This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Chatham chapter.
Remember the day when scientists announced that they were demoting Pluto to a dwarf planet, meaning that there were only eight planets in our solar system instead of a full set of nine?
Well fear not, space lovers. The same researcher whose work got Pluto reclassified as a dwarf planet, Mike Brown, has recently published work with Konstantin Batygin that provides strong evidence that there potentially is a 9th planet far out in our solar system. Their theoretical discovery is the result of a year and half’s worth of research sparked by a paper published in 2014 by researchers Chad Trujillo and Scott Sheppard suggesting that thirteen of the most distant objects in the Kulper Belt had similar yet unusual orbits, presenting the idea that there was perhaps a small planet lurking out there. Examining this collection of objects described in the 2014 paper, Brown and Batygin found that six of the thirteen objects had similar orbits that followed the same direction in space, a highly unusual discovery.
To attempt to explain this phenomenon, Brown and Batygin ran simulations with a planet in which encircled these Kulper Belt objects. After this proved to provide an insufficient explanation for the orbit of the objects, the duo eventually found that if they ran the simulation with a massive planet in an anti-aligned orbit (an orbit in which the planet’s perihelion is 180 degrees from the perihelion of other objects and planets), that the objects would be in the orbital alignment that Brown and Batygin were actually observing. This anti-aligned orbit allows for the alignment of these objects in relation of the planet to be preserved in physical space.
However, the planet explains more than the alignment of these Kulper Belt objects. The presence of this object would also help explain how objects such as Sedna never truly get close to Neptune unlike the standard Kulper objects in which are gravitationally “kicked out” of Neptune and then return to Neptune again. The massive planet would enable the presence of Sedna objects like it by slowly pulling the object into an orbit that was not closely connected to Neptune. In addition, the presence of the new planet could also help explain why there are objects in the Kulper Belt that have orbits that are perpendicularly inclined to the plane of our solar system.
The object in question that Brown and Batygin have aptly nicknamed Planet Nine has 10x more mass than planet Earth and orbits around 20x farther from the sun than Neptune; it would take this potential new planet around 10,000 to 20,000 years to make one complete orbit around our sun.
For more Information on this possible planet go to these links down below:
Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of Real Ninth Planet
Somewhere Out There Could Be A New Giant Planet in Our Solar System: So Where Is It?
Evidence For A Giant Distant Planet In The Solar System