Astronomers narrow down the range of existence of the unknown planet 'Planet Nine' in the solar system


by Kevin Gill

Planet Nine is the '9th planet in the solar system' that has been proposed to exist outside the solar system, but Planet Nine has never been actually observed. Newly, California Institute of Technology planetary scientists Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin have announced that they have narrowed down the 'range where Planet Nine is likely to exist.'

[2108.09868] The orbit of Planet Nine
https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.09868

The Search for Planet Nine: The orbit of Planet Nine
https://findplanetnine.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-orbit-of-planet-nine.html

If Planet 9 is out There, Here's Where to Look --Universe Today
https://www.universetoday.com/152351/if-planet-9-is-out-there-heres-where-to-look/

EarthSky | Planet Nine: Scientists map its likely location
https://earthsky.org/space/planet-nine-orbit-map/

In 2016, Brown and Batigin's research team published 'Evidence of the Existence of Planet Nine.' At this time, the research team did not directly observe Planet Nine, but inferred the existence of Planet Nine from 'the effect of gravity of a celestial body that seems to be Planet Nine on another celestial body'.

The possibility that the real 9th planet 'Planet X' exists in the solar system suddenly emerges --GIGAZINE



Neptune , the eighth planet in the solar system, is predicted to exist due to the effects of gravity on other objects. Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams , who predicted the existence of Neptune, said that Uranus is an outer planet (Neptune) due to the contradiction between the observed orbital movement of Uranus , the seventh planet of the solar system, and the expected movement. I was influenced by. '

Similarly, Brown and Batigin's research team discovered that the orbit of the Edgeworth Kuiper belt object among the objects outside Neptune's orbit is unnaturally biased. It claims that these objects may be affected by the gravity of Planet Nine, the ninth planet in the solar system.

At the time of writing the article, the existence of Planet Nine is just a hypothesis, but the research team announced that it has narrowed down the 'range where Planet Nine is likely to exist'. The research team identified the known Kuiper belt celestial body, excluded the influence of gravity and observation bias by Neptune, and analyzed the effect of Planet Nine on the Kuiper belt celestial body.

The following is a diagram showing the 'range where Planet Nine is likely to exist' narrowed down by the research team. In the figure above, the line that crosses the center is the ecliptic through which the sun passes through the celestial sphere, and the brightly colored areas show the areas where Planet Nine is likely to be present. The figure below shows the distance from the earth ( astronomical unit / AU ) in a form corresponding to the figure above, and it is highly likely that Planet Nine exists as it approaches dark red in each figure. matter.



From this analysis, the research team estimates that Planet Nine weighs about 6.2 Earths and has an orbit 300 to 380 AU (1 AU is the average distance from the Sun to the Sun) from the Sun. Neptune, the eighth planet in the solar system, has an average distance of about 30 AU from the Sun, which means that Planet Nine is orbiting more than 10 times as far away. Planet Nine also has an orbit tilted about 16 degrees from the plane of the solar system, and its brightness is thought to be 22 magnitude, which is even darker than Pluto's 15 magnitude.

It is still possible that the unnatural orbital bias of the Kuiper belt object was not caused by the gravity of Planet Nine, but by chance. However, according to Brown, the chance is only 0.4%.

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in Science, Posted by log1h_ik