what if there was a planet on the other side of the sun?

Question

If there was a planet at a similar distance to earth, with the same orbiting period as earth, how would we have known? Can we see clearly in the movements of Venus, Mars and Earth itself, that this is not the case?

K: you can put diagrams on, by uploading an image file on a yahoo or picassa web account, or any publically accessable internet space for that matter, and then including a link. Looking forward to the diagrams, if you can manage.

Irv and Zee Prim, thank you for your answers. I do not for one moment believe it is there. Also, I did not hear about it from somebody else (such is UFO freaks).

I'm just asking how do we know. Maybe I should put it this way, what would make the notion silly if a science fiction (not fantasy) writer used this in a book?

Answer 1

I'm not an astronomer, but it would seem to me that if there was a planet such, its existence could have been determined by comparing the specific gravities of the planets that you listed.

Answer 2

Such a position for a duplicate earth 180 degrees away on the same orbit is not stable.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050813/mathtrek.asp

Answer 3

the gravitational force from the sun is so great it bends light around it. Therefore we would be able to see it anyways. This was proved when a planet passed behind the sun during an eclipse and it was still visible using a telescope. Try doing a search on bent light.

Answer 4

We would have seen it by now.
We have sent plenty of probes to other planets that ventured to the far side of the sun from our perspective. Any one of them would have picked up a whole planet, earthsized or not, on the farside of the sun. The Voyager spacecraft took a pictures of the soalrsystem looking back from almost beyond the solarsystem. No second earths.

Answer 5

UFO freaks invented this myth and called the hypothetical planet Clarion. That's where UFOs come from. Only trouble is, the Sun is only 30 angular minutes in diameter, viewed from here. Perturbations from other planets would soon make Clarion visible to us. Plus the chances of Clarion being exactly in this position are zilch. If it was even a metre out, it would drift into our view, even without perturbations.

Answer 6

Yes, we can see clearly in those orbits that there is no planet Earth-sized opposite us the sun in an equal orbital path as the Earth.

Answer 7

You would think with all the research that has been established that we would know of such a planet. And those who could afford it would be offered transportation there. What limits does any organization set to prevent profit?

Answer 8

They would have saw it when they went to the moon, when they looked in the apollo's rear vision mirror, silly. ; )

Danny.

Late edit.

It would be way cool if there was a planet that close though, we could just duck over for a bucket of sugar if we were low.........and within 5 years of finding it, they could have a Mc Donalds on every corner too!


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Answer 9

The Hubble telescope has scanned and shown there isn't another planet orbiting the sun.

Answer 10

we can know it definetly... cause every moving object in space have grafitation influence by the sun... so if there is a planet similar distance to the earth, we can know it by the influence of it's grafity