![]() ![]() “Now we really know where to look, and where not to look,” Brown says. That area crosses the densely populated, sparkling plane of the Milky Way, which could have helped the planet hide during past searches. To aid searchers in the meantime, Brown and Batygin used their revised calculations to make a “treasure map” that points to a swath of sky where Planet Nine is most likely to be found. Astronomers have so far discovered only a handful of these distant objects, and without a more complete census of the outer solar system, it’s tough to tell whether these small, icy objects are truly behaving strangely, or are randomly distributed. “Most of these objects are discovered with large telescopes that have limited time for surveys of the outer solar system, and they look in the places they can look, which depends on where they are located,” says Renu Malhotra of the University of Arizona, who is agnostic about the planet’s existence and is working on her own estimates of its position. The apparent clustering of distant objects’ orbits doesn’t reflect the influence of an unseen world, critics argue, and is instead the result of natural biases in sky surveys. If discovered, the planet would be the first large world to join the solar system’s cast of characters since 1846, when astronomers announced the discovery of Neptune-an ice giant whose presence was forecast by its gravitational influence on Uranus.īut over the years, skeptics have suggested that the gravitational signatures betraying Planet Nine’s presence are nothing more than observational artifacts. I am super-optimistic.”īrown’s latest analyses of Planet Nine’s gravitational shenanigans, calculated with his Caltech colleague Konstantin Batygin, suggest that the world is roughly six times as massive as Earth-which would likely make it either a rocky super-Earth or a gaseous mini-Neptune. But, he adds, “I’ve made that statement every year for the past five years. “I think it’s within a year or two from being found,” says Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the new study, which has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. ![]() That tighter orbit brings it much closer to the sun than previously expected, which means that Planet Nine may appear brighter to Earth-based telescopes. Instead of orbiting our home star once every 18,500 years, astronomers calculate that it loops around the sun in about 7,400 years. Now, a new analysis predicts that if it’s out there, that skulking planet could be closer, brighter, and easier to spot than previously estimated. But so far, searches for it have come up empty, and critics contend that the hints of its presence are just ghosts in the data. The unseen planet is predicted to exist based on its apparent gravitational influence on a group of small objects with odd, clustered orbits. This hypothetical world, nicknamed “Planet Nine” by some of the scientists searching for it, has stirred up controversy since it was first proposed. "What they're proposing is a contradiction with what we know about the Kuiper Belt," Batygin said.Among the solar system’s more intriguing mysteries is whether a large, icy planet lives in the outer regions of our cosmic neighborhood, well beyond the orbit of Neptune. That suggestion came from astronomers at the University of Colorado earlier this week, but Batygin said if that were the case, those icy objects would need a combined weight many times the suspected weight of the entire Kuiper Belt. The duo also remains unconvinced that a gaggle of icy objects tugging on one another could explain the bizarre orbit of 2015 BP519, the rocky object beyond Neptune. We'll keep on gong as long as the theory is strong." "Last year we lost more than half of our observing season to being clouded out or hailed on, but we're back on the telescope this fall. "The observational search for Planet Nine is proving very difficult, basically because of weather," Batygin said. He and Brown are currently using the Subaru telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii to conduct their search, but that comes with its own challenges. "The Planet Nine theory is in quite good shape," Batygin said. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. ![]()
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