For decades, the solar system was home to nine planets – that is, before Pluto’s demotion to “dwarf planet” status – and it not may be again, thanks to the discovery of a new, larger than Earth-sized world by Caltech researchers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown.
Batygin and Brown, whose findings were published Wednesday in The Astronomical Journal, discovered the possible existence of the world informally dubbed “Planet Nine” though a series of mathematical models and computer simulations, but have yet to directly observe it.
Nonetheless, their research indicates that the new world has approximately 10 times the mass of Earth and orbits the sun at an average distance of 20 times that of Neptune. In fact, the duo states that it would take “Planet Nine” between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete a single orbit.
The six most distant known objects in the solar system with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Also, when viewed in three dimensions, they all tilt nearly identically away from the plane of the solar system. Batygin and Brown show that a planet with 10 times the mass of the earth in a distant eccentric orbit anti-aligned with the other six objects (orange) is required to maintain this configuration. The diagram was created using WorldWide Telescope. (Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC))
“Although we were initially quite skeptical that this planet could exist, as we continued to investigate its orbit and what it would mean for the outer solar system, we become increasingly convinced that it is out there,” Batygin said in a statement. “For the first time in over 150 years, there is solid evidence that the solar system’s planetary census is incomplete.”
At an estimated 5,000 times the mass of Pluto, “Planet Nine” would be “a real ninth planet” and not another dwarf planet, added Brown, a planetary astronomy professor at Caltech. “There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third.”
The hunt is on to locate this purported new world
Furthermore, unlike dwarf planets, “Planet Nine” gravitationally dominates its neighborhood of the solar system, the study authors noted. Not only that, but Brown said that it dominates more of its surroundings than any of the known planets, which he said makes it “the most planet-y of the planets in the whole solar system.”
According to NBC News and National Geographic, the size of the proposed new planet would make it either a super-Earth or mini-Neptune, both of which have been scarce in our own cosmic backyard despite how efficiently the galaxy can produce them. In addition, Batygin and Brown believe that “Planet Nine” could help explain several unusual features of the Kuiper Belt.
The discovery was born out of research that started in 2014, as the Caltech scientists launched an investigation into 13 objects in the Kuiper Belt, the area of the solar system located past Neptune and which is filled with comets, dwarf planets and other icy entities. Six of those objects wound up having orbits indicating that they were likely orbiting some distant, yet-undiscovered body.
That body, Batygin and Brown now believe, is likely “Planet Nine,” which they hypothesize was first formed closer to the sun before being launched to the outskirts of the solar system during the earliest days of the cosmic neighborhood, when the sun was still part of its native star cluster and the surrounding stars kept it from completely escaping the reach of its gravitational pull.
The Caltech team plans to refine their simulations and hope to learn more about the orbit of the newfound planet. They also hope they or one of their fellow astronomers can ultimately observe the world from telescopes or observatories. While Brown said he would “love to find it,” he also said that he would be “perfectly happy” if someone else located it. “That is why we’re publishing this paper. We hope that other people are going to get inspired and start searching.”
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Feature Image: This artist’s rendering shows the distant view from Planet Nine back towards the sun. The planet is thought to be gaseous, similar to Uranus and Neptune. Hypothetical lightning lights up the night side. (Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC))
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