Is there a hidden planet in the solar system? Astronomers say the moment of truth is approaching

Currently, There are considered to be eight planets that make up our planet. solar system : Earth, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

This number was reached after it was concluded in 2006 that Pluto It was not a planet as such, but rather a dwarf planet. according to the guidelines of International Astronomical Union (IAU, for its acronym in English).

However, for more than a decade, Astronomers have been searching for a planet that has never been directly observed, but which they are convinced is in our solar system. .

The researchers arrived at this hypothesis due to the behavior of other objects close to this hidden body .

This is the call Planet Nine or Planet X .

Malena Rice, associate professor of astronomy at Yale University, said cnn that “If we find another planet, it will be something really important” .

“It could completely reshape our understanding of the solar system and other planetary systems, as well as how we fit into it.” It’s really exciting, There is so much potential to learn so much about the universe. “, he added.

However, he recalled that There is still no consensus on its existence. has.

“Certainly There are extreme skeptics about Planet Nine, it’s kind of a controversial topic . Some believe passionately in its existence. Others passionately believe it doesn’t exist.”

“There’s a lot of debate when it comes to trying to determine what it is and if it exists, but that’s the mark of a truly interesting topic. because otherwise people wouldn’t have passionate opinions about it,” Rice emphasized.

In conversation with the aforementioned media, astronomers explained the discoveries that promise to be the most convincing regarding the existence of Planet Nine .

Along with this, The telescope of an observatory under construction in northern Chile should help solve this debate.

Among the strongest defenders of the existence of Planet Nine are astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown. colleagues and academics at the California Institute of Technology, USA.

The latter is also known as “the man who killed Pluto” as his findings contributed to the body being considered a dwarf planet in 2006.

Batygin assured cnn that The debate over the existence of Planet Nine began more than 175 years ago. .

“Since Neptune was successfully discovered in 1846, At least 30 astronomers have proposed the existence of different types of trans-Neptunian objects and they have always been wrong. “.

He explained that the term “trans-Neptunian” refers to any body that orbits the sun beyond the orbit of Neptune .

“I never thought I would talk about evidence of a trans-Neptunian planet, but I think that, unlike all the previous times, in this case we are right “, underlined Batygin.

Since 2014, both have dedicated themselves to the search for the hidden planet after reviewing a study led by astronomers Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington and Chadwick Trujillo of Northern Arizona University.

The latter reported that The orbits of some known trans-Neptunian objects were strangely clustered .

Under this conclusion, Sheppard and Trujillo argued that An invisible planet several times larger than Earth – and more than 200 times the distance between our planet and the sun – could “graze”. smaller objects.

Brown told cnn that “the most visually striking evidence remains the oldest: that The most distant objects beyond Neptune all have orbits that point in a single direction. “.

From Batygin’s point of view, The strongest evidence for the existence of Planet Nine is found in a study which Brown and two other colleagues also worked on.

Their research was published in April 2024 in Letters from the astrophysical journal and in this frozen tracked bodies subject to some type of disturbance .

In the words of Batygin: “If you look at these bodies, their lifespan is tiny compared to the age of the solar system (…) This means that something puts them there. And what could it be? “.

After carrying out computer simulations to test different situations that could explain this phenomenon, scientists came to the conclusion that a solar system without the hidden planet would be ‘strongly refuted by the data’ .

According to Batygin, Planet Nine is a “super-Earth” object, five to seven times the mass of Earth .

They assume that Its orbital period varies between 10,000 and 20,000 years .

“What I can’t calculate by doing simulations is its position in its orbit, as well as its composition. The most banal explanation is that it is a sort of smaller version of Uranus and Neptune, and probably one of the cores that participated in the formation process of these planets ” he told cnn.

However, Other researchers have different theories and some are skeptical before Planet Nine existed.

Patryk Sofia Lykawka, associate professor of planetary sciences at Kindai University in Japan, told the aforementioned media that there is probably a smaller hidden planet, with a mass between 1.5 and 3 times that of Earth .

According to the expert, co-author of research on this subject published in The astronomical journal in August 2023, “It is possible that it is a frozen and rocky Earth, or a super-Pluto” .

Similar to Batygin’s study, Lykawka He also worked with computer models, but with different orbital alignments. and looked at other aspects.

This is why He talks about the “Kuiper Belt planet” and not from Planet Nine.

The difference in the name, he said, is to “make it clear that we are talking about different hypothetical planets “.

According to the rescue cnn, Other theories suggest that the phenomena identified could be due to a black hole created just after the Big Bang or to errors in certain considerations. on how gravity is currently understood.

However, Rice emphasized that These propositions are very complex to verify .

In this sense, he declared: “Normally I try to let myself be guided by Occam’s razor to decide on priorities in terms of verification.

Occam’s razor is a principle of philosophy which suggests that, among different ideas, the simplest is usually the most likely .

For the specialist, “in terms of scientific feasibility, We know that there are already eight planets, so it’s not that far-fetched to have another one in the same (solar) system. “.

Multiple investigations have been carried out with telescopes positioned in different parts of the world, but experts They hope the one about to come into force will help resolve the debate on planet nine.

He Vera C. Rubin Observatory is working on a wide-angle telescope with the largest digital camera ever built .

It is located in the north of Chile at the top of Cerro Pachón, in the Coquimbo region.

Batygin assured that “it is about a new generation telescope that will explore the entire available sky every few days.”

“You can directly find Planet Nine, which would be a fantastic conclusion to the quest and open a new chapter. . At the very least, you’ll find a ton of additional objects in the Kuiper Belt. But even if it doesn’t discover a single new object, that will be enough to confirm the Planet Nine hypothesis, because it will test all the statistics, all the patterns that we observe with independent investigation,” he explained.

Researchers from the US National Science Foundation and Stanford University are expected to Vera C. Rubin Observatory science operations begin in late 2025 .