Something is wrong in the outer solar system: some celestial bodies follow strange orbits around the sun. Is Planet Nine to blame, as some scientists suspect? New studies claim to have found more evidence. What it is and what consequences it may have.
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The most important thing on planet 9
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Astrophysicists and astrophysicists do not agree on whether they actually are All planets Found.
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Some scholars claim: only one Huge planet Still behind Neptune Explains why a lot Pieces of ice In the Edge of the solar system I behaved very strangely.
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However: no one has seen it yet: all the sayings are based on that Computer simulation. Many of her colleagues doubt there is one The ninth planet Give.
Planet discovery: Does Planet 9 exist?
🔭 In the early 2000s, astrophysicists Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin discovered Six strange things In the Kuiper belt, a wide area in the outer solar system. They flew their way around the sun Huge arches Getting out into space – all that more or less same direction.
🪐 In 2012, astronomer Rodney Gomes of the Brazilian National Observatory wrote: it causes be a Unknown, Planet Nine (“P9”)Only a large celestial body could have pulled the pieces into strange orbits with its gravity.
♆ In 2016, Brown and Batygin reported in a now-famous study that P9 should be a Ice giant He is, Ten times heavier than EarthAnd only a little Smaller than Neptune. Since then, the two have published more studies on the topic, most recently in April 2024.
🌠 Mike Brown A big success In the astronomical scene. Professor at an elite American university California Institute of Technology (“CalTech”) calls itself Pluto the killer. You can learn more about this at Pluto profile.
🌍🌍🌍 But also those Defenders of P9 I still don't agree, How big is this planet? It could be. In a 2023 study, scientists Patrick Lekaoka and Takashi Ito said their computer simulations showed it must be about One to three times the size of Earthbut 200 times farther than the sun Stay away.
✋ But other American research teams found Brown's arguments for the existence of a ninth planet Very one-sided. He just looks at the things he discovers. In fact, there will be orbs there All directions About the sun circle.
The body is our master: it revolves around the sun once every 10,500 years
Our master, one of Largest objects discovered In the Kuiper Belt it measures approx Its diameter is 1000 km And needs More than 10,500 years old To journey around the sun. And so you walk away 130 billion kilometers Of which. Hence their name: Our master is she Goddess of the icy cold sea Inuit.
Will the new giant telescope find P9?
Astronomers hope to help one in the future. New giant telescope. Which is under construction Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile Thanks to its 8.4-meter mirror, it is so powerful that the chances of finding P9 are increased – or even ruled out its existence.
Exoplanets as a model for large solar orbits
Astronomers have used an example. Outside the solar system I learned that planets can exist much farther from their stars than previously observed in the solar system. Researchers reported one in a study conducted in 2000 Exoplanetswhich has its star at a distance 50 billion kilometers Circles – Ten times the distance between the Sun and Neptune.
Neptune: Panett's latest discovery at the moment
James Challis received the maximum penalty in astronomy in 1846. Because he did not research carefully, he missed the opportunity to do so Planetary explorers To become. At the time, astronomers wondered why The last planet discovered is Uranus On one other railways Moved when he was Laws Of gravity requirements.
French Mathematician Urban Le Ferrer He suspects there is another one Other planets He had to give and asked Challis to come with him telescope Search. Challis saw a point of light, but he did not compare his notes.
So he didn't realize it The point moved Therefore a planet It had to be. colleague Johann Gottfried Galle of the Berlin Observatory He was even more excited: on the first night of his search, he found and recognized the person named Neptune Gas giants. It was found exactly at the previously calculated location.
Image gallery: Neptune and the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system
Another blue planet: Ice giant Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet so far in the solar system.© NASA, ESA, and J. Olmsted (STScI)
Behind it comes the Kuiper Belt. The doughnut-shaped ring of ice and rock is between five and eight billion kilometers away. Shown in yellow: Pluto's unusual orbit.© NASA
Researchers suspect there are hundreds of thousands of pieces with a diameter of more than 100 kilometers.© NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwestern Research Institute/Steve Gribben
This is also where many comets come from, which regularly wander through the center of the solar system and trail a tail of evaporating water behind them. Here Churyumov-Gerasimenko (“Churi”) was captured in 2015 by the Rosetta space probe.© ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM
Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt. It is up to 7.5 billion kilometers away from the sun, and therefore cannot be seen in the night sky with the naked eye. © NASA
What no one suspected until 1978: Pluto is actually part of a binary system. Its moon Charon is not much smaller than Pluto. Therefore, they circle around and always show the same side to each other, like two fighting dogs.© NASA
How well do you know your way around space?
Frequently asked questions about Planet 9
There is no Planet Nine – at least for the time being. Before 2006, the answer to this question was simply: Pluto. But after the International Astronomical Union (IAU) revised the definition of a planet, Pluto is now only a dwarf planet.
The most likely models so far suggest that Planet Nine orbits at a distance of 700 astronomical units (AU). However, according to the Japanese research team, P9 could also be found at a distance of 250 to 500 AU from the Sun.
The solar system consists of the sun, the eight planets with their moons, dwarf planets, and millions of small objects such as asteroids and comets. All of these objects move in orbit around the sun.
According to researchers, Planet 9 may have formed near our sun. It was then released outside the inner solar system through interactions with Jupiter. Another star may have finally settled into its orbit.
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