Tyche (hypothetical planet)

Not to be confused with the hypothetical planet Planet Nine, the hypothetical star Nemesis, or other hypothesized planets beyond Neptune.
This article is about the hypothetical planet. For the asteroid, see 258 Tyche.
An artist's rendering of the Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt (inset)

Tyche /ˈtaɪki/ was a hypothetical gas giant located in the Solar System's Oort cloud, first proposed in 1999 by astrophysicists John Matese, Patrick Whitman and Daniel Whitmire of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.[1][2] They argued that evidence of Tyche's existence could be seen in a supposed bias in the points of origin for long-period comets. More recently, Matese[3] and Whitmire[4] re-evaluated the comet data and noted that Tyche, if it existed, would be detectable in the archive of data that was collected by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope.[5] In 2014, NASA announced that the WISE survey had ruled out any object with Tyche's characteristics, indicating that Tyche as hypothesized by Matese, Whitman, and Whitmire does not exist.[6][7][8]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Independent was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Space was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Astrophysics Homepage of John J. Matese". Ucs.louisiana.edu. September 21, 2011. Retrieved April 1, 2013.
  4. ^ "Daniel P. Whitmire". Ucs.louisiana.edu. Retrieved April 1, 2013.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference WISE was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference NASA-20140307 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference MateseWhitmire2011 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Helhoski, Anna. "News 02/16/11 Does the Solar System Have Giant New Planet?". The Norwalk Daily Voice. Retrieved July 10, 2012.