There may be a ninth planet in our solar system waiting to be discovered — and no, it’s not Pluto.
Our solar system contains eight planets, but in recent years, astronomers have hypothesized that there could be a ninth planet hiding in our solar system that we haven’t been able to see yet.
This is because, due to its great distance from the Sun, it will be dimly lit and is like finding a needle in a haystack; Current telescopes may not be able to detect it either.
However, a new telescope that will begin looking up at the sky at the wonder of our solar system in 2025 may be able to spot it if Japan’s Subaru Telescope in Hawaii can’t.
The experts said Live sciences A new telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile could find the elusive Planet Nine, nicknamed Planet Nine, in the next few years or rule it out forever.
“It’s really hard to explain the solar system without Planet Nine, but there’s no way to be 100 percent sure,” said Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. [it exists] Until you see it.”
Stock image of the Kuiper Belt / Paul Fleet, iStock
With the Sun likely to appear from a greater distance than stars do to us on Earth, it is expected to be a gas or ice giant.
Aside from Pluto, which was demoted from planet to dwarf planet in 2006, no planets have been found beyond Neptune or the Kuiper Belt, a huge ring of asteroids, comets and dwarf planets that orbit the Sun beyond it.
In 2004, scientists discovered that Sedna, a possible dwarf planet beyond the Belt, had a strange orbit around the Sun suggesting that another large mass was pulling it gravitationally.
A 2014 study found that a similar Kuiper Belt object had a similar orbit to Sedna, and more have been discovered since then.
The Planet Nine hypothesis was published by Brown and Konstantin Batygin in 2016.
“At first, we didn’t say there was a planet because we thought it was ridiculous that there was a planet,” Brown told Live Science.
“But we tried a lot of different things to explain what we saw, and nothing else worked.
“Our best estimate is that it is about seven times larger than Earth.”
Other astronomers have reportedly said it is “very likely” there is a Planet Nine, but others are not convinced.
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