Look at Pluto: there could be a new ninth planet in our solar system and it isn’t you.
Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology announced yesterday that there could be a new planet at the very edge of our solar system, either further away than Pluto. What are they calling it so far? The creatively named “Planet Nine.”
Published in the Astronomical Journal, Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown have found evidence to suggest that there is a planet whose mass is five to ten times that of Earth, is composed of ice, and has been having an affect on celestial planets, with Planet Nine being referred to as a “massive perturber.”
Has Planet Nine been directly observed yet? No. But according to the Washington Post, the astronomers are about 90% sure that Planet Nine exists. The ironic thing is that the two researchers initially wanted to prove the planet didn’t exist, until they found evidence that some kind of huge celestial body was having an affect on the orbits of dwarf worlds. After doing the math and some more pondering, the two took the idea seriously and have now focused on proving the existence of this planet.
So far Brown believes that Planet Nine is following a highly elliptical orbit that sets it on a highly irregular path: one that approaches close to the sun once every 10,000 years, but even then remains far outside the known planets. This would explain why–in an era of great cosmic discovery–we haven’t yet witnessed it directly.
For more information on Planet Nine, you can read Batygin & Brown’s paper–“Evidence For A Distant Giant Planet In The Solar System”–directly, via the Astronomical Journal.
Thanks, Washington Post