Planet Nine is a hypothetical planet present in the far outer Solar System, whose mass is estimated to be 10 times more than the mass of Earth. The planet is said to be 20 times farther than the sun than Neptune is.
Dr Konstantin Batygin, a planetary astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology, said that there were five different lines of observational evidence which pointed to the existence of Planet Nine. He stated that if this theory does not sound believable, then people would have to come up with the answers of the five pieces of evidence which could lead to further confusion.
Batygin in 2016 published a study examining the six known objects in the Kuiper Belt, a circumstellar disc in the Solar System beyond the planets that extends from the orbit of Neptune towards interstellar space.
The study examines all the objects have elliptical orbits pointing in the same direction and are tilted the same way. These serve as evidence to the planet's existence.
It is being said that the objects are tilted 30 degrees downward compared to the plane where the eight official planets circle the sun. Researchers also made use of computer simulations of the solar system including the Planet Nine and to demonstrate that there should be more objects tilted a whopping 90 degrees to solar plane. It was revealed that five such objects, which fit these parameters were already known.
The study led to the birth of two more ideas. Researchers said that this planet could have tilted the planets of the solar system during the last 4.5 billion years.
Planet Nine's existence could also tell the reason as to why Kuiper Belt objects orbit in the opposite direction as compared to other things in the solar system.
-Prepared by Megha Acharya of NewsGram.
(the story was originally published in PTI)