Perpendicular orbits?

[Mentat]

I've just talked with someone who informed me of a T.V. special, that dealt with the discovery of two planets, that move in perpendicular orbits - relative to the other nine planets. Is this true, or was I right in assuming that it was ridiculous?

[selfAdjoint]

I don't believe that can be a long term stable orbit. The amount of mass in or near plane of the ecliptic would surely perturb such orbits after a while.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by selfAdjoint
I don't believe that can be a long term stable orbit. The amount of mass in or near plane of the ecliptic would surely perturb such orbits after a while.

That's what I tried to tell him, but he insisted that he had seen this on some "science special".

[LURCH]

The special to which he reffered might have been fudging around a little with the definition of "planet", since we don't really have one, yet. Maybe they were just talking about a couple of larger-than-usual objects in the Oort Cloud (which is, after all, spherical).