‘Planet Y’ theory hints at hidden Earth-size world lurking in the solar system — and it could be much closer to us than ‘Planet Nine’

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Scientists think they’ve found evidence of a ninth planet that hasn’t been discovered yet, hiding in the solar system’s nearby regions. This hypothetical world, called “Planet Y,” might be about the same size as Earth and could coexist with another well-liked Planet Nine candidate, bringing the total number of planets in our cosmic neighborhood to ten if both can be verified.

There is no evidence to support the existence of this newly theorized world, though, and some experts are dubious of the recent discoveries, even though researchers have stated that it could be discovered in three years.

Following the discovery of Neptune in 1846, the hunt for a ninth solar system world was momentarily put to rest in the 1930s with the discovery of Pluto, which was later demoted to dwarf planet status in 2006. However, in 2016, Caltech astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin reopened the search with their Planet Nine hypothesis, which postulated that the gravitational pull of a massive hidden object was responsible for the odd orbits of roughly a dozen large objects beyond Neptune.

Though it has so far escaped detection, this hypothetical world, also known as Planet X, most likely lurks somewhere within the Kuiper Belt, a massive disk of asteroids, comets, and dwarf planets (including Pluto) that orbit the sun beyond the eight known planets.

Right now, in a study released in August. Another team of scientists claims to have found evidence of a brand-new Planet Nine (P9) candidate, which they have named Planet Y, in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 21. This hypothetical world, which would also be located in the Kuiper Belt, might be twice as close to Earth as Planet X and possibly much smaller than our own planet. The researchers pointed out that the possibility of its existence does not rule out the Planet X theory.

After examining the trajectories of 50 Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), the team concluded that the objects were tilted by about 15 degrees in relation to the planets in the rest of the solar system. They claimed that a hidden world was the only explanation for this tilt.

Amir Siraj, an astrophysicist at Princeton University and the lead author of the study, told CNN recently, “We started trying to come up with explanations other than a planet that could explain the tilt, but what we found is that you actually need a planet there.”. “This paper is not a planet discovery,” he continued. “But it’s undoubtedly the identification of a riddle that a planet is probably the answer to. “,”.

The study team’s calculations indicate that Planet Y is most likely a rocky world with a mass in the range of Earth’s and Mercury’s. The estimated mass of Planet X, a gas giant that is thought to be up to ten times as massive as Earth, is much greater than this.

Also, the scientists suggest that Planet Y is between 100 and 200 times further away from the sun than Earth. Compared to Planet X, which is probably at least 400 times farther from the sun than Earth is, that is much closer to us and not too far from Neptune’s orbit, which circles the sun at a speed of 30 times that of Earth. Both planets would reflect very little light back to Earth at these distances, making direct detection difficult. ).

The researchers wrote that if Planet Y exists, it would also be tilted by up to 10 degrees relative to the orbital plane that the eight known planets share, which would make it more difficult to detect.

But not everyone is in favor of the new idea.

Critic of the Planet X theory Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, told CNN that the results were “not definitive,” primarily due to the study’s small sample size of KBOs. Planet Y is “plausible,” but more observations are needed to make it a likely possibility, according to Patryk Sofia Lykawka, an astronomer who studies KBOs at Kindai University in Japan.

Scientists will need to either get extremely lucky and see the elusive planets up close or discover a lot more KBOs that match the patterns they have discovered in order to conclusively demonstrate the existence of Planet Y or Planet X.

This might not take long because of the recently launched Vera C. The world’s largest digital camera has started to scan the night sky at Chile’s Rubin Observatory. According to a number of experts, this survey will find thousands more KBOs in the upcoming years, which may yield the information required to support these hypotheses.

It will become definitive, Siraj stated, “within the first two to three years [of the observatory’s mission].”. “The telescope can directly locate Planet Y if it is within its field of view. “,”.

However, if the researchers are unable to find what they are looking for in this time frame, both theories may be permanently discarded.

Additional candidates for Planet Nine.

Alternative P9 candidates have surfaced in recent years, and Planet Y is not the only one. There have been several other speculative worlds put forth, but they have all been mainly refuted.

Researchers believed a faint infrared . they saw in May might be a ninth planet. This result was mainly disregarded, though, because the object that caused the reading would need to be orbiting the sun in a plane perpendicular to the other planets, which is improbable.

Even further away from our home star, there is a chance that several rogue planets—worlds that have been kicked out of alien star systems and then caught by the gravity of the sun—may be hiding. According to Siraj’s 2023 calculations, the solar system’s outermost regions may contain space for up to five rocky planets that resemble Earth.

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Other explanations for Planet X have also been put forth by some astronomers, such as the idea that a baby black hole is the source of the gravitational anomalies or that there is another type of gravity at work that we are still unaware of. Others have proposed that this missing world might actually be surrounded by dozens of moons and be smaller than we realize.

However, some experts believe that the recent discovery of a number of dwarf planet candidates in the Kuiper Belt, such as 2023 KQ14 and 2017 OF201, which were revealed in July and May, respectively, raises doubts about the existence of Planet X because these objects do not exhibit the characteristics predicted by this theory.

Right now, the only thing we know for sure is that we still have a lot to discover about the enormous backyard of our cosmic neighborhood.