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Comment by snissn | Hacker News Reader

I recently listened to an episode of Sean Carroll's podcast with the planet nine astronomer interviewed. Basically they're working on finding it, but their math can only limit the location of the planet to a specific orbit, and they need to check all possible angles of that orbit and it is a lot of the sky to look through.

Edit - podcast link https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/08/27/epis...

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Damn, you just put a hole in my already utterly impractical scheme. CURSES!!! (twirls mustache)

In all seriousness, that would definitely kill any possibility. Sweeping an entire orbit at the resolution needed to hit something smaller than Uranus/Neptune would take eons.

Space is so hugely, mind-bogglingly big, that even paring it down to small fractions using clever orbital analyses still yields hugely mind-bogglingly big regions of space. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

I think someone should re-imagine all of Star Wars as hard Sci-fi set in the vicinity of a system like Alpha Centauri. That's still a vast setting.

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Even as old as it is, I didn't think it necessary to explain my reference.

I just realized it has been nearly 40 years since I first heard those words on the NPR radio broadcast of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". It was broadcast alternately with the Star Wars radio drama. IIRC, Star Wars was aired Friday nights and Hitchhiker's Guide was Saturday nights. Good times, thanks for the reminder. :)

You should at least put quotation marks around it.

It's not an exact quote.

I think they're starting to get support within the astronomy community for people to donate telescope time to them. I really recommend the podcast link above, I think you'll enjoy it!

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