic consequences which we'd have noticed by now.

I'll add the Ferni Paradox, which more or less can be vulgarized as saying that the odds of little green men making contact with us are astronomically low because we're either too far away, too technologically advanced, too much *behind* these hypothetical aliens, or simply of no worth to them whatsoever.

Think about it. Assuming there is a spaceship defeating the Sun's gravitational pull and staying safely out of sight at all times, then why in God's name would it even stay cloaked? It's a lot easier and a lot more probable to just go with the fact that there's a whole lot of nothing behind the Sun, except the other planets of our solar system as they pass on the other side.