Latest news with #PlanetNine
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
Search for 'Planet Nine' Yields Unexpected Discovery
Astronomers have long been on the hunt for "Planet Nine," a hypothetical planet that lies within our solar system just beyond Neptune. Scientific evidence has alternately pointed to and against the existence of such a planet, but the search is still on, stoked by the 2006 demotion of Pluto to "dwarf planet." This time, scouring the cosmos may have yielded a concrete result—it's just not the kind astronomers were hoping for. A small team of researchers at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University spent half a year sifting through data from the Victor M. Blanco Telescope's Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS). Gathered in 2019 by the telescope's Dark Energy Camera, or DECam, the archive consists of wild-field optical imaging data from the green, red, and z bands. Though these filters make it possible to search for distant space objects via photometric redshift, no one (to the researchers' knowledge) had looked for Planet Nine in the DECaLS dataset before. According to a preprint paper that has not yet undergone peer review, the researchers found a dwarf planet candidate they've since dubbed 2017 OF201. With an estimated diameter of approximately 700 kilometers (435 miles), the object is just big enough to classify as a dwarf planet. The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced the finding this month. This illustration shows just how wide 2017 OF201's orbit is, compared with the orbits of solar system planets. Credit: Jiaxuan Li, Sihao Cheng But the team is lucky they found 2017 OF201 at all: Only 0.5% of its wide, elliptical orbit comes close enough to Earth for Blanco to detect. At its farthest point from the Sun (aphelion), the object is more than 1,600 times farther away than Earth, making a complete orbit 25,000 years long. "This limited visibility window strongly suggests that a substantial population of similar objects—with large sizes, wide orbits, and high eccentricities—should exist but be difficult to detect due to their extremely large distance," the paper reads. The orbit of 2017 OF201 is also strange because it appears to contradict a common hypothesis about Planet Nine. The hypothetical planet's gravity is thought to shepherd trans-Neptunian objects into a cluster of sorts, but 2017 OF201 resists such clustering. What this means within the broader search for Planet Nine will likely be determined by Chile's Vera Rubin Observatory, which is expected to go online later this year.
Metro
2 days ago
- Science
- Metro
Twist in search for mysterious 'Planet Nine' in the dark depths of our solar system
Scientists hunting for Planet Nine, an elusive planetary body that could change our understanding of the solar system, have found something. Planet X is a hypothetical planet seven times the mass of Earth tucked just behind Pluto. Despite possibly being the fifth most massive planet, scientists have never tracked the white whale of astronomy down – that is, if it even exists. But a trio of American scientists trying to find the elusive gas giant have discovered a new planet… of sorts, a dwarf planet called 2017 OF201. According to a study, which has not been peer-reviewed, 2017 OF201 is roughly 430 miles across, three times smaller than Pluto. The object is an extreme trans-Neptunian object (eTNO), a minor planet that orbits the Sun far beyond Neptune. So far away, in fact, OF201 would take 25,000 Earth years to complete a solar lap. Its orbit even swings out into the Oort Cloud – a sphere of icy comets a trillion miles from the Sun. OF201 can only be observed from Earth 0.5% of the time, making its closest approach to us in 1930 and won't do so again until 26,186. The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center added 2017 OF201 to its database last week. Five other dwarf planets are officially recognised: Pluto, Eris, Ceres and two others beyond Neptune, Haumea and Makemake. The search for a ninth planet in our solar system has been going on for a century. The evidence for it that hunters have long clung to is how six objects – dwarf planets and chunks of ice – have been discovered in the vastly empty outskirts of the solar system. Bizarrely, they huddle together as they orbit, as if something a gassy behemoth of a planet were shepherding them, said Imo Bell, astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. They told Metro: 'Some astronomers believe that proving the existence of this planet would explain the behaviour of many other eTNOs with highly elliptical orbits clustered on one side of the Sun. 'It's thought that Planet Nine, with a mass of about five Earths, would explain the confined orbits of these eTNOs.' Sihao Cheng of New Jersey's Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University graduate students, Jiaxuan Li and Eritas Yang, discovered 2017 OF201. They did so by combing through an archive of images of the outskirts of the solar system, taken by the Blanco telescope in Chile, as well as by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii. Over time, they realised that tiny dots in the images were a single dwarf planet-sized rock with a wide and eccentric orbit. Yang said: 'It must have experienced close encounters with a giant planet, causing it to be ejected to a wide orbit.' Yet the discovery isn't exactly what the team had hoped for, explained Bell, as it's not part of the pack of eTNOs that imply Planet Nine exists. They said: 'The discovery of 2017 OF201 is significant because it's found in a region of the Solar System thought to be empty, and it's presence points to the existence of other similar eTNOs with orbits that challenge ideas about Planet Nine as they are not clustered in the way that has been seen with other eTNOs.' Yang's simulations only considered one proposed orbit of Planet Nine, meaning that the findings don't disprove the planet's existence altogether. Cheng hasn't lost hope, saying that the existence of 2017 OF201 suggests there 'could be another hundred or so other objects with similar orbit and size'. 'They are just too far away to be detectable now,' he added. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Saturn in Aries for the first time since 1999 will impact these five star signs most MORE: Nasa warns of huge solar flares that could cause blackouts on Earth MORE: Here's the best spots to see the Northern Lights tonight
Perth Now
2 days ago
- Science
- Perth Now
Planet Nine may exist
Planet Nine may exist Scientists at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have shared new research that supports the idea of the large distant planet that may lurk at the edge of the solar system. Planet Nine – which is thought to be five to ten times the mass of Earth - is a theoretical planet first suggested in 2016 by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology. According to their study of complex simulations, there is up to a 40 per cent chance of its existence. If Planet Nine is real, it could help explain the unusual orbits of objects in the Kuiper Belt, a region beyond Neptune. The team hopes the planet – which would orbit the sun on a distant path far beyond Pluto - can be detected by the largest camera built inside the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located on the El Penon peak of Cerro Pachon mountain in Chile. Doctor Andre Izidoro, the study's lead author, is quoted by MailOnline: 'When giant planets scatter each other through gravitational interactions, some are flung far away from their star. 'If the timing and surrounding environment are just right, those planets don't get ejected, but rather they get trapped in extremely wide orbits. 'Our simulations show that if the early solar system underwent two specific instability phases - the growth of Uranus and Neptune and the later scattering among gas giants, there is up to a 40 per cent chance that a Planet Nine-like object could have been trapped during that time.'
Eyewitness News
2 days ago
- Science
- Eyewitness News
The hunt for mysterious 'Planet Nine' offers up a surprise
PARIS - It's an evocative idea that has long bedevilled scientists: a huge and mysterious planet is lurking in the darkness at the edge of our solar system, evading all our efforts to spot it. Some astronomers say the strange, clustered orbits of icy rocks beyond Neptune indicate that something big is out there, which they have dubbed Planet Nine. Now, a US-based trio hunting this elusive world has instead stumbled on what appears to be a new dwarf planet in the solar system's outer reaches. And the existence of this new kid on the block could challenge the Planet Nine theory, the researchers have calculated. Named 2017 OF201, the new object is roughly 700 kilometres (430 miles) across according to a preprint study, which has not been peer-reviewed, published online last week. That makes it three times smaller than Pluto. But that is still big enough to be considered a dwarf planet, lead study author Sihao Cheng of New Jersey's Institute for Advanced Study told AFP. - Distant traveller - The object is currently three times farther away from Earth than Neptune. And its extremely elongated orbit swings out more than 1,600 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, taking it into the ring of icy rocks around the solar system called the Oort cloud. It goes so far out, it could have passed by stars other than our Sun in the past, Cheng said. During its 25,000-year orbit, the object is only close enough to Earth to be observed around 0.5 percent of the time, which is roughly a century. "It's already getting fainter and fainter," Cheng said. The discovery suggests "there are many hundreds of similar things on similar orbits" in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune, Cheng said. After taking a risk spending more than half a year sorting through a difficult dataset in search of Planet Nine, Cheng said he was "lucky" to have found anything at all. The researchers are requesting time to point the James Webb, Hubble and ALMA telescopes at their discovery. But Sam Deen, a 23-year-old amateur astronomer from California, has already been able to track the dwarf planet candidate through old datasets. "OF201 is, in my opinion, probably one of the most interesting discoveries in the outer solar system in the last decade," Deen told AFP. - What about Planet Nine? - The icy rocks discovered in the Kuiper belt tend to have a clustered orbit going in a particular direction. Two decades ago, astronomers proposed this was due to the gravitational pull of a world up to 10 times larger than Earth, naming it Planet Nine and kicking off a debate that has rumbled since. It is also sometimes called Planet X, a name proposed for a hypothetical world beyond Neptune more than a century ago. Back in 1930, astronomers were searching for Planet X when they discovered Pluto, which became our solar system's ninth planet. But Pluto turned out to be too tiny -- it is smaller than the Moon -- and was demoted to dwarf planet status in 2006. There are now four other officially recognised dwarf planets, and Cheng believes 2017 OF201 could join their ranks. When the researchers modelled its orbit, they found it did not follow the clustered trend of similar objects. This could pose a problem for the Planet Nine theory, but Cheng emphasised more data is needed. Samantha Lawler of Canada's University of Regina told AFP that this "great discovery" and others like it mean that "the original argument for Planet Nine is getting weaker and weaker". The Vera Rubin Observatory, which is scheduled to go online in Chile this year, is expected to shed light on this mystery, one way or another. Deen said it was discouraging that no sign of Planet Nine has been found so far, but with Vera Rubin "on the horizon I don't think we'll have to wonder about its existence for much longer". For Cheng, he still hopes that this huge planet is out there somewhere. "We're in an era when big telescopes can see almost to the edge of the universe," he said. But what is in our "backyard" still largely remains unknown, he added.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Science
- Time of India
A new kid in our solar system? Hunt for mysterious 'Planet Nine' offers a surprise
A new kid in our solar system? Hunt for mysterious 'Planet Nine' offers a surprise PARIS: It's an evocative idea that has long bedevilled scientists: a huge and mysterious planet is lurking in the darkness at the edge of our solar system , evading all our efforts to spot it. Some astronomers say the strange, clustered orbits of icy rocks beyond Neptune indicate that something big is out there, which they have dubbed Planet Nine. Now, a US-based trio hunting this elusive world has instead stumbled on what appears to be a new dwarf planet in the solar system's outer reaches. And the existence of this new kid on the block could challenge the Planet Nine theory. Named 2017 OF201 , the new object is roughly 700km across, according to a preprint study published online last week. That makes it three times smaller than Pluto. But that is still big enough to be considered a dwarf planet, lead study author Sihao Cheng of New Jersey's Institute for Advanced Study said. The object is currently three times farther away from Earth than Neptune. And it's extremely elongated orbit swings out over 1,600 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, taking it into the ring of icy rocks around the solar system called Oort cloud . It goes so far out, it could have passed by stars other than our Sun in the past, Cheng said. During its 25,000-year orbit, the object is only close enough to Earth to be observed around 0.5% of the time, which is roughly a century. "It's already getting fainter and fainter," Cheng said. The discovery suggests "there are many hundreds of similar things on similar orbits" in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune. After spending over half a year sorting through a difficult dataset in search of Planet Nine, Cheng said he was "lucky" to have found anything at all. Researchers are seeking time to point James Webb, Hubble and ALMA telescopes at their discovery. But Sam Deen, a 23-year-old amateur astronomer , has been able to track the dwarf planet candidate through old datasets. "OF201 is probably one of the most interesting discoveries in the outer solar system in last decade," he said. Back in 1930, astronomers were searching for Planet X when they found Pluto, which became our solar system's ninth planet. But Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status in 2006. There are now four other dwarf planets, and Cheng believes 2017 OF201 could join their ranks. When researchers modelled its orbit, they found it did not follow the clustered trend of similar objects. This could pose a problem for Planet Nine theory, but Cheng said more data is needed. He hopes this huge planet is out there somewhere. "We're in an era when big telescopes can see almost to the edge of universe," he said. But what's in our "backyard" largely remains unknown.
