Astronomers at Lund University in Sweden have published results of a simulation suggesting that Planet 9 could be an exoplanet that was captured by our solar system:
"Planet 9 may very well have been 'shoved' by other planets, and when it ended up in an orbit that was too wide around its own star, our sun may have taken the opportunity to steal and capture Planet 9 from its original star. When the sun later departed from the stellar cluster in which it was born, Planet 9 was stuck in an orbit around the sun", says Alexander Mustill. "There is still no image of Planet 9, not even a point of light. We don't know if it is made up of rock, ice, or gas. All we know is that its mass is probably around ten times the mass of earth."
It requires a lot more research before it can be ascertained that Planet 9 is the first exoplanet in our solar system. If the theory is correct, Alexander Mustill believes that the study of space and the understanding of the sun and the Earth will take a giant leap forward. "This is the only exoplanet that we, realistically, would be able to reach using a space probe", he says.
Is there an exoplanet in the Solar system? (DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slw075)
Previously: Evidence of Another Planet in Our Solar System
Astrophysicists Narrow the Search for "Planet Nine"
Related Stories
Researchers at CalTech have found evidence of what they refer to as a real ninth planet in our solar system.
Caltech researchers, Batygin and Brown, have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun.
I'm old enough that Pluto is still a planet for me, but finding a new planet in the solar system would be really cool. I wonder if it is really there, and if so, who will be the first to locate it directly.
takyon: Coverage at Nature.
Evidence for a distant giant planet in the solar system (open, DOI: 10.3847/0004-6256/151/2/22)
Astrophysicists from the Physics Institute at the University of Bern have calculated upper and lower limits for the size, temperature, and luminosity of the hypothetical icy giant known as "Planet Nine":
In their paper accepted by the journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics" the scientists conclude that a planet with the projected mass equal to 10 Earth masses has a present-day radius of 3.7 Earth radii. Its temperature is minus 226 degrees Celsius or 47 Kelvin. "This means that the planet's emission is dominated by the cooling of its core, otherwise the temperature would only be 10 Kelvin," explains Esther Linder: "Its intrinsic power is about 1000 times bigger than its absorbed power." Therefore, the reflected sunlight contributes only a minor part to the total radiation that could be detected. This also means that the planet is much brighter in the infrared than in the visual. "With our study candidate Planet 9 is now more than a simple point mass, it takes shape having physical properties," says Christoph Mordasini.
The researchers also checked if their results explain why planet 9 hasn't been detected by telescopes so far. They calculated the brightness of smaller and bigger planets on various orbits. They conclude that the sky surveys performed in the past had only a small chance to detect an object with a mass of 20 Earth masses or less, especially if it is near the farthest point of its orbit around the Sun. But NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer may have spotted a planet with a mass equal to 50 Earth masses or more. "This puts an interesting upper mass limit for the planet," Esther Linder explains. According to the scientists, future telescopes like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope under construction near Cerro Tololo in Chile or dedicated surveys should be able to find or rule out candidate Planet 9. "That is an exciting perspective," says Christoph Mordasini.
Evolution and magnitudes of candidate planet nine (open, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201628350) and arXiv link
Previously: Closing in on Planet Nine
(Score: 4, Funny) by devlux on Friday June 03 2016, @05:46AM
So do you mean to say that this may in fact be the legendary Planet 9 from Outer Space?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln7WF78PolA [youtube.com]
Ed Wood fans should be thrilled by this discovery!
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Friday June 03 2016, @08:17AM
Gotta say, the dept. of this story is excellent. Just excellent.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @05:59AM
Don't use numbers to refer to a planet as that is subject to change by internal politics.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 03 2016, @06:03AM
The name's going to change anyway so it really doesn't matter.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @06:05AM
Call it Rupert.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Friday June 03 2016, @02:43PM
Bitter are we? Heaven forbid scientists classify things scientifically.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @06:03AM
An invisible object the size of Neptune at the outer edge of the system? It's a cloaked space station.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Friday June 03 2016, @06:12AM
I wonder if such a planet in orbit so far away from our sun would have left a telltale path of stars temporarily blacked out by its shadow to us?
( Yeh, "needle in a haystack" probably does not describe it as much as a .001 karat diamond lost at the beach. ).
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @06:22AM
No because it's cloaked and therefore invisible. The only way anyone can even guess it's there is it still has gravity, because the aliens couldn't afford to install the kind of cloaking device that also hides inertial mass. There's been a galactic recession for a few eons, you see, and the aliens are waiting for us to invent some technology they can steal and patent and sell for themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @07:38AM
mod +100 "I feel dumber for having read your post"
(Score: 4, Informative) by butthurt on Friday June 03 2016, @09:15AM
A star being "temporarily blacked out by its shadow" is called an occultation. [wikipedia.org] The rings of Uranus were discovered that way, and occultations by trans-neptunian objects have been observed.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday June 03 2016, @10:32AM
Thanks.
When I read the article, I kept remembering that although one can not see a thing by either its emitted or reflected light, it could often be detected by its shadow... or as you say occultation.
Seems I recall planets orbiting other stars were detected this way.
So it seemed natural to me to speculate any further planets thought to be in our solar system would be detectable by similar techniques.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Friday June 03 2016, @01:19PM
> Seems I recall planets orbiting other stars were detected this way.
That's right, although the term "transit" is used when only a small portion of the star's light is blocked, as is usual for a planet passing in front of its star.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_transit [wikipedia.org]
There's a spacecraft being built that will look for exoplanets that way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transiting_Exoplanet_Survey_Satellite [wikipedia.org]
Exoplanets are most often detected with a method based on the Doppler effect:
http://www.euhou.net/index.php/exercises-mainmenu-13/astronomy-with-salsaj-mainmenu-185/267-from-doppler-effect-to-exoplanets [euhou.net]
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday June 04 2016, @02:03AM
To do this, you would first need to know the location of the planet. Even the giant planets occult stars very infrequently, and we cant simply look at all the stars all the time.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday June 04 2016, @08:30AM
That's why I added that .001 karat diamond lost at the beach thing...
I figured the only way they are gonna notice it is if they have an unexplained winkout of a star while they are taking starfield photos searching for pulsars...( PDF ) [pulsarsearchcollaboratory.com] when they take two photos of a wide field of stars separated in time, then alternate them during viewing, looking for the blinking one. Then they find out on subsequent investigation the star was not a pulsar. Just an unexplained one-time wink. Possibly an occlusion of a huge planet beyond the kuiper belt --- too far away for the sun to illuminate sufficiently for our telescopes to see.
Disclaimer: I am not an astronomer, not even a hobbyist one. This is science spectator sport for me. I could be really full of it here...
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 03 2016, @01:59PM
Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Username on Friday June 03 2016, @05:39PM
It’s a seed ship. They travel the universe looking for habitable planets to impregnate with life. It then sticks around babysitting this new life until it gets developed enough to understand and survive in space. We have just not matured to the point in which the seed ship will acknowledge and guide us out into the universe.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday June 03 2016, @07:27AM
It might not. Gotta love these totally speculative alleged science posts. At least they spelled "priniciple" correctly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @08:07AM
If we get confirmation of the object's existence, will you complain that simulations [wikipedia.org] were used to get astronomers interested in looking for it?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday June 03 2016, @08:27AM
No! Not at all! How do you think we found Pluto, after all! The only thing I was suggesting was a bit beyond any and all current evidence was the "captured exo-planet" hypothesis, which still seems a bit of a stretch. Not that anything rules it out. But why would we go "there"? (As opposed to "their" or "they're", or "theare", just to reference a recent thread that went badly.)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:19AM
Going to a planet 200 AUs away would be orders of magnitude easier than going to the nearest star, and if it is a captured exoplanet it could be different from the rest of the solar system's planets in important ways. It would probably have moons too, which means more chances to look for life (in a tidally heated subsurface ocean).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 03 2016, @12:46PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @12:58PM
At least they spelled "priniciple" correctly.
Better than you did at least.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @04:03PM
Ensign, set a course for the Bad Analogy sector.... Engage!
All of the planets could have evolved in a stellar nursery, tossed about like so many rattles by erratic young stars.
Our sun is an adult who has far less outbursts than the infant, toddler or esp. teenage stars who mostly clear their envelopes. Our planet, and all the others, could just be one of many that are the Sun's favorites. Note that adults develop their tastes in their teens and twenties and usually stick to them for the rest of their lives. The chances of Planet 9 From Outer Space being a late aquired taste is up for debate. As is the entire notion of how planets form around stars. Given that all the asteroids we've been to are hard dry hot rocks, not dirty snowballs from the Oort Cloud, our entire theory of solar system evolution is up in the air.