Re: Planet?
Well, the published article does pose an idea of how a mass like that would have ended up all the way out there, and if they're correct "orbit clearing" would have been on the menu before the core was tossed out by the Dance of the Gas Giants during our solar systems puberal tantrums.
Fair warning: the article is not Light Reading, and the Math it contains may well cause recurrent nightmares of Highschool Days Past or other feelings of inadequacy. They're also pretty fair about the limits of their models, so anyone owning a fat cluster with spare time : They Need Moar Cycles...
But yeah.. They make a solid case. Enough to warrant a serious hunt.
Edit: a brown dwarf would have shown up on at least IR already.. Besides the mass is calculated to be around the order of 10 earth masses. Nowhere near enough to rival any of the Big 4, let alone a brown dwarf...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
