New studies support the existence of a massive 9th planet

Pluto was the ninth planet, but it lost that distinction many years ago. This is the first of many dwarf planets outside the solar system, but there is every reason to believe that something bigger might be hiding there. Scientists are looking for a truly ninth planet since 2014 and two new studies provide more evidence of the existence of such an object.

The Kuiper Belt exists in the space beyond Neptune's orbit. Pluto and other objects in this area of ​​space are often referred to as Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO). While they were studying the KBO orbits discovered in recent years, astronomers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin of Caltech realized that there was an unusual clustering or orbits. According to the 2014 document, this suggests the existence of a super-terrestrial body in the external solar system.

Until now, no one has been able to directly prove that the so-called "New Planet" exists, but new studies add weight to the hypothesis. Fred Adams of the University of Michigan thinks Planet Nine will be spotted in the next 10 to 15 years. In his latest study, Adams used computer models of the evolution of the solar system to simulate Planet Nine's place in our little corner of the universe.

According to Adams, the analysis suggests that Planet Nine is smaller and closer to the sun than previously thought. The team's model predicts that Planet Nine is about five to ten times more massive than Earth and is around 60 billion kilometers. This estimate makes sense because astronomers have detected planets of similar size in other solar systems, but there are none of the known planets here.

Planet Nine may be at the origin of the grouping of KBO orbits.

Another study by Brown and Batygin examines what we know about grouped KBO orbits. Researchers looked for a bias in each observation, finding a 500 chance that the observations were inaccurate.

This points to Something which leads the KBOs to organize in these asymmetrical orbits. Other teams have suggested that the cumulative gravity of many small objects could affect such orbits. Still others claim that a massive object like a brown dwarf grazing the solar system could push the KBO into such orbits. For now, the answer is unclear, but new studies support the idea that Planet Nine exists.

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