Weird But True: Astronomers Discover Possible Ninth Planet in Our Solar System
By Hannah Sparks
September 4, 2023 | 6:24pm
There may be another world lurking between the orbital lines of our solar system. Astronomers in Japan have published their theory of an “Earth-like planet,” dubbed Planet Nine, that’s hiding in plain sight just a few billion miles behind Neptune.
Published last month in the Astronomical Journal, researchers Patryk Sofia Lykawka and Takashi Ito, of Japan’s Kindai University and the country’s National Astronomical Observatory, respectively, peered deep into the Kuiper Belt to search for signs of planetary bodies.
The Kuiper Belt is a massive ring composed of interstellar objects such as dwarf planets, asteroids, carbon masses, and icy volatile elements like methane and ammonia. The celestial scrapyard sits just past Neptune’s orbit and circles the sun like anything else in our solar system.
Lykawka and Ito’s findings point to another significant object within the Kuiper Belt with “peculiar” properties, such as gravitational influence over other objects, to suggest its planetary status.
“We predict the existence of an Earth-like planet. It is plausible that a primordial planetary body could survive in the distant Kuiper Belt as a Kuiper Belt planet, as many such bodies existed in the early solar system,” they wrote in their report, according to Earth.com.
While some astronomers remain unconvinced that such a planet exists, this new work isn’t the first to posit the existence of a ninth planet in our cosmic community.
Prior research has led to similar theories of an extra planet in the far reaches of our solar system, with Lykawka and Ito indicating a much more massive body than previously proposed, and at a much shorter distance from where we sit.
If their calculations serve them correctly, Planet Nine would have a mass that is about 1.5 to 3 times that of Earth, at 500 times the distance between our home and the sun.
Caltech researchers in 2014 were reportedly the first to come up with a firm theory on Planet Nine after observing disturbances in space objects just beyond Neptune, also known as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs).
Separate research in 2020 hypothesized that a Planet Nine may have been positioned much more centrally within our system before Jupiter’s inception whizzed it off into the far reaches.
And just this year, another study laid down the theory that the planet could also be flanked by 20 “hot” moons, with temps a balmy minus-280 degrees Fahrenheit.
Some may remember that Pluto was once considered our solar system’s ninth planet until it was demoted to a dwarf planet in 2006 when scientists began to realize how many planetary bodies exist much like it — with the likes of other TNOs.
Three criteria must be applied to be considered a fully-fledged planet, according to Space.com: A solar orbit, massive and spherical, and bigger than all of the objects around it.