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Register a new userThe Hunt for Planet Nine: Atmosphere, Spectra, Evolution, and Detectability
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Added by
Jonathan J. Fortney
Publication date
2016
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We investigate the physical characteristics of the Solar Systems proposed Planet Nine using modeling tools with a heritage in studying Uranus and Neptune. For a range of plausible masses and interior structures, we find upper limits on the intrinsic Teff, from ~35-50 K for masses of 5-20 M_Earth, and we also explore lower Teff values. Possible planetary radii could readily span from 3 to 6 R_Earth depending on the mass fraction of any H/He envelope. Given its cold temperature, the planet encounters significant methane condensation, which dramatically alters the atmosphere away from simple Neptune-like expectations. We find the atmosphere is strongly depleted in molecular absorption at visible wavelengths, suggesting a Rayleigh scattering atmosphere with a high geometric albedo approaching 0.75. We highlight two diagnostics for the atmospheres temperature structure, the first being the value of the methane mixing ratio above the methane cloud. The second is the wavelength at which cloud scattering can be seen, which yields the cloud-top pressure. Surface reflection may be seen if the atmosphere is thin. Due to collision-induced opacity of H2 in the infrared, the planet would be extremely blue (instead of red) in the shortest wavelength WISE colors if methane is depleted, and would, in some cases, exist on the verge of detectability by WISE. For a range of models, thermal fluxes from ~3-5 microns are ~20 orders of magnitude larger than blackbody expectations. We report a search of the AllWISE Source Catalog for Planet Nine, but find no detection.
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The existence of a giant planet beyond Neptune -- referred to as Planet Nine (P9) -- has been inferred from the clustering of longitude of perihelion and pole position of distant eccentric Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). After updating calculations of observational biases, we find that the clustering remains significant at the 99.6% confidence level. We thus use these observations to determine orbital elements of P9. A suite of numerical simulations shows that the orbital distribution of the distant KBOs is strongly influenced by the mass and orbital elements of P9 and thus can be used to infer these parameters. Combining the biases with these numerical simulations, we calculate likelihood values for discrete set of P9 parameters, which we then use as input into a Gaussian Process emulator that allows a likelihood computation for arbitrary values of all parameters. We use this emulator in a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis to estimate parameters of P9. We find a P9 mass of $6.2^{+2.2}_{-1.3}$ Earth masses, semimajor axis of $380^{+140}_{-80}$ AU, inclination of $16pm5^circ$ and perihelion of $300^{+85}_{-60}$ AU. Using samples of the orbital elements and estimates of the radius and albedo of such a planet, we calculate the probability distribution function of the on-sky position of Planet Nine and of its brightness. For many reasonable assumptions, Planet Nine is closer and brighter than initially expected, though the probability distribution includes a long tail to larger distances, and uncertainties in the radius and albedo of Planet Nine could yield fainter objects.
We use more than a decade of radial velocity measurements for $alpha$ Cen A, B, and Proxima Centauri from HARPS, CHIRON, and UVES to identify the $M sin i$ and orbital periods of planets that could have been detected if they existed. At each point in a mass-period grid, we sample a simulated, Keplerian signal with the precision and cadence of existing data and assess the probability that the signal could have been produced by noise alone. Existing data places detection thresholds in the classically defined habitable zones at about $M sin i$ of 53 M$_{oplus}$ for $alpha$ Cen A, 8.4 M$_{oplus}$ for $alpha$ Cen B, and 0.47 M$_{oplus}$ for Proxima Centauri. Additionally, we examine the impact of systematic errors, or red noise in the data. A comparison of white- and red-noise simulations highlights quasi-periodic variability in the radial velocities that may be caused by systematic errors, photospheric velocity signals, or planetary signals. For example, the red-noise simulations show a peak above white-noise simulations at the period of Proxima Centauri b. We also carry out a spectroscopic analysis of the chemical composition of the $alpha$ Centauri stars. The stars have super-solar metallicity with ratios of C/O and Mg/Si that are similar to the Sun, suggesting that any small planets in the $alpha$ Cen system may be compositionally similar to our terrestrial planets. Although the small projected separation of $alpha$ Cen A and B currently hampers extreme-precision radial velocity measurements, the angular separation is now increasing. By 2019, $alpha$ Cen A and B will be ideal targets for renewed Doppler planet surveys.
Many of the planets discovered by the Kepler satellite are close orbiting Super-Earths or Mini-Neptunes. Such objects exhibit a wide spread of densities for similar masses. One possible explanation for this density spread is giant collisions stripping planets of their atmospheres. In this paper we present the results from a series of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of head-on collisions of planets with significant atmospheres and bare projectiles without atmospheres. Collisions between planets can have sufficient energy to remove substantial fractions of the mass from the target planet. We find the fraction of mass lost splits into two regimes -- at low impact energies only the outer layers are ejected corresponding to atmosphere dominated loss, at higher energies material deeper in the potential is excavated resulting in significant core and mantle loss. Mass removal is less efficient in the atmosphere loss dominated regime compared to the core and mantle loss regime, due to the higher compressibility of atmosphere relative to core and mantle. We find roughly twenty per cent atmosphere remains at the transition between the two regimes. We find that the specific energy of this transition scales linearly with the ratio of projectile to target mass for all projectile-target mass ratios measured. The fraction of atmosphere lost is well approximated by a quadratic in terms of the ratio of specific energy and transition energy. We provide algorithms for the incorporation of our scaling law into future numerical studies.
A distant, as yet unseen ninth planet has been invoked to explain various observations of the outer solar system. While such a Planet Nine, if it exists, is most likely to be discovered via reflected light in the optical, it may emit much more strongly at 3$-$5$mu$m than simple blackbody predictions would suggest, depending on its atmospheric properties (Fortney et al. 2016). As a result, Planet Nine may be detectable at 3.4$mu$m with WISE, but single exposures are too shallow except at relatively small distances ($d_9 lesssim 430$ AU). We develop a method to search for Planet Nine far beyond the W1 single-exposure sensitivity, to distances as large as 800 AU, using inertial coadds of W1 exposures binned into $sim$1 day intervals. We apply our methodology to $sim$2000 square degrees of sky identified by Holman & Payne (2016) as a potentially likely Planet Nine location, based on the Fienga et al. (2016) Cassini ranging analysis. We do not detect a plausible Planet Nine candidate, but are able to derive a detailed completeness curve, ruling out its presence within the parameter space searched at $W1 < 16.66$ (90% completeness). Our method uses all publicly available W1 imaging, spanning 2010 January to 2015 December, and will become more sensitive with future NEOWISE-Reactivation releases of additional W1 exposures. We anticipate that our method will be applicable to the entire high Galactic latitude sky, and we will extend our search to that full footprint in the near future.
Cosmology experiments at mm-wavelengths can detect Planet Nine if it is the size of Neptune, has an effective temperature of 40 K, and is 700 AU from the Sun. It would appear as a ~30 mJy source at 1 mm with an annual parallax of ~5 arcmin. The challenge is to distinguish it from the approximately 4000 foreground asteroids brighter than 30 mJy. Fortunately, these asteroids are known to the Minor Planet Center and can be identified because they move across a resolution element in a matter of hours, orders of magnitude faster than Planet Nine. If Planet Nine is smaller, colder, and/or more distant than expected, then it could be as faint as 1 mJy at 1 mm. There are roughly $10^6$ asteroids this bright and many are unknown, making current cosmology experiments confusion limited for moving sources. Nonetheless, it may still be possible to find the proverbial needle in the haystack using a matched filter. This would require mm telescopes with high angular resolution and high sensitivity in order to alleviate confusion and to enable the identification of moving sources with relatively short time baselines. Regardless of its mm flux density, searching for Planet Nine would require frequent radio measurements for large swaths of the sky, including the ecliptic and Galactic plane. Even if Planet Nine had already been detected by other means, measuring its mm-flux would constrain its internal energy budget, and therefore help resolve the mystery of Uranus and Neptune, which have vastly different internal heat.
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