A 'ninth planet' has recently been discovered by an astronomer who, incidentally, was instrumental in demoting the status of Pluto from a planet to just a dwarf planet.
Michael Brown, professor at the California Institute of Technology teaching planetary astronomy, together with another astronomer, was able to plot the orbit of a probable "new planet" in the solar system. This astronomical body is said to be bigger than Pluto, and at a much farther distance from the sun.
In an interview with the Astronomical Journal, Brown and his colleague, Konstantin Batygin, stated that this planet is approximately 10 times larger than the Earth. They estimated that it would take this planet about 20,000 years to make a complete revolution around the sun.
According to the two, its theoretical size is between that of Neptune and Earth. They say there is nothing like it in our current solar system, and is more like exoplanets which are detected in other solar systems.
"We are pretty sure there's one out there," says Brown, referring to his belief about an additional planet in the solar system. It appears that because of their determination, they have actually found such a planet.
To support their theory, the two have devised a detailed circumstantial evidence that such planet exists because of what they have observed about the distant elliptical orbits made by half-a-dozen small astronomical bodies.
What triggered their curiosity is that the orbits of the six bodies loop outward within the same quadrant of our solar system. Their orbits are also slanted on a similar angle. Batygin claims that the odds that this can happen are about 1 in 14,000.
Their theory is that a ninth planet could be gravitationally pulling these small astronomical bodies into their orbits.
For many years, astronomers have searched for "Planet X" without success. Could this 'ninth' planet be what they're looking for?
