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A planet 10 times the mass of Earth beyond Pluto is the Holy Grail among many astronomers, but new developments suggest that elusive Planet Nine may be no more than a mirage.
The researchers propose that the mysterious planet is ‘collective gravity’, which is an expanding disk of frozen debris consisting of millions of small bodies.
The team theorizes that the disk has a mass several times greater than that of Earth and is capable of changing as it moves around the sun, adding weight to the fable of the invisible planet.
They also believe that the debris was left from the formation of the solar system and reached the edge of space, where it became an orbiting group.
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A planet 10 times the mass of Earth beyond Pluto is the Holy Grail among many astronomers, but new developments suggest that elusive Planet Nine may be no more than a mirage.
The concept that Planet Nine is a mirage was developed by Ann-Marie Madigan, who is an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder, according to Scientific American.
She and her graduate student Alexander Zderic have worked on theory development in two studies.
In one they discuss how collective gravity is able to recreate the same type of titled and grouped orbits found between Earth and the Sun, what some have suggested is Planet Nine.
In the second article, the team explains how collective gravity in deep space can change as it revolves around the sun, evidence that has emerged over the mysterious world.
“What we are doing is taking into account the gravitational forces between all these little bodies,” Madigan told Scientific American.
“Including those gravitational forces turns out to be really important.”
Not only did she and her team present evidence that Planet Nine does not exist, but they also paint a different picture of the early solar system.
When Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus were formed, the excess debris that did not reach the planetary age reached the outer edge of the solar system.
Most, whom Madigan calls the ‘primordial scattered disk’, were forced to go far beyond Pluto; These, according to her, may have much more mass than previously thought.
The frozen remains were thrown into a ring formation, making a top-like system.
Eventually it became more stable, so some may think it is an undiscovered planet.
However, Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin of the California Institute of Technology are not on board with these theories.
The researchers argue that the mass of planet Nine must be up to 10 times greater than that of Earth and is at least 400 times the distance from our planet to the sun.
Batygin said he is interested in Madigan’s developments, but is not convinced by the idea of what the solar system looks like.
The researchers propose that the mysterious planet is ‘collective gravity’, which is an expanding disk of frozen debris consisting of millions of small bodies. The team theorizes that the disk has a mass several times greater than that of Earth and is capable of movement as it moves around the sun.
‘If there was such a ring parked too far [from our sun], you run into the problem of its stability in the early solar system, since the solar system was formed into a group of stars, ” he said.
Disturbances from passing stars will ruin this ring. They are going to destroy its coherence and disperse it.
In his response, Madigan noted that his simulation shows that if the disk was formed during the birth of the solar system, it could have lasted ‘eons’.
Madigan and his team’s ideas are not popular with the scientific community, but searches for Planet Nine have still been left empty.
“We are in the minority, but we are growing,” he said.
‘In the solar system, collective gravity has simply not been really studied. The field is just beginning to take off.
Planet Nine was first theorized by experts at Caltech in 2016 when they discovered that a group of icy objects at the edges of the solar system have tilted orbits.
They suggested that the orbits of these chunks of ice, the so-called transneptunian objects (TNO), were deformed by the gravitational pull of a ninth planet in the solar system.
The objects had elliptical orbits that pointed in the same direction and were tilted 30 degrees ‘down’ compared to the plane in which the planets surround the sun.
While Planet Nine has never been seen, several astronomers, including NASA scientists, have published research supporting the theory.
WHAT IS THE MYSTERIOUS ‘PLANET X’?
Astronomers believe that the orbits of various bodies in the far reaches of the solar system have been disrupted by the attraction of an as yet unidentified planet.
First proposed by a group at CalTech in the USA. In the USA, this alien world was theorized to explain the distorted paths seen in distant icy bodies.
To fit in with the data they have, this alien world, popularly called Planet Nine, would need to be about four times the size of Earth and ten times mass.
The researchers say that a body this size and mass would explain the clustered paths of several icy minor planets beyond Neptune.
First proposed by a group at CalTech in the USA. In the USA, this alien world was theorized to explain the distorted paths seen in distant icy bodies.
Its enormous orbit would mean that it takes 10,000 to 20,000 years to make a single turn around the sun.
Theoretical Planet Nine is based on the gravitational pull it exerts on these bodies, and astronomers are confident it will be found for years to come.
Those who await theoretical Earth-sized planets proposed by astrologers or science fiction writers, who ‘hide behind the sun’ and are tied to the doomsday scenarios, may have to keep looking.
