237: Chapter 237: Pluto is illogical as a planet, and as a satellite...it's ridiculous!

"According to my brother's solar fission hypothesis and this orbital formula, if we continue the deduction, we will find that the Sun, in its early stages, may not have been scattering matter randomly, but rather ejecting chunks of matter rhythmically."

"My calculation result is—"

"The Sun originally likely ejected a total of 6 pairs of planetary matter, which means theoretically 12 planetary embryos!"

"The first pair should be the one closest to the Sun; one of them evolved into Mercury, but its twin brother might have been torn apart or swallowed by the Sun's gravity because it was too close, disappearing completely!"

Xiao Yu and the viewers nodded slightly.

After all, Mercury is too close to the Sun; if it were any closer, it would be pulled by the Sun's gravity and swallowed.

He let his gaze fall on the Solar System star map on the tablet, "The second pair is the current Venus and Earth, a pair of twin planets that have been preserved relatively intact."

"The third pair!"

He pointed his finger at Mars and the nearby location, "It should have been Mars, and a twin Mars of similar size and composition. But something happened to one of them."

"The fourth pair, Jupiter and Saturn, exist intact."

"The fifth pair, Uranus and Neptune, these ice giant brothers are also basically intact."

"And the sixth pair!"

Speaking to this point, Jiang Zhe dragged the star map in the tablet to the outer edge of the Solar System, namely Pluto and the blurry debris belt area further out.

"The eliminated planet: Pluto, the original ninth planet, and outside it, there is a larger and sparser debris belt, which is the Kuiper Belt."

Xiao Yu immediately asked, "Brother, according to this inference, was the Kuiper Belt formed after the planet paired with Pluto shattered?"

"For example, Pluto and another planet were a pair, and then the other planet shattered and became the Kuiper Belt?"

"Just like the Asteroid Belt next to Mars?"

This question also made countless viewers and experts prick up their ears.

"No, that's completely unrelated!" Jiang Zhe shook his head slightly, then threw out an even more explosive idea: "According to rough estimates of the orbits and the total mass of existing Kuiper Belt objects, the combined mass of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt seems too small and too scattered for a pair of twin planets with Pluto."

Pausing for 2.5 seconds, he nodded slightly, his expression becoming quite serious, "And another possibility is more likely—Pluto, and even the main fragments of the entire Kuiper Belt, may not have been a pair of independent planets in the past—but a satellite system of a larger, more distant unknown Planet X!"

"Just like Jupiter, which is observed today to have numerous satellites!"

As the words fell, this inference was even more unbelievable than twin planets!!

Pluto and the Kuiper Belt were originally satellites of some unknown giant planet?

"Wait, unknown giant planet, the ninth planet that Brother mentioned before?"

"Holy crap! Didn't Brother mention a long time ago that there might be a super-sized planet hidden in the outer Solar System? Turns out it's not one, but a damn pair!"

"Nibiru, the legendary Planet X?"

"Right! I remember now! Brother said when popularizing science for Xiao Yu before that there is abnormal gravity in the outer Solar System!"

"Could it be true?"

In Qingfeng Temple.

Listening to what Jiang Zhe said, Zheng Ming shook his head and sneered:

"Look, what did I say? It's getting more and more outrageous!"

"A satellite of an unknown giant planet, why doesn't he say the Solar System is a playground?"

...

At this time, the National Astronomical Observatory.

Director Wang couldn't help but hold his forehead, "Good guy, this deduction is running more and more in the direction of a sci-fi blockbuster!"

Professor Zhang Qinian was relatively calm and shrugged: "What he said is just a deduction based on the framework of his hypothesis, not necessarily a conclusion; however, he can justify his logic."

At this moment, a researcher who had been operating the tablet and quickly checking and comparing data suddenly raised his head.

His face was filled with irrepressible shock.

"Holy cow!!"

Everyone looked at the young researcher.

The researcher connected the content in the tablet to the projection Bluetooth and put it on the big screen.

"Director Wang, Professor Zhang; look at this, the speculation mentioned by Xiaoyu's brother that [Pluto might be a satellite of some giant planet], from the perspective of size data, it may not be a fantasy!"

Everyone moved their eyes to the side of the big screen—the right side of Jiang Zhe's screen.

The screen clearly listed the comparative data—Jupiter's four largest Galilean moons.

Ganymede, diameter about 5268 km.

Callisto, diameter about 4821 km.

Io, diameter about 3643 km.

Europa, diameter about 3122 km.

And Pluto's diameter: about 2376 km.

The researcher pointed to the data and said excitedly: "Jupiter's four moons, each one is bigger than the other, the smallest Europa is 3122 km, which is 800 km longer than the diameter of Pluto, which has already been removed from the planet queue!"

"And Ganymede's 5268 km diameter is even larger than Mercury's 4880 km diameter as a planet!"

"Look at Pluto's size again, in Jupiter's satellite system, although it's considered large, it can't even rank in the top four!!!"

Excited to this point, he paused for 2.5 seconds and gave an even more shocking comparison.

"Looking at our Earth's satellite, the Moon, its diameter is only 3474 km."

"If there is a Planet X at the edge of the Solar System that is larger than Jupiter, and it has a satellite system containing Pluto with a diameter of 2376 km and numerous Kuiper Belt objects..."

"In this way, in terms of size specifications, it makes perfect sense, and even conforms to the observation law that giant planets have multiple large satellites!"

"Pluto's size as a [satellite] is actually much more reasonable than as an [independent planet]!"

As the open and fair astronomical data fell, the conference room was silent.

Wang Weiguo, Professor Zhang Qinian, and a group of researchers stared fixedly at the big screen.

Everyone's face showed disbelief, shock, and a tingling sensation on the scalp.

This simple size comparison, like a bullet, hit everyone's heart on the spot, instantly disintegrating the cognition that Pluto is a planet!

Pluto as a planet, it is unreasonable!

Pluto as a satellite, it is damn reasonable!

Could it be???

Were Pluto and the Kuiper Belt really satellites of the 11th or 12th giant planet at the edge of the Solar System?

At this moment, more and more teachers and experts reacted.

Pluto's size as a planet is unreasonable; but once Pluto's size is treated as a satellite of some giant planet, it becomes reasonable!

In Principal Fu's office, Ren Xiaoyao sat up straight, his face extremely solemn, "Size!"

In Qingfeng Temple, Fang Xu also said the same sentence with a solemn face: "Size!"

Zheng Ming glanced at Fang Xu, what the hell is he talking about, what size?

Inside the big screen.

Jiang Zhe nodded slightly, "Xiao Yu, do you remember the ninth planet hypothesis I mentioned to you before?"

Xiao Yu nodded vigorously: "Remember! Brother, you said that in the far, far outer edge of the Solar System, there may be a huge planet hidden that we haven't directly observed yet, because it is too far from the Sun, too dark, and its orbital period may be thousands of years long, so we haven't found it!"

"Exactly."

"If the solar fission ejected 6 pairs, then the existing planets, counting Mercury's missing brother, then counting Mars's missing brother: the twin Mars represented by the Asteroid Belt; and one of the satellites in the sixth pair of planets that Pluto might represent..."

"Then, that hypothetical [Giant Planet X] and [Giant Planet X+1] hidden outside the Kuiper Belt; whether it is [X] or [X+1], they may have one that escaped and left the Solar System, but there must be one that stayed at the edge of the Solar System."

"Of course, the possible sixth pair of planets may both be at the edge of the Solar System, which is exactly that [gravitational anomaly zone]!"

Then Jiang Zhe changed the subject.

"It's just a pity that current scientific equipment makes it impossible for us to observe the dark star or two dark stars hidden in the Solar System."

"Alright, back to the topic!"

"My solar fission hypothesis can also easily explain another fact: why the revolution direction of the current eight planets is basically consistent with the rotation direction of the Sun..."

Xiao Yu's eyes lit up and she blurted out: "That's because they were all ejected from the rotating Sun, so they inherited this rotation direction!"

"Exactly!"

Then, Jiang Zhe suddenly showed a playful expression and began to ask back, "But Xiao Yu, do you think if I write this solar fission hypothesis into a paper and send it out now, will the astronomical community accept it?"

Xiao Yu was stunned, then full of confidence, raised her iron grip, "That's for sure! Brother's hypothesis explains things better than the current ones, it's intuitive and can solve so many problems; I think once you send it out, the astronomical community will have to respect you as King!"

"They won't." Jiang Zhe said in a flat tone.

"Ah? Why?"

Jiang Zhe smiled slightly sarcastically, "Even if my hypothesis looks more perfect and has stronger explanatory power, it has an unavoidable fatal flaw."

He took a deep breath, "And this flaw is—if the solar fission hypothesis is true, it must first admit that between Mars and Jupiter, there once existed a planet similar to Mars. And, at some point in time, for some reason, this planet completely exploded and shattered."

"Once I write this deduction in black and white in the paper,"

Jiang Zhe's gaze fell on Xiao Yu's puzzled face, "Then the next day, I will become a sci-fi, academic clown who is criticized and even sneered at by the global astronomical community."

"Before you can provide conclusive evidence that the planet existed and exploded, no matter how perfect the logical deduction is, it can't beat a single sentence of [Where is the evidence?]"

Xiao Yu was stunned after hearing this, and a sense of powerlessness welled up in her heart.

The live broadcast room also flooded with barrages of pity and regret.

National Astronomical Observatory.

Director Wang Weiguo sighed when he heard this,

"He is sober, knowing where his model is stuck."

"Unless he can find ironclad evidence that a planet-level destruction actually happened there, otherwise, no matter how beautiful the hypothesis is, it is just a hypothesis."

A young researcher couldn't help but ask: "Director Wang, Professor Zhang, the Giant Planet X that might exist outside the Kuiper Belt that he just mentioned; is there any observational basis?"

Professor Zhang Qinian nodded and replied with a serious expression: "Yes. A few years ago, astronomers from institutions such as Caltech, by analyzing the abnormal clustering of the orbits of trans-Neptunian objects—objects outside the Kuiper Belt—did indeed speculate that there might be an unknown planet at the edge of the Solar System with a mass of about 10 times that of Earth and an orbital period of more than ten thousand years."

"The paper was originally published in the 'Astronomical Journal' and attracted a lot of attention; it's just that it hasn't been directly observed yet."

"So, the [abnormal gravity source] he mentioned is not groundless." (True)

The researcher gasped, only feeling that the story was getting bigger and bigger, and more and more disturbing.

In Qingfeng Temple.

Zheng Ming heard Jiang Zhe be humble for once, but frowned, his hostility slightly reduced: "At least he has self-knowledge; a person should be humble!"

Fang Xu, however, pressed his chin and fell into deeper thought, "Even if he admits that his hypothesis has flaws, that core problem still exists; if, just if, there really once existed a twin Mars, then, what kind of terrifying energy would it take to completely blow a planet the size of Mars into the current Asteroid Belt?"

As if telepathic, just as Fang Xu's thought came out.

Inside the big screen, Jiang Zhe's clear voice came, "4.88 x 10 to the 30th power Joules."

Fang Xu's pupils shrank, "Holy crap!"

This really scared him, even Zheng Ming, Wang Chongyang, and Celestial Master Zhang were stunned.

Even countless viewers in the live broadcast room typed a series of question marks.

Xiao Yu looked at Jiang Zhe blankly, "Brother, what is this number?"

"This is the minimum energy value required to completely crush a rock planet with a mass and volume similar to Mars, and then make the gravity of Mars's twin brother unable to bind itself anymore."

"Converted into units you are familiar with, it is roughly equivalent to the equivalent of 700 quadrillion 'Little Boy' atomic bombs dropped on Japan exploding at the same time."

"Or more intuitively, this energy far exceeds the total equivalent of all nuclear weapons ever produced in human civilization by hundreds of millions of times, and even approaches a small fraction of the total energy released by a small star, such as a red dwarf, in its long lifespan."

"And the Chicxulub meteorite that destroyed the dinosaurs, compared to this, is nothing more than a firefly to the bright moon!"

As the voice fell, the audience was silent.

For a long time, the live broadcast room erupted with barrages like a tide.