Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet
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Deborah Williams-Hedges
Caltech Office of Strategic Communications
debwms@caltech.edu
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Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the distant reaches of our solar system.
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VIDEO
Evidence of a Ninth Planet
Caltech's Konstantin Batygin, an assistant professor of planetary science, and Mike Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy, discuss new research that provides evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system.
Credit: Caltech AMT
Planet Nine Animation
- 0:00 - Zooming out from the orbit of Neptune, we see the six aligned objects, and how they fall within the same plane.
- 00:38 - Planet Nine is required to be anti-aligned to these objects, but shares the same plane.
- 00:56 - The presence of Planet Nine also forces objects into orbits that are perpendicular to the plane of the solar system and oriented at right angles to Planet Nine.
Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
IMAGES AND GRAPHICS
Mysterious Orbital Alignment
The six most distant known objects in the solar system with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Moreover, when viewed in three dimensions, they are all tilted nearly identically away from the plane of the solar system. Such an orbital alignment can only be maintained by some outside force. In their new paper, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown show that a planet with 10 times the mass of the earth in a distant eccentric orbit anti-aligned with the other six objects (orange) is required to maintain this configuration.
The diagram was created using WorldWide Telescope.
Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
Orbital Predictions
A predicted consequence of Planet Nine is that a second set of confined objects should also exist. These objects are forced into positions at right angles to Planet Nine and into orbits that are perpendicular to the plane of the solar system. Five known objects (blue) fit this prediction precisely.
The diagram was created using WorldWide Telescope.
Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
A Perfect Partnership
Caltech professor Mike Brown and assistant professor Konstanin Batygin have been working together to investigate distant objects in our solar system for more than a year and a half. The two bring very different perspectives to the work: Brown is an observer, used to looking at the sky to try and anchor everything in the reality of what can be seen; Batygin is a theorist who considers how things might work from a physics standpoint.
Credit: Lance Hayashida/Caltech
Download larger version: JPG
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