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Our solar system may host a ninth planet that is 10 times the mass of the Earth and takes up to 20,000 years to orbit the Sun in a bizarre, highly elongated path. The object, nicknamed Planet Nine, orbits about 20 times farther from the Sun on average than Neptune.
Here are nine facts about Planet 9:
The farthest planet
Planet Nine could be 20 times further away than Neptune, so far considered to be the farthest planet in the solar system. Thus, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make one full orbit around the sun
Existence predicted on mathematical modelling
Researchers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown haven’t actually seen the planet, but other research helped them conclude that there is one. Basically, they found that certain objects in the Kuiper Belt -- the field of icy objects and debris beyond Neptune -- had orbits that peculiarly pointed in the same direction. Over time, mathematical modeling and computer simulation led them to the conclusion that a planet was exerting the gravity necessary to shape these orbits.
It dominates a region larger than any other planet
Planet Nine is so massive that it gravitationally dominates a region larger than any of the other known planets. It is 10 times more massive than the earth.
It changes our understanding of solar system
For the first time in 150 years, scientists have had solid evidence that there are more planets in our solar system than we already knew about. This could change our understanding of how the whole solar system was made.
It is not a new planet
Scientists believe that could have been created at the same time the four gas giants -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune -- were formed. Researchers believe that the early solar system began with four planetary cores that grabbed gas around them. Planet Nine then might have got too close to Jupiter or Saturn, getting ejected to its more distant orbit.
Planet Pluto's 'killer' discovered Planet Nine
Yes. Mike Brown, one of the two scientists to make the discovery about Planet Nine, is also the scientist who removed Pluto’s status as the ninth planet and called it a ‘dwarf planet’.
It will profound our knowledge beyond Neptune
Its discoverers said that Planet Nine helps explain a number of mysterious features of the field of icy objects and debris beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt.
It exists, for sure
Planet Nine has not been spotted doesn’t mean it may not exist. Researchers say it definitely exists and there's only a 0.007 per cent chance (about one in 15,000) that the ninth planet doesn’t exist.
The search to spot Planet Nine is on
Brown and other researchers have begun searching the skies for Planet Nine. Only the planet’s rough orbit is known. Brown says if the planet is close to its perihelion -- the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is closest to the sun -- astronomers should be able to spot it in images captured by previous surveys. If it is in the most distant part of its orbit, the world’s largest telescopes will be needed to see it.