Astronomers continue to search for the mysterious "Ninth Planet", which, in their opinion, may exist practically on the outermost border of our solar system. And although scientists have not yet found direct evidence of its presence, the piggy bank of indirect signs indicating the possibility of its existence has replenished again, Popular Mechanics reports.
In 2016, scientists began to suspect that another planet, or at least an object the size of a planet, could be "hiding" on the outer borders of our system. American astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin observed several of the most distant objects (asteroids and comets) in the solar system and found that they all behave very strangely.
A large international team of astronomers used observational data from the Dark Energy Survey experiment to discover the new trans-Neptunian object 2015 BP519. Scientists estimate that this object has an extremely elongated orbit with small and large radii, reaching 35 and 862 astronomical units, respectively (1 AU = distance from the Earth to the Sun). In addition, as the researchers note, the orbit of 2015 BP519 is tilted relative to the plane of the orbits of the planets of the solar system - by as much as 54 degrees.
If the object was not captured during the interstellar travel by the attraction of the Sun, then it, like the vast majority of other trans-Neptunian objects, was formed together with the Solar system, and its orbit should pass in a common plane.
Astronomers have been doing computer simulations for several years, but none of them have been able to explain the evolution of the body's orbit. Calculations show that gravity of any of the known planets of the solar system could not give it such a sharp tilt - and, perhaps, it is explained by the influence of the mysterious "Ninth Planet".
If the "Ninth Planet" really exists, then finding it will be very difficult. According to scientists, its orbit lies several times farther than the orbit of Pluto (and may go beyond the solar system), which means that the object cannot really be seen by terrestrial telescopes. In addition, while scientists do not understand exactly where to look.
Nikolay Khizhnyak
