The study, yet to be peer-reviewed, is a result of their collective efforts to simulate the movements of objects on the Solar System’s fringes and determine the likelihood of Planet Nine’s existence. The discovery of a new planet is often the result of collaboration between multiple individuals and institutions. In this case, the idea of Planet Nine was first proposed by two scientists, who simulated the movements of objects on the Solar System’s fringes to determine the likelihood of its existence.

The study, “although not yet peer-reviewed.”.. is a significant contribution to the field of astronomy and sheds light on the mysteries of our Solar System.

Image

Reference: See here

In The News:

A huge unknown lurks in the far reaches of our Solar System — something massive enough to pull distant space rocks into extraordinarily long, thin loops around the Sun.

In 2016, he and a colleague at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) proposed something almost unfathomable: a huge planet, up to 10 times heftier than Earth, way out on the edge of our Solar System.

Now, they have published a study , yet to be peer-reviewed, that simulated the movements of objects on the Solar System’s fringes , and found that the chance of a Planet-Nine-type object not existing was just one in a million.

The honour of predicting it goes to mid-19th-century astronomers Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams.

They noticed that Uranus (which was only discovered about 60 years earlier) had irregularities in its orbit that could only be explained by the presence of another, more distant planet.

Le Verrier in Paris and Adams in Cambridge calculated coordinates for this hypothetical planet, and when German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle and his student pointed a telescope to that part of the sky in 1846, there it was: Neptune, the Solar System’s eighth planet.

While Planet Nine might be found the same way, the most tantalising hints it exists come not from ice giants like Uranus, but the motion of dwarf planets and asteroids that typically orbit much further out in our Solar System.

More than 3,000 of these objects — including dwarf planet Pluto — have been found so far, although most have not yet been named or thoroughly investigated.

Leave a comment

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started