Astronomers already far not the first year I suspect or at least suggest, the presence of one, and probably several remote planets of the relay around the Sun. However, our ground-based telescopes are not able to see these objects through a dense ring of dust and rocks surrounding the internal borders of our system. The ring has an official name – the Kuiper belt.
The results of the new observations, published in the latest issue of the journal Astronomical Journal, suggests that the boundaries of the Solar system may “drift unknown, and as yet unseen planetary mass object”. This mysterious celestial body, as the scientists write in the journal, controls the feature behavior and the orbits of some Kuiper belt objects remaining after the final formation of the Solar system.
Apparently, at least judging from the illustrations below, to see what really lies beyond the Kuiper belt, is really easy.
Astronomers kat Volk and Renu Malhotra of the Lunar planetary lab at Arizona state University reported that they were interested in the feature of inclination of the axis of some Kuiper belt objects, which is different from all other objects within the Solar system. According to researchers, the reason for this discrepancy may be a planetary body the size of Mars.
“The only reasonable explanation of the phenomenon of inclination of the axis of the observable object, as shown by our results, may be the presence of some invisible to our eyes the masses. According to our calculations, something with the mass of the planet Mars changed the angle of some objects in the Kuiper belt,” commented the Wolf.
Even if it’s a planet, it is invisible to our telescopes because of the strong density in the Kuiper belt. About his existence on this planetary object suggests its impact on the most distant objects zone
To come to such conclusions, the researchers conducted the calculations and analyzed the angle of inclination of more than 600 objects in the Kuiper belt.
“Imagine that you have a variety of rapidly rotating gyroscopes, and each of them give you a small boost – a light push. If at this point to photograph them, in the pictures you will see how the axis of rotation will change slightly, but the average will be in the direction of the gravitational field of the Earth,” says Malhotra.
Scientists had to determine how big should be an object to exert a gravitational influence. The result of parsing the numbers, the researchers concluded that the size of the planet (unless, of course, the planet) is equal to something average between the size of Earth and Mars. In addition, according to the data obtained, the inclination of the axis of this object is about 8 degrees, which, in turn, suggests that the seasonal changes on the surface of this object is not seen.
However, the researchers do not rule out other options. For example, bodies that influence the inclination of the axis of Kuiper belt objects, there may be several. And perhaps those non-existent, and especially of the inclination of the Kuiper belt objects may be held in some distant past in a strong proximity with our system the wandering star.
Kat Volk, Renu Malhotra and many other astronomers expect the data with the mission of Pan-STARRS and the Large SYNOPTIC survey telescope, which will begin in 2022 and will finally get an accurate picture of what is happening at the external borders of our Solar system. So the only thing that remains now is to wait for.
Something massive is on the outer edge of the Solar system
Nikolai Khizhnyak