Is there planet 9 in the solar system? A new study indicates where to find it

Since Pluto is no longer considered a planet, there are currently only eight recognized planets in our solar system, although there is some evidence that there may in fact be a ninth.

Hypothetical Planet 9 will be located in the outer region of our solar system, and a new one study can help find out where it is, Secondly Phys.org portal.

Planet 9’s potential for existence comes from its attraction to other bodies. If a planet is present, its gravity will affect the orbits of other planets. In fact, this is how Neptune was discovered, when John Couch Adams and Urban Le Verrier noticed that the planet Uranus appears to have been pulled by an invisible planet.

In the case of Planet 9, there is no gravitational influence on other planets, but rather a strange group of small icy bodies outside the solar system, known as Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). If there are no planets outside the Kuiper belt, then the orbits of the Kuiper belt objects will be randomly oriented within the orbital plane for the solar system. Instead, we see many KBO orbitals grouped in the same direction.

In 2016, the authors of the new study analyzed the statistical distribution of Kuiper Belt objects, and concluded that the clump was caused by an undiscovered exoplanet. Based on his calculations, this celestial body would have a mass of five planets, and it would be about ten times farther from the Sun than Neptune. A wide area of ​​the sky has been calculated Where is the planet It could have been, but the searches yielded nothing, the portal informs.

One of the interesting aspects of the study on the supposed ninth planet is the new calculated orbit put planet 9 Closer to the Sun than originally thought, which is strange because if it was closer to our star, we would have to find it now.

However, the scientists argue that observations so far have ruled out options of this kind, which may further help in finding their potential location. If the planet in question exists, it should be detectable by the Vera Rubin Observatory in the near future, Phys.org says.

However, nothing is conclusive yet, and it must be borne in mind that many astronomers still argue that Planet 9 does not exist.