Scientists report that they have discovered two possible candidates for the role of Planet Nine in the Solar System. They found it in data from AKARI. However, the status of these objects now needs to be confirmed.
Planet Nine
A team of scientists led by Amos Chen from Tsinghua University said they found a possible candidate for Planet Nine in the Solar System. Actually, two at once. This could put the end to the long-standing debate about whether there’s a massive object orbiting Neptune or not.
There are no obvious signs of the presence of an object the size of Jupiter in the outer regions of the Solar System. However, the distribution of the orbits of large asteroids and dwarf planets in the vicinity of the Solar System looks as if something is indeed influencing them.
According to calculations by supporters of this hypothesis, the object should have a mass 5–10 times greater than Earth’s and orbit at a distance of approximately 400–800 astronomical units from the Sun.
The only problem is that it is not really such a large object that it would be easy to spot from such a distance. In addition, it is very far from the Sun, so it should not reflect much visible light. Therefore, even if Planet Nine really exists, it is extremely difficult to prove its existence.
Infrared range
Even if an object reflects very little visible light, it can still be heated and therefore emit infrared radiation. Therefore, scientists turned to data from AKARI.
This Japanese instrument operates not just in infrared light, but in far-infrared light. In addition, it observes the entire sky, making it ideal for searching for objects in the darkness and cold of space.
Of course, if you scan the entire sky, the search can take a very long time. However, based on the aforementioned orbits of Kuiper Belt objects, scientists had a general idea of which areas of the sky to search. The main challenge here is how to distinguish a relatively close planet from a brighter but more distant star. This can be done by observing its movement in space. And researchers finally succeeded in doing so.
They discovered two candidates, each of which could turn out to be Planet Nine. However, for now, these are just points moving somewhere on the outskirts of the Solar System. Their orbits remain unknown because their movement is extremely slow. Therefore, additional observations will be needed to determine whether this is indeed the largest object that everyone is searching for.
According to phys.org
