- NASA’s Hubble Telescope provides 14 years of data on the Exoplanet HD 106906B.
- It exhibits strange behavior in its orbit 336 light-years from Earth.
- Scientists believe that data from exoplanets could explain what happened to the potentially hidden planet Nine in our solar system.
How many planets are there in our solar system? You may think there is a clear answer to what you learned in kindergarten, but depending on whether you accept enough Pluto for the planet, the numbers fluctuate between 8 and 9. But there is another mysterious planet that is probably crawling on the edge of the solar system – the so-called “Planet Nine”. All we know about it is done by this conjecture, arriving by judging its potential influences around the planet. Now, for the first time, scientists have measured the motion of a giant exoplanet in a giant solar system, which probably behaves similar to the hypothesized Planet Nine.
Exoplanet HD 106906 b 6 336 light years away from Earth. With a cluster of about 11 Gupiters, it orbits a double star system. Scientists first discovered it in 2013, but now thanks to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, much better information is available about its orbit. In fact, Hubble has collected 14 years of accurate data about exoplanets, which could lead to a wealth of new insights.
The exoplanet is located far away from its host stars, about 730 times the distance from Earth to the Sun. While its slow 15,000-year orbit usually does not allow for very crucial observations in just 14 years, the Hubble team found that its orbit is extreme, both very diagonal and elongated, both staying out of the debris around connected stars.
Meiji Nguyen of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study, commented on how unusual the exoplanet’s orbit is:
“To illustrate why this is strange, we can only look at our own solar system and see that all the planets are located in approximately the same plane.” Shared Nguyen. “If science were to say that, Jupiter is rarely tilted 30 degrees compared to an airplane orbiting every other planet. All sorts of questions. “
Strange exoplanet that looks like the long-awaited “Planet Nine”
How did the orbit of this planet evolve? Scientists believe that it is probably very close to the host star, but the effect of the system’s gas disk pulling could affect its orbit. This could bring it closer to the Twin Stars, whose gravitational force then threw it into eccentric orbit, almost all the way into interstellar space. As the Hubble team’s press release explains, the passing star probably improved the orbit of the exoplanet and prevented it from leaving the home system together.
This explanation is similar to what scientists have predicted, possibly pushing Planet Nine to the edge of our solar system, in front of the Kuiper belt. Jupiter can affect its orbit by expelling it from the inner solar system. Planet Nine could have kept Pluto moving forward, but the passing star changed its orbit and probably stopped it.
Paul Klaas of the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the Hubble team, commented that analyzing what happened to Exoplanet HD 106906B is like examining our own past.
“It looks like the machine for our own solar system is going back 6 billion years to see when our young solar system was dynamically active and we had to see everything was going awry and rearranging. There is a time machine. “ Described the class in detail.
This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the potential orbit of the Exoplanet HD 106906B (by dashed ellipse).
Credits: NASA, ESA, M.A. Nguyen (University of California, Berkeley), r. De Rosa (European Southern Observatory), and p. Class (University of California, Berkeley and SETI)
Of course, none of this means we actually got Planet Nine, even if it did exist. Evidence for its physicality includes the bizarre behavior of small celestial bodies in Neptune’s past, whose impractical orbit may be affected by the gravitational pull of an invisible planet.
Further investigation into the formation and debris system of the Exoplanet HD 106906B will be carried out by the James Webb Web Space Telescope, which is set to launch in October 2021. It promises to increase on an unusual system of exoplanets and on our own by extension. Mystery Planet Nine.
Check out the team’s paper published in This Astronomical Journal.
Probably the artist’s impression of the hidden “Planet Nine”
Credit: ESA / Hubble, m. Cornmeaser
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