A Japanese research team has suggested that an Earth-like planet could exist between 40 and 75 billion kilometers from Earth, much farther away from Neptune, which is about 4.5 billion kilometers from Earth.
To come up with the findings, published Aug. 25 in The Astronomical Journal, the team built computer simulations of a group of Kuiper Belt objects observed over the past several decades and found to indicate something gravitationally affecting them.
Kuiper belt containing nearly 100,<> objects (Shutterstock)
Kuiper Belt
The Kuiper Belt is an area of frozen snow and rock behind Neptune, extending approximately between 30 and 55 astronomical units from the Sun, and the astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, equal to about 150 million kilometers. The belt is estimated to contain close to 100,100 objects, with a radius of more than <> kilometers.
The Kuiper Belt is a remnant of the early history of the solar system, as in the case of the asteroid belt, and both did not come together to form a giant planet for the same reason, the gravitational effect of a nearby planet, Jupiter in the case of the asteroid belt, and Neptune in the case of the Kuiper belt.
According to the new study, these huge pieces of rock take orbits around the sun like planets, but their small size makes them more vulnerable to the passage of any object next to them, and Japanese scientists have noticed an anomaly in the movement of a group of these bodies, which suggests the existence of a new ninth planet in that region.
The Planet Nine hypothesis emerged when scientists observed anomalies in the Kuiper belt (Shutterstock) objects.
Planet Nine hypothesis
Scientists now know of more than 100,<> objects in that region, including more than <> dwarf planets, the most famous of which is Pluto, along with other dwarf planets such as Sedna, Orcus and Eris.
Pluto is the most famous object in this region, of course, and it is large enough to keep an atmosphere consisting of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide, but it is not large enough to control its surroundings of objects, but it is - like the rest of the belt bodies - under the influence of the planet Neptune, which is the main reason why it left the list of planets about a decade and a half ago.
The "Planet Nine" hypothesis emerged in 2014 when scientists from the Caltech Institute in the United States observed anomalies in the orbits of objects located in the Kuiper Belt, and assumed at the time that this planet is ten times larger than Earth, and is <> times further away from the sun than the distance between the sun and Neptune itself.
In 2016, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced additional evidence of Planet Nine based on a new model that explains the orbits of many distant post-Neptune objects, suggesting that the planet was ten times larger than Earth.