Link Back to Post #42
One good thing about this right now is that in April (presumably, or shortly thereafter) we will have some results from WISE to establish or discredit (although this has such popular appeal that it has a life of its own) a theory to explain a single phenomenon: the high angle of approach of certain cometary anomalies, the 27-M.Y. cycle of extinctions notwithstanding.
And the 27 M.Y. orbital cycle has only one thing to establish it as proof, other than extinctions which may be some period greater or lesser: at a distance out at the outer limits of the Oort cloud, and at some projected appropriate velocity, an orbital cycle might share a period that matched the extinctions.
Don't they need some explanation of the mechanics that would account for such a large body to form out where the stuff of the original accretion disc is most disparate? Do Pluto/Charon or particularly other large KBOs show any resonance that would indicate or support its existence? Hopefully the
New Horizons Mission will yield something useful, but not of course in the immediate future, as it will begin its observations of the Kuiper Belt not before 2015.
EDIT: I would not expect New Horizons to actually detect such an object in whatever spectra, but at the very least some indication of a resonance that might begin to support its existence. It does appear that the scientists who (currently) postulate this large mass think that WISE might turn up something.