Cornell study supports existence of distant Planet 9
Scientists from Cornell University recently published a study supporting the existence of Planet 9, far out in the distance past the planet Neptune.
The new evidence published in April shows a cluster of objects orbiting in the perihelia, which is the point of their closest approach to the Sun.
“Of these distant objects, the orbit varies up and down, sometimes dipping close to Neptune’s orbit and sometimes swinging farther away,” Astronomy explains.
The clustered objects are all tilted off the plane of the ecliptic, which is described in the report as the plane of the solar system by an average of about 15°.
They are objects whose orbits “are twisted by about 90° from the plane of the solar system and are on very eccentric orbits,” Planetary astronomer Michael E. Brown told Astronomy. “These unusual orbits are nearly impossible to explain without the existence of Planet Nine.”
Planet 9 was first predicted in 2014 when astronomers started to notice unusual orbits of various outer solar system bodies called extreme trans-Neptunian objects. These objects are farther from the sun than Neptune and have more elongated, distant orbits that are unaffected by interactions with any of the known planets.
Caltech scientists believe Planet 9 may have a mass approximately 10 times that of Earth, similar in size to Uranus or Neptune, according to NASA. The predicted orbit is about 20 times farther from our sun on average than Neptune, which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles. Scientists predict the new planet will take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun, where Neptune completes an orbit roughly every 165 years.
With the new era of ground telescopes being built, such as the Giant Magellan Telescope being constructed in the Chilean Atacama Desert and the partnered labs around the world, scientists are on the cusp of discovering more about Planet 9 and many more of the unanswered questions that lie deep within the vast space of the universe.
Planetary astronomer Michael E. Brown discusses Planet 9 during a Ted Talk in 2019: