Researchers find possible ninth planet beyond Neptune

But according to this Caltech study, another planetary body has been found, and if it turns out to exist, there will be no confusion, as it would be “the most planet-y of the planets in the whole solar system”.

That doesn’t mean the researchers haven’t tried; so far Brown and Batygin have used the Subaru telescope in Hawaii to try and spot Planet Nine.

According to their theory, Planet Nine is located about 20 times farther away from the sun than Neptune, making seeing it via telescope very hard, partially due to the lack of sunlight in the far reaches of the solar system. The discovery of the world that Brown and Batygin refer to in The Astronomical Journal simply as “Planet 9” began in 2003, with the discovery of a far more modest object named Sedna.

Researchers believe that they may have found the replacement for Pluto as the “ninth planet” after its famous and, debatable, harsh ejection by the International Astronomical Union in 2006. What researchers believe is that a new planet, unofficially dubbed “Planet X”, is pulling these objects into its orbit.

They say that this fifth core could have been ejected by Jupiter or Saturn to form the ninth planet, which may explain its highly eccentric orbit.

Alessandro Morbidelli of the Côte d’Azur Observatory in France, an expert in dynamics of the solar system, said, “I think they’re onto something real” and “the chase is now on to find this planet”.

The new planet also potentially has 10 times the mass of Earth – and 5,000 times of the recently-demoted Pluto, they added. The Washington Post reports telescopes on two continents are trying to find Planet Nine.

Nevertheless, Batygin said the discovery really makes our solar system more normal. It bears a striking resemblance to Hoth in that it’s enormous, barren, and covered in ice (although no Tauntauns have been spotted) and lurks in an extreme elliptical orbit just on the edge of our solar system, roughly 20 billion miles from Earth.

Planet Nine, as the mystery object is known, has not yet been observed directly, but it may have been captured during previous surveys.

ANALYSIS: Is “Planet X 2.0” Lurking Beyond Pluto’s Orbit?

“I was very skeptical”, Batygin said in the release. Of the others: we’re standing on one, Uranus was discovered in 1781, Neptune in 1846 and Pluto (recently relegated) in 1930.

“I realized there are objects like that”, Brown said. “We hope that other people are going to get inspired and start searching”.