If planet nine is hiding in our solar system, we finally know where it is

We may be getting closer to a full set of planets, again.

Our solar system has only had eight known planets since Pluto was demoted, but evidence pointing to another candidate for planet nine status has frowned astronomers for years on suspicion that it is there, lurking at the edge of our solar system. But we may have finally figured out the precise trajectory of the missing cosmic body, according to a recent study shared on a preprint server.

Planet Nine can run, but she can’t hide. Unless, of course, that doesn’t exist.

Planet Nine researchers respond to criticism

All of the evidence for Planet Nine comes from the gravitational pull it appears to have on other bodies in the outer solar system. If there is a planet, a gravitational anomaly makes sense, and all astronomers need to do a little math on the affected oscillations of other nearby planets, to challenge the news. This is how astronomer John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Varrier discovered Neptune, when they observed Uranus exhibiting a “pull” movement from an invisible planet. But for Planet Nine, no one saw any unusual movement or “pull” in the path of other planets. The only gravitational evidence available is an atypical clustering of small icy bodies in the outer solar system, within the totality of Kuiper Belt (KBO) objects. If no planet existed beyond the Kuiper belt, the orbits of the KBOs would spontaneously be arranged in the orbital plane of the solar system. But that is not what is happening.

Instead of the standard random motion, astronomers observe clustered KBO orbits, and while it might be a fluke, it’s also highly unlikely. In 2016, researchers analyzed the statistical distribution of KBOs and reported that the unusual clustering behavior was due to an undetected outer planet. They even calculated that its mass was that of five Earths and about 10 times the distance of Neptune from the sun. The older study also specified which region of the sky the planet was probably hiding, but widespread research found no new planets, which has led some to believe that it does not exist. The new study takes a look at the initial work of 2016 and examines some of the criticisms of the proposed ninth body.

The jury is still out on Planet Nine being real or not

One of the problems with locating a planetary body in the outer solar system is the inherent difficulty in locating anything there. This forces astronomers to look where they want, meaning that aggregated KBOs could be the result of skewed data. The authors of the recent study explain this observation bias and concluded that clustered bodies are still an unusual phenomenon, with only a 0.4% chance of occurring without a nearby body of significant mass, such as a planet. But, more importantly, the study’s authors located the mysterious object further when they repeated their calculations of Planet Nine’s likely orbit, placing it closer to the sun than we thought.

If Planet Nine is real, astronomers should detect it very soon. But, with many astronomers even more skeptical about it (some of whom even suspected it was a primordial black hole), the years to come will likely see it either dismissed as a possible explanation for the KBO cluster or revealed. the world. historical data on a new ninth planet. Time will tell what the final verdict will be on Planet Nine.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article had an ambiguous title about how some scientists talk about Planet Nine. This has been corrected to reflect that its existence remains unknown.