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Time of India
03-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
A 9th planet in our solar system? Scientists finally find a potential candidate to ‘replace' Pluto
The empty seat on the 9th row might just be filled! There possibly is a 9th planet after all (and a replacement for Pluto )! Researchers have *finally* found a candidate for the hypothetical Planet Nine , which could be an undiscovered giant planet way out in our solar system. Read on to find out more about the potential candidate! The 9th planet! It's been almost two decades since our solar system lost its 9th planet. Pluto was officially reclassified from a planet to a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in August 2006. While Pluto orbits the Sun and is large enough to be spherical due to gravity, it is not big enough to gravitationally dominate its orbital region, meaning other objects share its path in the Kuiper Belt. Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 by the IAU because it failed to meet the third criterion for being a planet: it did not "clear its neighborhood" around its orbit. Nearly two decades after that, astronomers claim that they may have found new evidence that points to a celestial body that could be a possible candidate as "Planet Nine," according to a new paper, which has been accepted for publication in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia but not yet peer-reviewed. What do the researchers say? Astronomers engaged in the search for a hypothetical ninth planet in our solar system have identified a promising candidate situated well beyond Neptune, according to a recent preprint study. This finding may represent the first substantial evidence of the long theorized Planet Nine, which, if confirmed, would be a large, yet-to-be-discovered world orbiting the sun at a considerable distance. However, the prospect of Planet Nine remains a debated topic within the scientific community, and skepticism surrounds the new findings. The potential planetary candidate was detected while researchers analyzed archival data from two decommissioned satellites: the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), operational in 1983, and the AKARI satellite, which functioned from 2006 to 2011. The team was specifically looking for distant objects exhibiting slow movement characteristic of a large planet's orbit. After dismissing known celestial objects, they focused on a shortlist of candidates and ultimately identified what they referred to as "one good candidate." This candidate appeared as a consistent dot in infrared images from both satellites, indicative of a single object. Study lead author Terry Phan, a doctoral student in astronomy at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, expressed excitement over the discovery, noting its motivational impact on the research team. Their findings were shared on the preprint server arXiv on April 24 and have been accepted for publication in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. Who is the potential candidate for the 9th planet? According to the paper, the hidden candidate is likely the size of Neptune and is so far away that it could take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to orbit the sun. The criteria to be a Planet: For a celestial body to be classified as a planet, the IAU defines, it must meet three criteria: it must orbit a star, it must be massive enough to have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium (meaning it is round or nearly round), and it must have cleared its orbital neighborhood, meaning it is the dominant gravitational body in its orbit. Is Planet Nine the replacement for Pluto? Despite this progress, some experts remain unconvinced. Notably, Caltech astronomer Mike Brown, who originally proposed the Planet Nine hypothesis alongside a colleague in 2016, has expressed doubts regarding the infrared signals' connection to the elusive planet. Brown analyzed the orbit of the candidate and concluded that its tilt—approximately 120 degrees from the Solar System's plane—deviates significantly from the predicted tilt for Planet Nine, which should be around 15 to 20 degrees. This discrepancy suggests the object may not significantly influence the orbits of other known planets. The predictive position of Planet Nine is designed to account for the irregular orbits observed among some objects in the Kuiper Belt at the outer edges of our solar system. However, many researchers contest the notion that an undiscovered planet is responsible for these anomalies, and direct observational evidence for Planet Nine's existence remains elusive. If Planet Nine does exist, predictions indicate that it would be considerably larger than Earth, orbiting the sun in a distant and unusual path. The vast distance from the sun makes detection particularly challenging, complicating efforts to confirm or refute its existence. Follow-up observations are necessary to refine the orbit of the identified candidate. Brown has suggested that if the infrared signal indicates a planet, it would contradict the existence of the originally hypothesized Planet Nine, as their orbits would likely destabilize each other. Evidence of ninth planet found in solar system
Daily Mail
29-04-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Scientists discover planet in our solar system that could have life
Astronomers have found new evidence that a mysterious ninth planet may be hiding at the edge of the solar system - rewriting what we know about the cosmos again. An international team from Taiwan , Japan , and Australia used 40 years' worth of data from two space probes to track down what they believe are signs of this distant planet moving around our sun. Pluto, which infamously lost its status as the ninth planet in 2006, is less than four billion miles away from the sun, sitting in the Kuiper Belt - a region in our solar system beyond Neptune filled with icy objects, comets, and dwarf planets like Pluto . Since this hidden planet may be so far away, the new study theorizes that it's likely an ice giant like Uranus or Neptune. Under those circumstances, the only possibility for life there would likely make it what scientists refer to as an extremophile, which are microbes that can survive and thrive in incredibly harsh conditions where most life forms would die. These conditions might include very high or low temperatures (like boiling hot springs or icy Antarctic waters), high pressure (deep in the ocean), extreme acidity, or even high radiation levels. On Earth, they live in near underwater volcanic vents, icy glaciers at the south pole, and even in Chile's lifeless Atacama Desert. On Planet Nine, the conditions would arguably be even worse. The study, still on the pre-print server arXiv as it awaits peer review, found that Planet Nine is so far away from the sun, the temperature would likely be between -364°F and -409°F. Based on the gravitational pull, scientists believe the distant world would have the mass of seven to 17 Earths - making it roughly the size of Uranus or Neptune. Just like these distant ice giants, however, Planet Nine almost certainly doesn't have liquid water, unless it's deep under the ice, closer to the planet's core. Also, Planet Nine is so far away from the sun that sunlight would be extremely weak, meaning lifeforms would need to find another source of energy to survive. While life may be questionable, scientists are getting closer to determining its orbit around the sun. The study used data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), launched in 1983, and AKARI, a Japanese satellite which made space observations between 2006 and 2007. Both scanned the entire sky to catch infrared signals from distant objects. However, the key was the 23-year gap between their observations, which let astronomers look for something moving slowly across the sky. Comparing the two datasets from these space satellites, the international team was able to hunt for distant space bodies which were traveling about three 'arcminutes' per year. An arcminute is used by scientists to measure angles in the sky, like how far apart things appear when you look up. There are 60 arcminutes in a degree and 360 degrees in a full circle. For comparison, the full moon is about 30 arcminutes wide in the sky - roughly the size of a small coin held at arm's length. It's a way to describe tiny movements or distances between objects in space. Based on the 2016 study which estimated that Planet Nine was sitting between 46.5 billion to 65.1 billion miles away , astronomers started looking for objects orbiting the sun within this three-arcminute range. Three arcminutes per year would be roughly the width of a dime seen from two miles away. Over the course of 23 years, the astronomers figured out that Planet Nine would have travelled between 42 and 69.6 arcminutes. They combined this pattern of movement with the gravitational effect scientists believe Planet Nine is having on the Kuiper Belt to narrow down the search from 13 distant objects to just one which appears to fit the description of a distant world pulling on the solar system's icy belt beyond Neptune. The astronomers noted that with just two detections (one from IRAS and one from AKARI) aren't enough to map Planet Nine's full orbit or confirm it's really a planet. While scientists are still trying to confirm Planet Nine's existence, NASA says proving that this ice giant is real would help astronomers explain several mysteries within our solar system. In a breakdown of Planet Nine , NASA said: 'It could also make our solar system seem a little more 'normal.' 'Surveys of planets around other stars in our galaxy have found the most common types to be 'super Earths' and their cousins — bigger than Earth, but smaller than Neptune,' NASA researchers continued. 'Yet none of this kind exist in our solar system. Planet Nine would help fill that gap.' Specifically, finding a large planet at the rim of the solar system would explain why objects in the Kuiper Belt are tilted by about 20 degrees with respect to the plane the planets sit on as they orbit the sun. Planet Nine's gravity would be pulling on these objects over long periods of time, tilting their orbits so the entire ice belt would be out of line with the planets. The existence of Planet Nine and its strong gravity would also explain why all these comets and tiny dwarf planets like Pluto all cluster together and move in the same direction without floating away.
