might the solar system has nine planets. Two scientists from the United States believes that the deployment of the orbits of several objects beyond the orbit of Neptune indicates the presence of a large, unknown planet on the edge of our solar system.
A hypothetical planet can to circle the Sun once every 10-20 thousand years , within an average of twenty further than Neptune. Her weight would be 10 times greater than the mass of the Earth.
The authors of the article, which appeared on Wednesday in the journal “The Astronomical Journal” are Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown of Caltech in Pasadena Institute (USA), experts from research distant objects in the solar system. New potential target scientists named the Ninth Planet (
- It may be true ninth planet. Since ancient times, it was discovered only two real planets in the solar system. This would be the third. It is quite a significant portion of the solar system, where you can still discover something interesting – says Michael Brown.
Their hypothesis, researchers are based on the analysis of clusters of six known objects orbiting beyond Neptune. According to calculations carried out, there is only 0.007 percent. chance (one in 15,000) that the observed characteristics of the orbits of these objects are accidental convergence.
This fits in with lasting more than 100 years the search for the so-called. Planet X, which is a large object beyond the orbit of Neptune, disturbing the movement of Uranus and Neptune. The observations led to the discovery of Pluto in 1930, but soon found out that Pluto is too small to explain the disorder. Despite the fact that studies in the second half of the twentieth century, made it possible to specify the mass of Neptune, so that the problem disappeared disorders, the objects beyond Neptune still sought.
It is now known that beyond the orbit of Neptune is a lot of small bodies similar to asteroids between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The equivalent of the asteroid belt is called the Kuiper belt.
The role of Brown as the discoverer of a potential ninth planet, contrasts with his earlier role “detronizatora Pluto”, because the discovery by Brown in 2005 dwarf planet Eris was one of the reasons for the deprivation titers ninth planet Pluto Solar System. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union has established a definition of a planet in the solar system, according to which it has eight planets from Mercury to Neptune, and Pluto and several other objects are assigned to a new category called. dwarf planets, ie intermediate bodies between asteroids and planets.
In 2014, Chad Trujillo and Scott Sheppard published an article which indicated that 13 distant objects in the Kuiper belt have similar orbital characteristics. As an explanation of the convergence suggested the existence of a small planet. Brown believed that planetary solution is unlikely, but took the problem more closely.
Brown, together with Batyginem analyzed by a year and a half distant objects in the Kuiper belt, approaching the problem from two different perspectives. Brown as an observer looking from the perspective of what you see in the sky and Batygin as a theorist analyzing the dynamics of physical solutions in the orbits of objects in the solar system.
It turned out that six of the most distant objects in the group, which examined Trujillo and Sheppard have elliptical orbits pointing in the same direction in space. This is particularly surprising in the context of these objects are moving at the edge of the solar system and from different periods.
“It’s like having a six-clockwise moving at different rates and time to look at them, they are all in the same place” – vividly explains Brown. The chance of such a situation is 1 in 100, but in addition six orbits of these objects are inclined to the same extent – point in the same direction about 30 degrees relative to the plane of the orbits of the eight planets of the Solar System. A chance, it’s just 0.007 per cent, or rather this should not happen by accident.
The first consideration was the following explanation: perhaps there are enough objects in the Kuiper belt, some of which have not yet been found to exert a gravitational influence on the discussed group of bodies. But it soon turned out to be rather impossible, because it would require that, in the Kuiper belt was 100 times more mass than is currently estimated.
The remainder therefore to examine the idea of an additional planet. As a result of the simulation it proved that the best situation this explains the presence of a massive planet from orbit situated in such a way that its closest to the Sun point (perihelion) is located at the site opposite 180 degrees to peryheliów other planets and objects of the Kuiper belt.
As he explains Batygin, a natural response to such a scenario would be: “the geometry of the orbit is not possible”. They can be stable for a long time, as would cause a possible collision objects. But the mechanism known as resonance average traffic can prevent a collision scenario. For example, for every four circuits around the sun for the Ninth Planet, distant Kuiper belt object overcomes nine of their orbits, and never collide.
The existence of a ninth planet helps explain not only the inclination orbits in the Kuiper belt objects. It also allows you to explain the mysterious orbits of two of them. Sedna, an object discovered by Brown in 2003, never coming to Neptune, as opposed to objects thrown by Neptune’s gravity, which then return in its vicinity. The impact of the Ninth Planet causes the orbits of objects such as the two mentioned may be naturally slowly moved apart, making them less relationship with Neptune.
The calculations also show that in the Kuiper belt may occur with orbits lying perpendicular to the plane of the solar system. It turns out that in recent years, observers have identified four subjects moving vertically in relation to the movement of Neptune. Their orbits are in line with expectations simulated taking into consideration the Ninth Planet.
How could come ninth planet? If, four giant gas planets, there is no reason to think that she could not have formed as fifth. If you came too close to Jupiter and Saturn, he may have been stranded on a long elliptical orbit.
Some experts, however, has doubts and indicates that the result of statistical uncertainty is still greater than generally accepted in scientific research, and reduce the group analyzed objects from 13 to 6 weakens the conclusions. Batygin and Brown speak in turn, they realize that astronomers generally recognize the existence of Planet X until when will direct observational discovery of the object, and currently it is still only a hypothesis. Astronomers have obtained observation time on the large 10-meter telescope in Hawaii to look for this planet.
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