Episode 182: Planet Nine or Black Hole One, with Jakub Scholtz

thestarspot

6 years ago

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Feature Guest: Jakub Scholtz

We’ve long believed that membership in the solar system’s planetary family was limited to those eight planets we learned about in grade school. But then astronomers began to raise the possibility of a new super-Earth-sized planet, five to ten times the mass of Earth, orbiting far off in the outer solar system. Now if you thought the concept of Planet Nine was astonishing, consider if the mysterious body wasn’t a planet at all – but a black hole. That’s right, Planet Nine might be Black Hole One, our own solar system’s very first singularity. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by astrophysicist Jakub Scholtz, co-author of a new study making the case for this fascinating proposal.

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Current in Space

Tony celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. Then Jeff reports on water loss from mysterious interstellar comet Borisov.

About Our Guest

Jakub Sholtz is Junior Research Fellow at the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology at Durham University in the UK. He earned his PhD at the University of Washington, where he was awarded the Hadley Fellowship, and performed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University.

Links

Scholtz and J. Unwin, “What if Planet 9 is a Primordial Black Hole”, arXiv:1909.11090 (scholarly article)

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