Furthermore, unlike dwarf planets, “Planet Nine” gravitationally dominates its neighborhood of the solar system, the study authors noted.
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“I think it’s fitting that on the 50th anniversary we complete the initial reconnaissance of the planets with the exploration of Pluto”, said principal scientist Alan Stern.
Dubbed “Planet Nine”, the proposed celestial object orbits about 20 times farther from the sun than Neptune, which orbits at an average distance of about 2.8 billion mi.
If the planet is near what’s thought to be the closest point in its orbit to the sun, Caltech’s news release said astronomers may be able to spot it on images from previous surveys.
It sprung from a catalogue of 13 of the most distant objects in the Kuiper Belt.
The two astronomers are also famous for working to reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006. “I’d be very happy if the Brown-Batygin were the exception to the rule, but we’ll have to wait and see”. “Now we can go and find this planet and make the solar system have nine planets once again”.
Brown isn’t only in the business of finding planets, he’s also responsible for killing them.
Now, the task for stargazers worldwide is to visibly confirm the existence of Planet Nine, somewhere within the calculated planetary orbit.
So where did this possible planet come from?
Brown and his colleagues say they have begun searching the skies for Planet Nine, although only the planet’s rough orbit is known – not the precise location of the planet on that elliptical path. In 1905, Percival Lowell predicted a Planet X existed beyond Neptune; his calculations actually led to the discovery of Pluto, which was too small to be what Lowell suspected.
Alessandro Morbidelli of the Côte d’Azur Observatory in France, an expert in dynamics of the solar system, said he was convinced.
The astronomer who helped kick Pluto out of the planet club believes a much larger body may be lurking in the outskirts of the solar system.
Another scientist, Alan Stern, said he’s withholding judgment on the planet prediction.
“I would love to find it”, said Dr Brown. Basically, they found that certain objects in the Kuiper Belt – the field of icy objects and debris beyond Neptune – had orbits that peculiarly pointed in the same direction.
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In a recently published paper, Brown and Batygin suggested Planet Nine has a diameter two to four times larger than Earth’s, which would make it the fifth largest planet.
