Planet X Gets X'd Out
“太阳系第十大行星”传说破灭
An exhaustive search by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer has found no hints of a theorized planet or dwarf star in our neck of the cosmic woods. Clara Moskowitz reports
NASA的广域红外线巡天探测卫星(WISE)的一次地毯式搜查,粉碎了一个长以来的谣言——我们银河系的外围,不存在什么传说中的“第十大行星”。
撰文/播音 克拉拉•莫斯克维兹(Clara Moskowitz)
翻译 李轩
Solar system conspiracy theorists have long harbored suspicions that a hidden extra planet or dwarf star lies beyond the orbit of Pluto. As a planet, it’s been called Tyche or simply Planet X. As a star, Nemesis.
长久以来,太阳系阴谋论者一直认为,从理论上讲,冥王星的轨道之外一定还隐藏着一个行星或矮星。作为行星,它的名字叫堤喀(Tyche,命运女神),或者干脆就叫Ⅹ行星(Ⅹ为罗马数字10,意为第十大行星);而作为矮星,它的名字是涅墨西斯(Nemesi,复仇女神)。
But an exhaustive search has found no hints of this long-rumored object. NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer has scanned the entire sky in infrared light—twice—and ruled out any hidden bodies larger than Saturn out to 10,000 times the distance from the Earth to the sun.
然而,NASA的广域红外线巡天探测卫星最近(WISE)进行了一次地毯式的搜索,却没有发现任何证据,可以证明这颗传说中的星星的存在。卫星对距太阳1万倍地日距离内的所有空间进行了两次全方位的红外扫描,没有发现任何大于土星的天体。
Furthermore, it found no evidence for anything bigger than Jupiter out to 26,000 times the Earth-sun distance. Pluto, for comparison, lies only 40 times farther from the sun than Earth. [Kevin L. Luhman, A Search For a Distant Companion to The Sun with the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, in the Astrophysical Journal]
此外,在距太阳2万6千倍地日距离内,WISE也没有发现任何证据,证明有比木星大的星体的存在。相比之下,冥王星与太阳间的距离仅仅是地日距离的40倍。
The finding deals a blow to theories that a Planet X- or Nemesis-type object may have caused periodic mass extinctions on Earth. Some theorists have mused that a hidden planet might have swept through bands of comets in the solar system, sending them crashing into Earth. Now it seems that for such mass species die-offs, the fault lies not in the stars.
这一发现给予了“X行星周期性灭绝地球生物论”一次沉重的打击。一些理论学家认为,像X行星这样一个隐秘的行星,能够横穿太阳系的彗星带,将彗星“扫”向地球,导致它们撞击地球。不过现在看来,曾经的生物大灭绝,并不能算在这些传说中的星星头上。
(题图来源:NASA)