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.