Researchers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) said they calculated the planet’s presence through mathematical modeling and computer simulation.
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The evidence for Planet Nine is indirect and is based on alignments of known Kuiper Belt objects that are very hard to explain through simple chance occurrence.
Depending on where Planet Nine is in its “bizarre, highly elongated orbit”, many telescopes have a shot at finding it. Brown would love to find a planet he helped discover, “but I’d also be perfectly happy if someone else found it. That is why we’re publishing this paper”.
On Wednesday, two astronomers reported that they had compelling signs of something bigger and farther away – something that would definitely satisfy the current definition of a planet, where Pluto falls short. Professor Brown told The New Yorker: “We haven’t seen it. But we have felt it”. But Planet Nine could have been the fifth, that was effectively ejected to its odd far-off orbit by a collision with the larger Jupiter or Saturn. “Planet Nine is forcing any objects that cross its orbit to push into these misaligned positions”. The planet is thought to be gaseous, similar to Uranus and Neptune.
Researchers are now pretty certain there’s a ninth planet in the solar system. Brown was part of the team that found Sedna too, and if anything made the new world remarkable, it was its extreme distance from the sun-one that has it completing a single orbit in 11,400 years, compared to Pluto’s 248.
While the history of astronomy is one of floored expectations and false hopes, mankind’s understanding of the solar system has grown rapidly in the past 25 years.
But Planet X is seven times farther from the sun than Neptune, at its closest approach, so do not go selling the farm just yet.
Brown said his daughter was the inspiration for his new project, since she only promised to forgive him for demoting Pluto if he discovered a new planet. But according to this Caltech study, another planetary body has been found, and if it turns out to exist, there will be no confusion, as it would be “the most planet-y of the planets in the whole solar system”.
The next step for confirmation is for astronomers to make a sighting using the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. A potential explanation is that Planet Nine is one of the lost gas giants.
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“It’s such a long history of people being basically wrong that standing up and saying we’re right this time makes us nearly look insane”, Brown said.
