From: utzoo!decvax!duke!harpo!npois!alice!sjb Newsgroups: net.space Title: Space Search Article-I.D.: alice.677 Posted: Fri Jun 18 19:54:23 1982 Received: Sat Jun 19 04:43:41 1982 Scientists at the Ames Research Center are now talking more than ever about another body of some sort in our solar system. They say that Pluto is too small to be affecting the orbits of Uranus and Neptune as much as they had earlier expected. So, Pioneers 10 and 11 are now searching around to find the object. They hope that the two spacecraft, launched ten years ago and now on opposite sides of the sun, will be affected by the gravitational pull of the object and will yield the approximate position of it. Possibilities are a tenth planet (though it would have to be very dark to have evaded observation), a brown dwarf star (one that never ignited), a dark star that is just passing through the solar system, or even a black hole, and many others. A black hole is considered unlikely though, since the energy usually found around it has not been detected.