In early January this year, the entire scientific community was shocked by the news of the probable presence of the ninth planet of the solar system, located beyond the orbit of Pluto. Scientists have yet to figure out the details about our new neighbor, but researchers already agree that this planet is at least 10 times larger than Earth. Scientists among themselves have already christened her "Fatty" (from the English "Fatty"). And the fact that such a huge cosmic body continued to remain undetected to this day, only once again tells us how little we actually know about our solar system and how much we have yet to find out about it.
The planet was discovered by the man who "killed" Pluto
Even if you've never heard of Mike Brown, you've probably heard of his work. In 2005, he discovered Eridu, a Kuiper Belt space object claiming planetary status. The debate that erupted between scientists led to the fact that in the end Eridu, like Pluto, it was decided to reclassify into the category of dwarf planets. This event brought Brown some share of world fame, and the scientist even wrote a book "How I killed Pluto and why it was inevitable."
However, ironically, the man who "deprived" our solar system of the planet, discovered a new one. In collaboration with his colleague Konstantin Batygin (an astrophysicist from the California Institute of Technology and a native of the USSR), he announced in the pages of the Astronomical Journal that the unusual orbital behavior of 13 trans-Neptunian objects (that is, objects outside the orbit of Neptune) can be strong evidence in favor of the existence of a massive, distant planet.
"We realized that the only thing that could make all these trans-Neptunian objects move in the same direction is the gravity of the massive planet."
The deletion of Pluto from the list of planets upset many space enthusiasts. It is likely that the new Ninth Planet (which has not yet received its official name) will be able to calm their souls.
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It's an ice giant
According to Brown and Batygin, unlike Pluto and Eris, the new Ninth Planet is truly a full-fledged (not dwarf) planet. Brown, in an interview with the New Yorker, even shared his suggestion that "this planet is the" most planetary planet "among all the planets in the solar system." We usually refer to objects as planets “which dominate by their gravitational forces over neighboring objects. Pluto is a slave to Neptune's gravity. However, Planet Nine has the largest area of gravitational dominance of any known planet in the solar system. And for this reason alone, we can say with confidence that this find is indeed a planet. Knowing this, we can conclude that this is not a small object at all. It is at least 10 times more massive than Earth and about 5 thousand times more massive than Pluto."
The estimated size of an object can tell us about one of its most important characteristics - composition. The larger the planet, the thicker its atmosphere, as it produces more and more gaseous elements through a process called accretion. This process, for example, explains why planets such as Earth and Mars can only reach a certain size before they turn into gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn. The ice giants, in turn, are located somewhere in the middle of this classification. Their atmosphere is also dense and consists of almost the same components that make up the atmosphere of the gas giants, but these planets are much smaller in size.
Planet Nine is larger than any other rocky planet, yet smaller than any gas giant. This, in turn, may hint about their belonging to such a strange category as ice planets. Scientists have not yet come to a joint agreement on how ice giants form. Most of the accepted models for the formation of gas giants are not suitable here. As a result, the question of the formation of ice giants remains an open subject of heated debate in the scientific community. More details about Planet Nine could help resolve all these controversies.
She's incredibly far from the sun
Even by astronomical standards, Planet Nine is located incredibly far from the Luminary. Its estimated distance from the Sun is more than 90 billion kilometers, which is 20 times the distance from the Sun to Neptune - currently officially the most distant planet. Just imagine, the New Horizons spacecraft, which reached Pluto 9 years after its launch, would take another 54 years to reach Planet Nine! And this is at best! During the orbital phase of its maximum distance from the Sun, it can take up to 350 years to reach it. It should be noted, however, that, of course, both scenarios are still only hypothetical, since the "New Horizons" simply do not have enough fuel to reach the Ninth planet.
Such a high distance may also be the reason why the Ninth Planet could not be found until now. Based on their calculations, Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin believe that their hypothetical planet can still be seen even with the help of amateur and semi-professional telescopes, but only at the moment when its orbit is relatively closer to Earth. And since the planet has not yet been discovered by anyone, we can conclude that at the moment it is located at the most distant point of its orbit. Nevertheless, Batygin and Brown believe that it can be seen with very powerful observatory telescopes.
Its orbital period is colossal
Do not rush to buy telescopes, as the Devayata planet is not going to appear in the near future. Scientists have yet to figure out the exact time it takes for the planet to complete one revolution around the Sun, but according to preliminary calculations by Brown and Batygin, its orbital period is at least 10,000 years. And this is at its best. Since scientists believe that the planet has an elliptical orbit, it is likely that its orbital period could be 20,000 years. And this, in turn, will be the largest orbital period among all planets known to astronomy.
As is often the case in astronomy, the numbers are speculative, so determining the exact values will be very difficult. If it turns out that the orbital period of the Ninth planet is really equal to 10,000 years, then the last time it was at the point at which it is now, there was a time when mammoths still walked on the Earth, and the human population, at best, numbered 5 million people. Almost all of Earth's recorded history, from the rise of agriculture to the invention of the iPod, has passed in just one year for Planet Nine, where seasons can last for centuries. It sounds crazy, but in the solar system, where a day can last much longer than a full year on some planets, anything is possible.
She could be much closer
The extreme remoteness of Planet Nine makes it special in the literal and figurative sense. The comparative distances of other planets make the entire solar system look like a cozy company, while the ninth planet looks more like a hermit living alone somewhere in the forest. However, perhaps this was not always the case, and the “first prankster of the solar system” - Jupiter, may be to blame.
In 2011, scientists began to wonder why our solar system does not have a fifth "giant" planet, the presence of which is usually noted in many other systems. One explanation may be that Jupiter could have caught this "fifth giant" with its gravitational forces at a time in history when our solar system was still very young. As a result, this planet could be thrown from the orbit of the Sun and thrown into its most distant outskirts. While scientists are not sure whether this could happen to the Ninth Planet, however, the very discovery of a giant planet in the far corners of the system, to some extent, only fuels this theory.
She may be an interstellar traveler
The main problem with space is that it is very, very large. Therefore, one of the greatest obstacles to studying it is that we simply do not have the opportunity to get to one or another of its corners in a relatively reasonable period of time by human standards. In addition, there are no refueling stations in space in case we run out of fuel during space travel. The ninth planet can partly solve this problem.
In the same way that the Apollo 13 astronauts used the moon as a "gravitational slingshot" to get the spacecraft back to Earth, future space explorers will be able to use Planet Nine's powerful gravity pool to accelerate their spacecraft to higher speeds, accelerating their movement further into the unknown of cosmic darkness. This process, also known as "gravity assist", has helped NASA aerospace agency numerous times. Thanks to this process, for example, it was possible to accelerate the movement of the Voyager space probe, as well as the New Horizons interplanetary spacecraft. Both used Jupiter's gravitational forces to accelerate toward the outer edges of the solar system. The same can be done with the Ninth planet.
Of course, this is all just theory so far. Planets like Jupiter, whose characteristics are more or less known to scientists, allowed NASA to accurately calculate the required acceleration time to move in the right direction and at the right speed. However, the orbital period of Planet Nine, which is 10,000 years by modest standards, means that spacecraft will have to stay in one place for several hundred years to correctly guess the desired trajectory of further movement. In other words, this gravity assist will only be useful for moving in certain directions, and not necessarily in those that we need. In addition, if it turns out that the density of the Ninth planet is as low as, say, Neptune, then the gravitational acceleration will be quite insignificant. However, the idea should not be buried right away. At least until we learn more about the planet itself.
Conspiracy theorists say that she is the harbinger of the apocalypse …
It's time to get used to the fact that with almost every new significant (and not so) discovery, many people appear inside the solar system who associate these discoveries with the coming apocalypse. For example, take the asteroids "Apophis", TV135, 2014 YB35 and many others, which are supposed to put an end to all living and nonliving on Earth.
The attitude towards the discovery of Planet Nine, as you might have guessed, is the same. Almost immediately after the announcement of the discovery, "prophets" appeared on the Internet, who began to talk everywhere that the Ninth Planet is actually Nibiru, also known as Planet X (which seemed like a joke until Pluto was taken away from the status of the 9th planet Solar system). According to conspiracy theorists, Nibiru is a mystical "planet of death", whose existence has long been denied and continues to be denied by the governments of all countries. Allegedly, one day it will pass close to the Earth so close that its gravitational forces will cause earthquakes and tsunamis to destroy all living things on our planet. And this is the best case. At worst, she will face us.
The forecast is very "romantic", but one thing is not clear: how is the Ninth Planet going to do this, if it is almost the most distant space object inside the solar system? Indeed, let's not give in to conpyrological delusions.
… Although there is a small chance that this is true
More scientifically-minded fatalists claim that Planet Nine's gravity can capture passing asteroids and meteorites and send them towards Earth, potentially leading to devastating meteor impacts. From a scientific point of view, this theory does have weight. The gravitational effects of Planet Nine (or whatever) are indeed documented. In the end, scientists began to derive hypotheses about the presence of "Fat" after they discovered the gravitational effect on smaller space objects. Therefore, in the realities of possibilities, one or more of these objects may indeed at some time be directed straight to the Earth.
However, here again, not everything is so simple. Remember that space is very, very large. An object thrown in our direction will have to overcome many planets, and therefore, many gravitational forces that can change its direction before it reaches Earth. In this case, Planet Nine will have to "shoot" very accurately in order for the "bullet" released to reach its destination. For the sake of fairness, we note that there is still a possibility of this, but this is far from probability. Astronomer Scott Sheppard says that "Planet Nine can indeed launch small objects through the solar system from time to time, but this only slightly increases the chances of our mass extinction."
It may not exist at all
Before we send Matt Damon to the Kuiper Belt, let's think for a second. Currently, Planet Nine is the best hypothetical explanation for why some objects beyond Neptune's orbit have strange behavior. Even those astronomers who discovered the planet are very careful in their formulations. According to Mike Brown, all of these oddities can be nothing more than surprising coincidences.
Amazing coincidences of circumstances, in turn, are very common in astronomy. At the beginning of the 20th century, American businessman, diplomat, and astronomer and mathematician Percival Lowell announced that Neptune's orbit had been altered by the gravity pool of a previously undetected giant planet. In 1930, another American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, discovered the planet Pluto exactly where Lowell had predicted it. However, in the 1970s, astronomers realized that Pluto was actually a very small planet and could in no way affect Neptune's orbit. In fact, there was no planet that somehow influenced the orbit of Neptune. Lowell's calculations were based on incorrect data, and the discovery of Pluto in that predicted place is nothing more than surprising, but nonetheless an accident.
Therefore, before rejoicing in the discovery, one should think: No one has seen the ninth planet visually yet. And there is a chance that she will never be seen, because she is not there and never was.
