When the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided to demote Pluto from the list of planets, the news did not go well with astronomical fans of the celestial body orbiting around the Sun every 248 years.
A new detection in 2016 piqued global interest when Mike Brown, a planetary science professor then part of the IAU that demoted Pluto, and Konstantin Batygi from the California Institute of Technology announced another body beyond Neptune that could become the ninth planet, the world had missed in Pluto for a decade.
The researchers have now assessed the orbit of Planet 9 and state that it is closer and brighter than initially expected. The study set to be published in The Astronomical Journal could bring the world closer to another planet that has remained elusive for centuries.
“We’ve had a pretty good general idea for years now, but we couldn’t really give a full assessment of the range of uncertainties for where in the sky Planet Nine might be, how massive it might be, and how bright it might be. Now we can,” the researchers said in a blog.What is Planet 9?
Researchers first found evidence of an object nearly six times the mass of Earth, 15 years after the demotion of a planet beyond Neptune. The assessment of a planet out there is based on its gravitational influence on a group of small objects in its vicinity.
“Hints of the possibility of a massive planet well beyond the orbit of Neptune have been emerging for nearly twenty years. The first clues came from the discovery of a population of distant eccentric Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) decoupled from interactions with Neptune,” the researchers said in the paper.Since the announcement of the likely planet, several astronomers have taken a dig at finding it but have come up empty-handed making it a controversial discovery. However, the new assessment of the possible planet by the two planetary science researchers indicates that instead of orbiting the Sun once every 18,500 years, the planet could be revolving around it in 7,400 years.
If the discovery is confirmed, Planet 9 will be the first such celestial object to join the list of planets in the solar system since the discovery of Neptune in 1846. Neptune too was discovered in a similar fashion by studying its gravitational influence on Uranus.Why is it difficult to exactly locate Planet 9?
One of the biggest hurdles in spotting this massive object is the extreme distance from Earth. The planet is speculated to be located beyond the orbit of Neptune and ground-based telescopes can not peer through such large distances. The James Webb Telescope, slated to be launched by the end of this year could provide a helping hand in spotting Planet 9 once it’s operational.
Astronomers have long been speculating about an object is affecting Neptune’s orbit. However, the two Caltech researchers believe that icy worlds beyond Neptune include a population of objects with orbits nearly 150 times farther from the sun than Earth’s orbit.”So where IS it? Sadly, the data only tells us the orbital path, no WHERE in the orbital path it is (very sadly, actually). It is MORE likely to be at its most distant point from the sun, but only because it travels more slowly there. But this is where you should be looking,” Mike Brown said in a tweet.
A suite of numerical simulations shows that the orbital distribution of the distant KBOs is strongly influenced by the mass and orbital elements of P9Not all are convinced
When the announcement first came in 2016, the scientific community took note and several types of research commenced on finding the mysterious planet in the extreme trans-Neptunian orbits. However, not all have been convinced. A paper published earlier in February this year titled “No Evidence for Orbital Clustering in the Extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects” concluded that the observed clustering is highly likely to be a physical effect.
Meanwhile, another paper published in Physical Review Letters in July 2020 argued “What If Planet 9 Is a Primordial Black Hole?” The paper tried to highlight an excess of free-floating interstellar objects spotted by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) survey. The researchers also argued that if searches for the planet in infrared result in nothing then future surveys should explore X-rays or gamma rays instead.
