Sedna is one. The notion that we have a loose planet or dim companion star that’s just too far out there and too dim to spot is not a case of “it’s weird, because….aliens” —but it’s still weird.
Just one of those instances in which the clockwork heavens in which things ran predictibly was a nice model, but t’ain’t so.
I’m fairly sure that it is predictable to someone who has all of the skills and information; that would not be me. It would probably not even be us.
It is just a much larger, much more complex clock than we thought. 🙂 With some wandering imps involved.
You mean the cuckoo clock’s cuckoo’s eggs? 😉 … Now I’m reminded of those old clocks with animated figures circling around.
Hmm, so any ship navigating through the system has this huge cloud of objects to fly through. Some are in elliptical or near circular orbits, planets and the like. Planetoids (asteroids) also travel within a belt, possibly tumbling besides. Moons orbit their planets. Meteors may whiz all over the system in strange ways, but probably predictable when their orbits are known. Then objects like Sedna that have somewhat comet-like orbits, and then comets. … Then whatever other odd bits are in a system. Add any orbiting stations, buoys, probes, and other ships, the interplanetary and the interstellar varieties and any ground-to-orbit craft.
Yet everything except the artificial objects, the ships and so on, is likely to be moving along a knowable, steady course.
Still, your pilot/helm officers, navigators, scan techs, ship’s arms techs … had better be on the ball. That’s a lot of pool balls (billions of billiards?) running loose in the system.
Hah, I’m reminded of old golden age and silver age stories where the redoubtable, square-jawed hero had his trusty slide rule clenched in his teeth, instead of a dagger, ready to plot the ship’s course and check it against the huge ship’s computer. Heinlein’s heroes often included in that, back when, though they got better about it later. And there weren’t a lot of women officers in those old days, though there were a few.
(My dad was an engineer and used to use a slide rule, before pocket calculators came in. He learned CAD, too.
I never got my father into CAD, but slide rules and calculators were definitely in his field. (He had a BSME, originally with an aeronautic aim. On the other hand, he got his first patent on an application filed while he was still in school: a rolled-paper-cover headrest for dental and barber chairs.)
In my day we hard science majors were required to take a semester class in slide-rule our freshman year. I know I still have mine, K&E IIRC, but not where. Bamboo and an ivory-like plastic, but if it’s in one of the garage boxes it may have delaminated by now.
I used to use a slipstick to figure grades. They’re nice if you know how.
I still have mine. (And one that was my father’s.) There’s an instruction book in one of the boxes….
We were introduced to them in junior-high math, cheap wood ones with ‘hairlines’ that were much re-drawn. But we got a chance to buy real (plastic) ones at a discount, and I took it. It’s great when you want a real fraction, not a decimal.
It was reported not so long ago that many of the planets we have found are accused of having kicked their siblings out of the nest. I’d say their number and general size makes it unlikely any or our TNO’s is a captured wanderer, but, ummmm, can I suggest someone with uncommon abilities might be able to detect one wandering alone out there? 😉 😉 😉 🙂
I particularly liked the Wiki article on trans-Neptunian objects at “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Neptunian_planet” and the lists found in the discussion of Plutinos at “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutino”
On a non-related note… We’re having the first rainfal of the year right now and we may actually get half an inch or more of rainfall in a non-downpour. California was hit very hard yesterday, so Arizona is grateful for gentle mercies, and a benediction of steady rain.
It’s still raining over here, so expect two or three days of dampness.
I swear, every time we have an auroral event, we cloud over: I think there really is a connection…