2 big new planets in our system?

[baggywrinkle]

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/18/two-undiscovered-planets-earth-solar-system

Interesting....

[hgjevans]

Oh, great - so that means all our 'I saw all the planets in one night' T-shirts have to go in the bin then? Typical!

[Aside: Wow - you were on HMS Conqueror - my hat off to you, Sir. Back when I did sonar research in the 90s/noughties the walls of our building were festooned with pictures of Conks flying the Jolly Roger - one gained a certain healthy respect.  ]

[ronin]

Since they predicted the presence and location of planets with pencil and paper some 100+ years ago I would have thought that with modern supercomputers (even a PC with XP) then giving a very good likely position of these big new planets would have been easy and with modern telescopes Atacama, Hawaii, Canary Isles then getting an image of them would be equally easy.

Since the Canary Isles are Spanish and there are observatories there I would have expected that a Spanish astronomer would have been allocated reasonable time to sweep that relevant section of the sky.

[JamesF]

So the discovery of planets beyond Neptune moving in circular orbits would be revolutionary, eh?  Who'd have thought it?

I was interested in finding out a little more about this story.  These came up and provide a little more background, with further links for more detail:

http://www.universetoday.com/118252/astronomers-are-predicting-at-least-two-more-large-planets-in-the-solar-system/

http://www.space.com/28284-planet-x-worlds-beyond-pluto.html

http://phys.org/news/2015-01-trans-neptunian-planets-solar.html

James

[Pondus]

So, if these planets do exist, approx 200AU from the sun, does that mean that Voyager 1(now at 130AU) has not entered interstellar space afterall?

[nightfisher]

Will i be able to find them with my TAL100 

[kev]

So, if these planets do exist, approx 200AU from the sun, does that mean that Voyager 1(now at 130AU) has not entered interstellar space afterall?

Depends how u look at it

From a prespective of the molecules around it, its in interstellar space

From a gravitation perspective its in the solar system - but that would extend out until it reaches equilibrium with the pull of a nearby star.

Sent from my iPhone so excuse the typos!

[LukeSkywatcher]

At least two as-yet undiscovered planets as big as Earth or larger may be hiding in the outer fringes of the solar system, scientists believe.

If they have not been discovered, how do they know that they might be there?.

[Scott]

At least two as-yet undiscovered planets as big as Earth or larger may be hiding in the outer fringes of the solar system, scientists believe.

If they have not been discovered, how do they know that they might be there?.

It's explained in the op's link

[Zakalwe]

At least two as-yet undiscovered planets as big as Earth or larger may be hiding in the outer fringes of the solar system, scientists believe.

If they have not been discovered, how do they know that they might be there?.

The same way that Pluto's existence was predicted, but not discovered until 90 years after.