Pre-Announcement Media Coverage

[John Smith]

We are seeing so many remarkable pre-announcement pieces showing up, this is a place to post and discuss them. This one for example, is making discoveries sound 'ho hum' which a few months/years ago were heralded as amazing breakthroughs. Today for example: 

"Nearly Every Star Hosts at Least One Alien Planet"

http://news.yahoo.com/nearly-every-star-hosts-least-one-alien-plane...

When a month or so ago they were making a BIG deal about finding one planet in the sweet zone which could possibly support life, son they they say 25% of them could support life! Including mention of red dwarfs, etc. The Zeta predicted evidence continues to build up!

Here is another blog that relates, describing a wobble:

NASA Scientists "Discover" a Wobbly Planet!?

https://poleshift.ning.com/forum/topics/nasa-scientists-discover-a-...

[Kris H]

Article talking about large planet found within Earth's orbital distance from its star.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-11/05/c_135807901.htm

[J Ph]

Look at the headline showing on the screen at the Apple Special Event announcing the MacBook Pro today 

[Ecosikh]

Interesting piece in that remarkable world renown astronomy peer reviewed journal - also known as the Daily Mail  - includes another interesting piece on plant 9.

The interesting thing is that the piece alludes to naming debates as to whether it's Planet X or  Planet 9.... and lastly Monica Grady is as renowned Astronomer in the UK

[casey a]

Scientists say data from NASA's 1976 Mars landing need to be reconsidered for signs of life 

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-say-their-1976-mars-landing-...

(Not the first time these dots have been connected.. But a good read for anyone who doesnt know about the Viking findings)

[Matt B]

'Planet Nine' Can't Hide Much Longer, Scientists Say

http://www.space.com/34455-planet-nine-discovery-coming-soon.html

Planet Nine's days of lurking unseen in the dark depths of the outer solar system may be numbered.

The hypothetical giant planet, which is thought to be about 10 times more massive than Earth, will be discovered within 16 months or so, astronomer Mike Brown predicted.

"I'm pretty sure, I think, that by the end of next winter — not this winter, next winter — I think that there'll be enough people looking for it that … somebody's actually going to track this down," Brown said during a news conference Wednesday (Oct. 19) at a joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) and the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) in Pasadena, California. Brown said that eight to 10 groups are currently looking for the planet.

...

The researchers suggested that this putative planet is perhaps two to 15 times more massive than Earth and lies hundreds of astronomical units (AU) from the sun. (One AU is the Earth-sun distance, about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)

This interpretation was bolstered in January of this year by Brown and fellow Caltech astronomer Konstantin Batygin, who found evidence of a perturber's influence in the orbits of a handful of additional distant objects. This "Planet Nine," as Batygin and Brown dubbed the putative world, likely contains about 10 Earth masses and orbits on a highly elliptical path whose aphelion (farthest distance from the sun) is about 1,000 AU, the researchers said. (For perspective, Pluto gets just 49.3 AU from the sun at aphelion.)

...

The ongoing Planet Nine research also includes efforts to pin down where the world might be in the sky these days. This is a key part of the discovery effort, since a blind search for an object so far away, and with such a huge and elliptical orbit, has little chance of success in the near term, Brown has said.

...

Astronomers have said Planet Nine is perhaps four times wider than Earth, and such an object would be easily visible with professional-grade equipment if it were relatively close to Earth, Brown explained. In addition, planets on highly elliptical orbits spend most of their time near aphelion, since they're traveling most slowly on this part of their path, he said.

An object four times bigger than Earth that's located at 1,000 AU would have a magnitude of about +25 on astronomers' brightness scale, Brown added.

"This is well within reach of the giant telescopes," he said. "The Subaru telescope, I think, on Mauna Kea, [in Hawaii] — the Japanese national telescope — is the prime instrument for doing the search. But there are a lot of other people who have clever ideas on how to find it, too, that are trying with their own telescopes."

...

[Derrick Johnson]

Is everything we know about the solar system WRONG? Bizarre new star formation leaves scientists baffled

• Astronomers have found a new kind of star system called a binary-binary 
• This has two stars orbiting each other, which is orbiting another star itself 
• The new system is also orbited unusually closely by two giant planets
• Finding could change our understanding of how the solar system formed

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3856324/Is-know-sola... 

[Ryan X]

1. The mysterious ‘Planet Nine’ might be causing the whole solar syste...
2. A possible ninth planet may be the reason for a tilt in our solar s...
3. If Planet Nine Is Out There, It Tilts Our Solar System - The New Yo...

That's not all that gets tilted and wobbles I might add... 

[casey a]

Astronomers have discovered two moons located behind Uranus after re-examining old data collected by NASA’s space probe Voyager 2. 

https://www.rt.com/viral/362875-voyager-2-uranus-moons/

[Kris H]

Obama issues executive order on space weather:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/10/13/obama-signs-...

[casey a]

A New Generation of Astronomers Is on the Hunt for the Next Earth 

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/meet-next-generation-exoplanet-hunters/

About a month ago, astronomers announced they had found a new exoplanet—this one, orbiting in the habitable zone of the nearest star to Earth. Proxima b is exciting because it’s nearby, and someday someone might send a spaceprobe to it. Plus, it has a mass close to Earth’s—making it more likely to be livable.

Proxima b popped out of a different technique, one that, for the most part, hasn’t been sensitive enough to see planets like Earth. And advances in that technique—including a new instrument called EXPRES—could improve detection enough for scientists to find and weigh lots of other Earth-mass planets.