“The ninth planet” — a mysterious hidden planet, which is hiding (or not hiding) at a great distance from our Sun, in our Solar system, continues to of astronomers led by the nose. She became something of a “Loch ness monster” among the planets — maybe it exists, maybe not, but scientists believe that they have every reason to believe that there is.
But if we found eight (and a half) of the planets in our Solar system, why is it so hard to make the passport and ninth? Oddly enough, those things are light, space, and technology of the people.
When we find the ninth planet?
Let’s for a moment make it clear: the ninth planet does not exist officially… yet. Watching the distant TRANS-Neptunian objects at the outer edge of the Solar system, astronomers saw a strange sight.
It seems that small bodies are subject to the movement of something bigger, but nobody knows exactly what. Perhaps it was an asteroid cluster; perhaps the planet is 20 times heavier than Earth. The first option would be an interesting discovery; the second is monumental.
As writes Washington Post, scientists hope, fingers crossed, that future telescopes will be able to look far enough, and with sufficient sensitivity to see what’s out there. Perhaps they will be the disappointment if a potential planet would be too dim to detect.
The brightness of the planet drops off exponentially the farther it is from the Sun. If the ninth planet really exists, it can be 1000 times further from the Sun than the Earth. This distance is measured in astronomical units (a.e.). The most optimistic scientists believe that we can find a planet at a distance of 1000.e. but then — no. Neptune, the farthest planet in our Solar system, is only 30.e. from us, so you can guess how hard it can be to detect the planet at a distance of 1000.e.
If the ninth planet is on an elliptical orbit, which it offered astronomers, and if we seek it at the wrong time and wrong place, we might have to wait hundreds or even thousands of years to the planet came back for a distance of 1,000.e. from which we can observe. Astronomers of the future will be some work to do.
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It may take another 1000 years before we will see “the ninth planet”
Ilya Hel