2023-09-05 03:20:00
When the search for exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) is undertaken, it is not an easy task, however, 5,502 have been discovered. A not insignificant figure, considering that the first one was discovered in 1992. Now, a team of astronomers raises the possibility that there is a planet similar to Earth yet to be discovered in our solar system.
But discovering objects in our own solar system is a bit more complicated, and involves finding by observing the movement of other objects. For example, Neptune was discovered after the astronomer and mathematician Urbain Le Verrier observed a difference between the observed orbit of Uranus and the way its orbit was predicted by Newtonian physics.
He calculated that the orbit could be explained by the gravitational influence of a planet located beyond Uranus. Sure enough, when the German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle checked where the planet should be according to Le Verrier, he found Neptune.
Is it Planet Nine?
In a new paper published in The Astronomical Journal, astrophysicists Patryk Sofia Lykawka, from the University of Kindai, Japan, and Takashi Ito, from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, analyze the motion of Kuiper Belt objects. Using simulations, the team determined that an Earth-sized planet could explain the unusual motions of objects beyond Neptune’s orbit.
According to the team, the planet would have between 1.5 and 3 times the mass of Earth and an orbit inclined at about 30 degrees.
For years, astronomers have hinted at the existence of another world in our solar system, commonly known as Planet Nine. But there could be another “Earth-like” planet waiting to be discovered much closer to home, Japanese astronomers now reveal.
They believe this new planet lurks in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of objects that extends just beyond Neptune’s orbit. This one, called the Kuiper Belt planet (KBP), lies at a distance of up to 500 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, 500 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, and closer than Planet Nine.
According to experts, KBP is up to three times more massive than Earth, but its temperatures are likely too cold to support life as we know it.
The authors write that the assumptions are independent of the putative “Planet Nine,” which some have theorized to be much more massive, and farther away, than a potential Earth-like planet in the Kuiper Belt.
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