It is clear that our Solar System has not been the same since Pluto was demoted from planet to dwarf planet. First, a group of scientists from the California Institute of Technology proposed the existence of the true Planet Nine , 10 times the mass of Earth and hidden in the remote recesses of our Solar System, far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Now, a new study by experts Kat Volk and Renu Malhotra from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) at the University of Arizona (USA) proposes the existence of what would be the ‘Planet 10’, a hidden planetary mass object in the outer reaches of our solar system. It would be closer than the previous one, a planet whose existence still awaits confirmation.
The research, reported in the Astronomical Journal , presents convincing evidence for a yet undiscovered planetary body with a mass that would be between that of Mars and Earth. The evidence has been found by monitoring the orbital planes of a set of space rocks known as Kuiper Belt Objects, or KBOs (Kuiper Belt Objects) , on the icy outskirts of the solar system.
The Kuiper Belt lies beyond the orbit of Neptune and spans a few hundred Astronomical Units. It houses a large number of minor planets, most of them small icy bodies, and a few dwarf planets like Sedna.
Unlike the rest of KBOs that remain from the formation of the solar system, this planetary body leans from the invariable plane of the Sun (average orbital inclinations) about eight degrees; which means that something unknown is deforming the mid-orbital plane of the outer solar system.
“The most likely explanation for our results is that there is an invisible mass. According to our calculations, something as massive as Mars would be necessary to cause the deformation we measured,” says Volk.
For the study, planetary scientists analyzed the inclination angles of the orbital planes of more than 600 objects in the Kuiper Belt to determine the common direction in which all of these orbital planes precess. Precession is the movement associated with the change of direction in space, like a kind of “wobble” in the orientation of a rotating object. Upon discovering a strange movement in the Kuiper belt, they postulated that it could suggest the existence of a tenth planet.
If it were not a planet, it could mean that there is another object, another large body beyond our vision whose gravity is affecting the movement of objects in the Kuiper belt.
“It would have to be quite a coincidence that this is not a real effect. We think there is a real signal there and this implies an additional planet,” says Volk.
If this is confirmed, we would be talking about a new planet that would be 60 Astronomical Units from Earth and with an orbital inclination of 8 degrees with respect to the plane of rotation of the other planets in the Solar System. Will there be more planets in that area waiting to be discovered?
Referencia: “The curiously warped mean plane of the Kuiper belt”. Astronomical Journal . Junio 2017. arxiv.org/abs/1704.02444
Image credit: Heather Roper / LPL
