Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of Giant Planet 20x Further From Sun Than Neptune

Let the Nibiru speculation begin!

Caltech researchers find evidence of a real ninth planet

Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun.

The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet's existence through mathematical modeling and computer simulations but have not yet observed the object directly.

Batygin and Brown describe their work in the current issue of 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.

"Although we were initially quite skeptical that this planet could exist, as we continued to investigate its orbit and what it would mean for the outer solar system, we become increasingly convinced that it is out there," says Batygin, an assistant professor of planetary science. "For the first time in over 150 years, there is solid evidence that the solar system's planetary census is incomplete."

As noted, they've not directly observed this possible planet (which it appears they're referring to only as Planet Nine) but rather, are deducing it's existence from models of the orbits of several very distant Kuiper Belt objects whose orbits shared peculiar features:

- Six of these objects have elliptical orbits "pointing" in the same direction.
- The orbits of these objects are also tilted in the same way, about 30 degrees downward from the plane of the orbits of the eight planets. The chances of this occurring without the influence of the proposed planet is calculated to be 0.007 percent by the team.
- In a serendipitous discovery, the model with the giant planet also explained the orbits of Sedna, discovered by Brown in 2003 and 2012 VP113, found by Trujillo and Shepherd, the former postdocs who published a paper in 2014 about the orbital peculiarities of 13 Kuiper Belt objects and brought their research to Brown.

Their research has been published in The Astronomical Journal, Volume 151, Number 2 in a paper entitled Evidence for a Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System. It's also got a Wikipedia page already.

a reply to: theantediluvian

So is this supposed to be proof of the infamous Nibiru?

This is the third thread about this just this morning.

Imo, the pluto probe is going to be finding a cloud of 'new planets'. None of them have ever threatened the Earth.

We thought the solar system ended at the limits of our telescopes, lol.

Edit: By the by, the evidence is a cluster of these oort denizens, not what they may be clustered about. They might just be loosely bound by each others gravity.

Like a star or galaxy "cluster".

originally posted by: 3NL1GHT3N3D1
This is the third thread about this just this morning.

Yes, I missed the first thread in the Science & Technology forum and I was writing up this one when the second one was posted.

Already Posted Here

Closing Duplicate

Semper