How closely are we to finding Planet Nine ? A novel paper seems to indicate that the solution to the mystery is actually much closer than we previously think .
Matthew Holman and Matthew Payne from the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have used observations by the Cassini spacecraft to reduce the potential sphere in the sky where Planet Nine might be conceal . The region is found in the southern sky , or so in the direction of the configuration of Cetus . The probable area extend over 20 degrees in all way ; by comparison , the full Sun Myung Moon measures only half a academic degree across .
Planet Nine is a hypothetical planetproposedin January by Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin to explicate why objects beyond the cranial orbit of Neptune have their closest decimal point to the Sun in the same localisation .
In February , French researchersannouncedthat by using data from the NASA / ESA Cassini space vehicle orbit Saturn , they were capable to narrow down the area where Planet Nine might be hiding . They used the disruption , or miss thereof , in Saturn ’s arena to establish where the major planet might be . Saturn would only be perturbed if Planet Nine was at its close approach , so not watch any disruption tells us that Planet Nine is not very close to the Sun right now .
In the late survey , availableonline , the two investigator used a sophisticated statistical technique send for Markov Chain Monte Carlo to cut back the possible concealment spot of Planet Nine even further . While the information from Cassinidoesn’t showany perturbations that can not be explain with current models , those subject discount the perturbation as stochasticity . Holman and Payne , therefore , decide to look for possible Planet Nine models that would not only fit the value , but also pad support for the perturbations as a real issue .
“ We put Planet Nine at a whole dissimilar slew of locations – all different opening on the sky , dissimilar distances , dissimilar tidy sum – and tried to recover out whether that constrains thing even more , ” read Payne toNew Scientist .
According to the model , Planet Nine could be place in two minute slip of the sky . The squad then overlapped these regions with Batygin and Brown ’s suggested orbit and got an even smaller area .
Astronomers are already looking at the advise region and will hopefully shortly find out whether there are nine planets in the Solar System .
[ H / T : New Scientist ]
