Renegade Game Studios Renegade Game Studio | The Search for Planet X | Board Game | Ages 13+ | 1-4 Players | 60 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

de la Fuente Marcos, C.; de la Fuente Marcos, R. (1 September 2014). "Extreme trans-Neptunian objects and the Kozai mechanism: signalling the presence of trans-Plutonian planets". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. 443 (1): L59–L63. arXiv: 1406.0715. Bibcode: 2014MNRAS.443L..59D. doi: 10.1093/mnrasl/slu084. S2CID 118622180. Patryk S., Lykawka; Tadashi, Mukai (2008). "An Outer Planet Beyond Pluto and the Origin of the Trans-Neptunian Belt Architecture". The Astronomical Journal. 135 (4): 1161–1200. arXiv: 0712.2198. Bibcode: 2008AJ....135.1161L. doi: 10.1088/0004-6256/135/4/1161. S2CID 118414447. Comets (2) – Comets only appear in certain sectors (noted on your sheet). When surveying for them, you must start and end in one of these designated sectors. Osbourne, Hannah (23 June 2017). "Forget Planet9 - there's evidence of a tenth planet lurking at the edge of the solar system". Newsweek . Retrieved 23 June 2017. The team concluded that the observed objects only seem to be clustered because of selection bias. However, others disagree, claiming more data is needed. And this may soon be coming.

J. Horner & N. W. Evans (September 2002). "Biases in cometary catalogues and Planet X". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 335 (3): 641–654. arXiv: astro-ph/0205150. Bibcode: 2002MNRAS.335..641H. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-8711.2002.05649.x. S2CID 17110153. Astronomers soon discovered a moon orbiting Neptune, but it took more than a century to discover a second one. Our knowledge of distant Neptune greatly increased from the scientific observations made during Voyager 2’s flyby in 1989, including the discovery of five additional moons and confirmation of dark rings orbiting the planet." Neptune (Source: NASA on the commons) Clyde Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto in 1930 appeared to validate Lowell's hypothesis, and Pluto was officially named the ninth planet. In 1978, Pluto was conclusively determined to be too small for its gravity to affect the giant planets, resulting in a brief search for a tenth planet. The search was largely abandoned in the early 1990s, when a study of measurements made by the Voyager 2 spacecraft found that the irregularities observed in Uranus's orbit were due to a slight overestimation of Neptune's mass. [3] After 1992, the discovery of numerous small icy objects with similar or even wider orbits than Pluto led to a debate over whether Pluto should remain a planet, or whether it and its neighbours should, like the asteroids, be given their own separate classification. Although a number of the larger members of this group were initially described as planets, in 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) reclassified Pluto and its largest neighbours as dwarf planets, leaving Neptune the farthest known planet in the Solar System. [4] S. C. Tegler & W. Romanishin (2001). "Almost Planet X". Nature. 411 (6836): 423–424. doi: 10.1038/35078164. PMID 11373654. S2CID 5135498.a b J. K. Davies; J. McFarland; M. E. Bailey; B. G. Marsden; etal. (2008). "The Early Development of Ideas Concerning the Transneptunian Region" (PDF). In M. Antonietta Baracci; Hermann Boenhardt; Dale Cruikchank; Alissandro Morbidelli (eds.). The Solar System Beyond Neptune. University of Arizona Press. pp.11–23. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-02-20 . Retrieved 2014-11-05.

In essence, the game is an extended Logic Problem puzzle wrapped up into a board game. So, if logic is your thing, then you’re likely to get a lot out of Planet X. If not, it might leave you a little cold. In January 2016, Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown published their “Planet Nine” hypothesis. Using a computer model, they showed that a distant planet could explain the unique orbits of observable objects in the solar system. In The Search for Planet X, 1-4 players take on the role of astronomers, surveying the night sky and attempting to deduce the location of this hidden planet. Luhman's study found 762 new objects among the data, but no signs of a Saturn-sized object out to 10,000 times the Earth-sun distance (an astronomical unit, or AU; 1 AU is about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers). Nor did Luhman spot any Jupiter-size or larger objects out to 26,000 AUs. Renu Malhotra (1998). "Orbital Resonances and Chaos in the Solar System" (PDF). Solar System Formation and Evolution ASP Conference Series. 149: 37. Bibcode: 1998ASPC..149...37M.

Contributors

Millholland, Sarah; Laughlin, Gregory (2017). "Constraints on Planet Nine's Orbit and Sky Position within a Framework of Mean Motion Resonances". The Astronomical Journal. 153 (3): 91. arXiv: 1612.07774. Bibcode: 2017AJ....153...91M. doi: 10.3847/1538-3881/153/3/91. S2CID 119325788. Lowell's sudden death in 1916 temporarily halted the search for PlanetX. Failing to find the planet, according to one friend, "virtually killed him". [25] Lowell's widow, Constance, engaged in a legal battle with the observatory over Lowell's legacy which halted the search for PlanetX for several years. [26] In 1925, the observatory obtained glass discs for a new 13in (33cm) wide-field telescope to continue the search, constructed with funds from Abbott Lawrence Lowell, [27] Percival's brother. [18] In 1929 the observatory's director, Vesto Melvin Slipher, summarily handed the job of locating the planet to Clyde Tombaugh, a 22-year-old Kansas farm boy who had only just arrived at the Lowell Observatory after Slipher had been impressed by a sample of his astronomical drawings. [26] Fienga, A; Laskar, J; Manche, H; Gastineau, M (23 February 2016). "Constraints on the location of a possible 9th planet derived from the Cassini data". Astronomy and Astrophysics. 587: L8. arXiv: 1602.06116. Bibcode: 2016A&A...587L...8F. doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/201628227. S2CID 119116589. There’s also some pleasing player interaction in the game as every action you take is publicly announced, with only the app’s answers kept secret. Combined with the opportunity for players to make claims on the non-Planet X objects they think they’ve found – sharing knowledge with other players for VP – this can lead to interesting second-level deductions, guesswork, and bluffing. However, it’s a subtle, optional form of interaction, meaning the game doesn’t feel all that different whether you play with three others or the challenging-but-fair AI opponent inbuilt in the app. In 2020, a new theory was published in The Astrophysical Journal Lettersby scientists from Harvard University which suggested that not only might Planet 9 actually exist but that there may once have been a binary companion to our Sun .

For instance, one of the topics might be ‘Comets & Asteroids’. You can then write this on your sheet to help with deductions.Mark Littman (1990). Planets Beyond: Discovering the Outer Solar System. New York: Wiley. ISBN 978-0471510536. Planets in the inner solar system were easily spotted by early astronomers as they moved across the sky, as were the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. More distant planets had to wait until the 18th century and the improvement of telescopes for their discovery; Uranus was discovered in 1781 and it took almost another 60 years to locate Neptune. In certain sectors of the board, you will find a ‘Theory’ symbol. Whenever the yellow arrow on the Earth board points to or passes over, one of these, pause the game and carry out a ‘Theory Phase’. Submit a Theory – if you are 1/2/3 spaces behind, you can submit one theory. If you are 4/5 spaces behind, you can submit two. There's both evidence that Planet 9 formed alongside the other planets in our solar system billions of years ago, and that it just passed through long enough to shake things up before disappearing once more.

The existence of Planet 9 was dealt a blow last year, when a team led by physicist Kevin Napier, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, conducted a meta-analysis of surveys examining the orbits of ‘extreme’ trans-Neptunian objects. The researchers found that the objects’ perturbed orbits could actually be explained without the presence of a nearby planet. a b Batygin, Konstantin; Brown, Michael E. (20 January 2016). "Evidence for a distant giant planet in the Solar system". The Astronomical Journal. 151 (2): 22. arXiv: 1601.05438. Bibcode: 2016AJ....151...22B. doi: 10.3847/0004-6256/151/2/22. S2CID 2701020. Myles Standish (1992-07-16). "Planet X– No dynamical evidence in the optical observations". Astronomical Journal. 105 (5): 200–2006. Bibcode: 1993AJ....105.2000S. doi: 10.1086/116575.And that’s how to play The Search For Planet X! This is a lovely little deduction game, with gorgeous production and brilliant app integration. It’s not for everyone, particularly as there’s very little interaction an