Scientists: Solid evidence for 9th planet in solar system

The object, called Planet Nine, has an elongated orbit – much longer than Earth’s – that reaches the outer limits of the solar system, according to Caltech researchers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin.

Batygin and Brown described their work in the Astronomical Journal and show how Planet Nine helps explain a number of mysterious features of the field of icy objects and debris beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt.

Brown says the planet has 5,000 times the mass of Pluto and is so big there should be no debate about whether it is a true planet.

Astounding evidence of a hidden giant planet on the fringes of the solar system has been uncovered by scientists using computer simulations.

The prospective planet is so far away one orbit of the sun takes more than 10,000 years.

Brown and Batygin at first reacted skeptically that they’d discovered a planet, but over time it became clear the existence of a ninth planet was the only logical explanation for such singular orbits. What we have found is a gravitational signature of Planet 9 lurking in the outskirts of the solar system, ‘ Batygin said.

They’re calling it “Planet Nine” for now.

The ninth planet has sure excited the people around the globe about the solar system they were so familiar about, and its changing face. It’s orbit differs from other planets, which have a more circular pattern.

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. Find us on Facebook too! An global team of astronomers announced that they’d discovered a new dwarf planet, nicknamed Biden, that stays even farther out than Sedna. According to his simulations, a large planet in such a freakish orbit would send some Kuiper belt objects into orbits that ran perpendicular to the planets in the solar system. He is the principal scientist for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which buzzed Pluto last summer in the first-ever visit from Planet Earth. The two noticed that six of them seemed to be moving in a coordinated way – like their elliptical orbits all pointed in the same direction in physical space.

It the presence of Planet Nine is proven, it would be the third planet to be discovered since ancient times.

There have been other searches for previously undiscovered planets at the edge of the solar system, all of which have come up empty. “So it’s not hopeless, this is not something we just have to hypothesize about and you never go out and see it. I think that it will be found within five years now that we know the path in the sky to be searching”.