The vast Solar System has areas still unknown to our scientists. The exploration continues, and we may find a surprise… as the other planet Earth that is hidden in it.
They call it Planet Nine, and the theory is put forward by various scientists. The most recent to do so are Patryk Sofia Lykawka (Kindai University, Japan) and Takashi Ito (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan).
The idea originates after studying the grouping behavior of trans-Neptunian objects (TNO) found in the confines of the Solar System. This could indicate the presence of a hidden world.
It would be, in the words of Lykawka and Ito, an icy and dark planet, being far from the Sun, and with three times the mass of the Earth.
“We predict the existence of a planet similar to Earth and various trans-Neptunian objects in peculiar orbits in the outer Solar System, which may serve as verifiable observable signatures of perturbations on the putative planet,” the scientists note.
Lykawka and Ito’s study was published in The Astronomical Journal, under the title of Is there an Earth-like planet in the far Kuiper Belt?
The Kuiper Belt lies beyond Neptune, 30 astronomical units from the Sun. It is made up of icy rocks and dwarf planets.
The clustering of several of the trans-Neptunian objects found in the Kuiper Belt motivates Lykawka and Ito to speculate about Planet Nine, or the other Earth.
“We determined that an Earth-like planet located in a distant and inclined orbit can explain three fundamental properties of the distant Kuiper Belt: a prominent population of TNOs with orbits beyond the gravitational influence of Neptune, a significant population of high-inclination objects, and the existence of some extreme objects with peculiar orbits.
Lykawka and Ito delve into what is driven by Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin in 2016. The Caltech astronomers pointed out that Planet Nine must be 460 astronomical units from our Earth, with 6.3 times the mass of it.
Can it be found one day? At the moment, all are speculations.