Solar System may hold ten planets or more, say scientists
by Sarah Knapton,
The Solar System may hold 10 or 11 planets, scientists have predicted after running new computer models on the data which led to the announcement of Planet Nine.
In January, astronomers Professor Konstantin Batygin and Professor Mike Brown from California Institute of Technology predicted the existence of a ninth planet after discovering that 13 objects in the Kuiper Belt – an area beyond Neptune – were all moving together as if ‘lassooed’ by the gravity of a huge object.
Now scientists from Cambridge University and Spain have discovered that the paths of the dwarf planets are not as stable as they thought, meaning they could be falling under the influence of more planets further out.
Sverre Aarseth from the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, two freelance Spanish astronomers, said that the orbit of Planet Nine would have to change to allow the dwarf planet to maintain stability for a long time.
Otherwise more planets would need to be involved.
“We believe that in addition to a Planet Nine, there could also be a Planet Ten and even more,” said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos.The new study, which is published in the journal ‘Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society’ is one of several to have addressed the question of Planet Nine in recent months.
Researcher Alexander Mustill from Lund University, Sweden , said the new planet may have come from outside the Solar System, and so could be an exoplanet.
His hypothesis is that around 4.5 billion years ago, our then young Sun “stole” this planet from a neighbouring star.
‘Planet Nine’ is believed to be 10 times the mass of Earth and takes between 10,000 and 20,000 years to orbit the Sun. It is so big that researchers have branded it ‘the most planety planet of the solar system.’
Astronomers are eagerly searching the skies for Planet Nine. Only the planet’s rough orbit is known, not the precise location of the planet on that elliptical path. If the planet happens to be close to its perihelion - the closest point it gets to the Sun - astronomers should be able to spot it in images captured by previous surveys.
If it is in the most distant part of its orbit, the world’s largest telescopes, such as the twin 10-meter telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Subaru Telescope, all on Maunakea in Hawaii will be needed to see it.
If, however, Planet Nine is now located anywhere in between, many telescopes have a shot at finding it. Pluto used to be regarded as the ninth planet but was downgraded in 2006 to a dwarf-planet or ‘plutoid’ and is now known unceremoniously as ‘asteroid number 134340.’
by Sarah Knapton,
The Solar System may hold 10 or 11 planets, scientists have predicted after running new computer models on the data which led to the announcement of Planet Nine.
In January, astronomers Professor Konstantin Batygin and Professor Mike Brown from California Institute of Technology predicted the existence of a ninth planet after discovering that 13 objects in the Kuiper Belt – an area beyond Neptune – were all moving together as if ‘lassooed’ by the gravity of a huge object.
Now scientists from Cambridge University and Spain have discovered that the paths of the dwarf planets are not as stable as they thought, meaning they could be falling under the influence of more planets further out.
Sverre Aarseth from the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, two freelance Spanish astronomers, said that the orbit of Planet Nine would have to change to allow the dwarf planet to maintain stability for a long time.
Otherwise more planets would need to be involved.
“We believe that in addition to a Planet Nine, there could also be a Planet Ten and even more,” said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos.The new study, which is published in the journal ‘Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society’ is one of several to have addressed the question of Planet Nine in recent months.
Researcher Alexander Mustill from Lund University, Sweden , said the new planet may have come from outside the Solar System, and so could be an exoplanet.
His hypothesis is that around 4.5 billion years ago, our then young Sun “stole” this planet from a neighbouring star.
‘Planet Nine’ is believed to be 10 times the mass of Earth and takes between 10,000 and 20,000 years to orbit the Sun. It is so big that researchers have branded it ‘the most planety planet of the solar system.’
Astronomers are eagerly searching the skies for Planet Nine. Only the planet’s rough orbit is known, not the precise location of the planet on that elliptical path. If the planet happens to be close to its perihelion - the closest point it gets to the Sun - astronomers should be able to spot it in images captured by previous surveys.
If it is in the most distant part of its orbit, the world’s largest telescopes, such as the twin 10-meter telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Subaru Telescope, all on Maunakea in Hawaii will be needed to see it.
If, however, Planet Nine is now located anywhere in between, many telescopes have a shot at finding it. Pluto used to be regarded as the ninth planet but was downgraded in 2006 to a dwarf-planet or ‘plutoid’ and is now known unceremoniously as ‘asteroid number 134340.’
