Is there a Mars-like planet in the outer solar system? This is suggested by simulations. Researchers also suspect where to look for him.
Frankfurt – In our solar system there have been eight planets since Pluto’s degradation to a dwarf planet. They are neatly lined up around the sun: First come the four inner planets – the rocky planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The asteroid belt is followed by the gigantic gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and far outside – outside the orbit of Neptune – there are dwarf planets like Pluto or Eris and comets.
But isn’t there something missing? “It seems unlikely that nature created four giant planets in the outer solar system and nothing bigger than dwarf planets,” write Brett Gladman (University of British Columbia) and Kathryn Volk (University of Arizona) in a review study from which the portal cited Inverse .
Ninth planet in the solar system? Mars-like planet suspected
With the help of computer simulations, the researchers want to find out how our solar system was formed. Several models that best explain how our solar system, including its planets and their orbits and order, could have formed have discovered at least one other planet, as Gladman and Volk report. The models suggest that the outer solar system was once home to one or more rocky planets the size of Mars or Earth – in addition to the well-known gas giants. Encounters with the force of gravity of the giant planets would presumably have pushed the small rocky planets far out to the edge of the solar system or even catapulted them out into interstellar space.
The planetary scientist David Nesvorny agrees. He told Inverse: “I agree that there was probably a Mars-class planet there in the beginning.” The only question is “whether it survived and whether we have evidence of it”.
Space exploration: where could you find a ninth, Mars-like planet?
Astronomers believe that the planets once orbited the sun in different orbits, and possibly even in a different order. Due to their gravity they shifted – Jupiter a little closer to the sun, the other three giant planets a little further out. However, so far there is no model that can explain the migration of all gas giants into their final orbits, according to Volk and Gladman.
There is, however, a conjecture where a possible ninth planet could be found – this does not mean the mysterious, giant “Planet 9″, which is currently also being searched for – could be found: in an orbit far away from the sun, on which so-called ” detached objects ”(German:“ detached objects ”). These are a class of asteroids that are so far away from the gas giants that they are barely influenced by their gravity – they appear to be “detached” from the rest of the solar system.
Astronomy: Simulations show Mars-like planets in distant orbit
Astrophysicist Scott Tremaine told Inverse that his simulations showed that half the time, all Mars-like planets in the outer solar system were catapulted into interstellar space. “But in the second half of the simulations there is one planet left – in an orbit similar to the orbits of the detached objects.”
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Future telescopes such as the Vera Rubin Observatory could discover this theoretical planet in the future – if it actually exists. Because so far there is no evidence of the existence of this Mars-like planet in the outer solar system – only circumstantial evidence, simulations and models. (tab)
