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Astronomers are inferring the existence of a "Planet Ten" (or actually the true "Planet Nine"?), a Mars-sized body in the Kuiper Belt, several times closer to the Sun than where the hypothetical Neptune-like Planet Nine is expected to be:
An unknown, unseen "planetary mass object" may lurk in the outer reaches of our solar system, according to new research on the orbits of minor planets to be published in the Astronomical Journal. This object would be different from — and much closer than — the so-called Planet Nine, a planet whose existence yet awaits confirmation.
In the paper, Kat Volk and Renu Malhotra of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, or LPL, present compelling evidence of a yet-to-be-discovered planetary body with a mass somewhere between that of Mars and Earth. The mysterious mass, the authors show, has given away its presence — for now — only by controlling the orbital planes of a population of space rocks known as Kuiper Belt objects, or KBOs, in the icy outskirts of the solar system.
[...] According to the calculations, an object with the mass of Mars orbiting roughly 60 AU from the sun on an orbit tilted by about eight degrees (to the average plane of the known planets) has sufficient gravitational influence to warp the orbital plane of the distant KBOs within about 10 AU to either side.
Also at New Scientist.
The curiously warped mean plane of the Kuiper belt
We estimate this deviation from the expected mean plane to be statistically significant at the ∼97−99% confidence level. We discuss several possible explanations for this deviation, including the possibility that a relatively close-in (a≲100~au), unseen small planetary-mass object in the outer solar system is responsible for the warping.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Monday June 26 2017, @12:47AM (2 children)
Come on, Runaway. Would it kill you to do some research on space topics [soylentnews.org]?
http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/exoplanets/transit-photometry.html? [planetary.org]
Basically, you can monitor a distant star's brightness. If you see it dim numerous times over months or years, you can determine the orbit of exoplanets around it that are periodically blocking some of the star's light that would otherwise reach our telescopes.
For distant objects in our solar system, that obviously does not work because the Earth and our telescopes are between the Sun and the Kuiper belt and are looking away from the Sun. We are looking for invisible pieces of dust in a hay stack with blindfolds on. You build the right telescopes, maybe you get to take off the blindfold.
And that's why we have trouble finding icy objects 100 AU away but can find exoplanets hundreds or thousands of light years away.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @01:41AM
My best guess, from watching Runaway for a long time, is that there is something orbiting him, either a gas giant, or a rather large abdomen. Of course, these could be one and the same, because all I know is what I know, and it seems like these "scientists" with all their "data" and "inferonometry" are saying stuff I don't know, so it must just be, like, their opinions, man.
(another option, equally often overlooked, is just too not comment on subjects where you have nothing to contribute.)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 26 2017, @04:24AM
Please scroll up just a bit, see my reply to Weasley.