What will happen if Planet Nine is a black hole the size of a bowling ball?

Some of the farthest rocks in our solar system act in a way that suggests that there is a massive object that we have not been able to see. A planet? May be. But why not a little black hole?

This is a scenario that two scientists describe in a new article. Of course, they recognize that a planet is more likely than an old black hole, unlike everything we observed directly. But they just want astronomers to think creatively while looking for what might be this hypothetical object, often called Planet Nine.

"By simply focusing on the concept of planet, you limit the experimental research that you undertake," said Gizmodo James Unwin, one of the authors of the study and an assistant professor at the University. from Illinois to Chicago. "Once you start thinking of more exotic objects, like primordial black holes, you think of different ways. We advocate that rather than just looking for visible light, perhaps gamma rays. Or cosmic rays. "

Past Neptune, the movement of rocky objects seems to be disturbed by something whose mass is about five to fifteen times greater than that of the Earth. Scientists have tentatively named this object Planet Nine and seek it. But it is not the only gravitational anomaly of planetary mass in the galaxy. Scientists have detected short chains in the light of incoming stars, possibly from objects the size of a planet that bent their gravity. Maybe they are rogue planets or maybe tiny black holes.

The "primitive black holes" are a class of proposed objects that have been formed as a result of the chaotic first days of the universe. Like any other black hole, these are incredibly dense regions where gravity distorts the space so much that light can escape. But these would weigh much less than the stars, since they were not formed of stars like the black holes we observed – they would have formed from places of density additional remaining in the early universe rapidly expanding. (And no, they would not contribute significantly to dark matter, that mysterious substance that seems to be the lion's share of the mass of the universe.)

Unwin and his collaborator Jakub Scholtz, a research fellow at the Institute of Particle Phenomenology at Durham University, proposed creating a primordial black hole that interacted with other members of the solar system and sank into an orbit. I asked Uniwn and Scholtz if such an object would evaporate tiny physical effects called Hawking radiation; they said no, even a black hole of five land masses would last a very long time, much longer than the age of the universe.

If the planet was really a primordial black hole, rather than a mass of ordinary matter the size of a planet, then it would be useless to search with typical search means of the planet. A figure in the document, shared above, shows that a black hole of five land mass could fit in the palm of your hand (yes, this encounter would kill you), and that a black hole of ten Terrestrial mass would be the size of a bowling ball. To find it, it would take a telescope research dedicated to finding a source that current gamma ray telescopes do not usually see – a source of high energy radiation moving fast in the sky .

Konstantin Batygin, a Planet Nine fighter, did not rule out the idea that it was really something more exotic. "Planet Nine could be a hamburger containing five land masses, and the calculation would be just as simple. Of course, a hamburger has a comparable albedo, "or the amount of light it reflects," on a planet, but a black hole the size of your wallet is a little harder to find, "he said. explained to Gizmodo in an email.He wrote that the scenario is a stretch, but not totally implausible, and that a black hole becomes an interesting potential target if Planet Nine does not rely on typical deep soundings and if the strange movement of trans-Neptunian objects persists.

Something causes unexpected behavior in the remote solar system, whatever it is. A primordial black hole is not the obvious choice nor the most likely choice – but the science is to keep the mind open and let the experiences refute the assumptions. If there is really a massive object out there, even if it's a planet, it would be "pretty shocking," Scholtz said.