Waiting for the Ninth Planet Found?
Sciencelovers - Two astronomers say they have found evidence of a planet about 10 times the mass of Earth is hiding on the outside of our solar system, in orbit are not closer than 200 times the distance between the sun and earth. DijulukiPlanet to Nine, this object is not visible directly. However, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have concluded existence of other strange orbits, of objects smaller.
Had this planet is confirmed, then he could steal the crown that was once used by Pluto. Ironically, Brown, who called himself "plutokiller" on Twitter, was instrumental in removing the crown of ninth planet of Pluto, because in 2005, Brown discovered an object about the size of Pluto, now known as Eris, in areas far from the solar system called Kuiper belt, which led to the reclassification of two objects as dwarf planets.
Brown and the other astronomers and continue exploring the Kuiper belt and have found a lot of small objects. One of them, called 2012 VP113, which was found in 2014, opening the possibility of a large distant planet, after astronomers realized that in a strange orbit aligned with a group of other objects. Now Brown and Batygin have studied this orbit in detail and found that six others follow an elliptical orbit that point to the same direction and equally tilt away from the field of the solar system.
"It's almost like having six needle on a clock that everything moves at a different pace, and when you saw it, they were all in the same place," Brown said in a press release announcing the discovery. The chances of it happening randomly is only 0.007 percent. "So we think there is something else that form these orbits."
According to the simulation, something that is a planet that orbits in the opposite side of the sun against all six of the smaller objects. Planet gravitational resonance between this and the other nine to keep everything in order. The planet's orbit extends far, at least 200 times farther than the distance the sun to the Earth, and it will take between 10,000 and 20,000 Earth years to complete a single orbit or one round.
Brown and Batygin have detailed their findings in a paper published in the Astronomical Journal January 20, 2016, but they do not have direct evidence for the existence of the new planet, which means it's time for other astronomers to point their telescopes and hunting.
"All the people who are angry and disappointed that Pluto no longer a planet can be happy to know that there is a real planet out there that can still be found," said Brown. "Now we can go and find the planet and makes the solar system has nine planets once more."
