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Two astronomers at the California Institute of Technology in the United States plotted the probability distribution function of the orbit of Planet Nine – a hypothetical planet that lies beyond Neptune in our solar system and may have a mass six times that of the earth. Caltech astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin have been working for five years to find planet nine, which is difficult for astronomers to find if it exists, due to its distance from the sun – 300 times the distance from the Sun to Earth.
Scientists say after five years of their proposal, they now know where to look in the sky to find planet nine.
Astronomers say that while they have a general idea of the mysterious planet, “we couldn’t really give a full assessment of the range of uncertainties as to where in the sky the new planet might be, how bad it might be. be massive and how brilliant she could be. Now we can, “Brown wrote in a statement posted to a blog dedicated to the research of mysterious world astronomers.
In the outer solar system, beyond Neptune’s orbit, is a circumstellar disk – of which Pluto is a part – which is said to be made up of more than 100,000 solar system bodies over 100 kilometers in size. This disc is similar to the main asteroid belt and is known as the Kuiper belt.
According to scientists, objects farthest from the Kuiper belt have anomalous orbits so that all of their orbits point somewhat in the same direction, indicating a gravitational signature influencing their orbits. While the two astronomers have proposed that Planet Nine is at the origin of the influence on this anomalous behavior, other scientists question their proposition saying that this anomalous behavior could be an observation bias.
The new paper, submitted Aug. 22 for publication in Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, maps likely orbits and makes predictions about its properties.
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