The tantalizing prospect of a ninth planet in the solar system that could be Earth-like is suggested by a new paper that explores objects in the distant Kuiper Belt.
... [+]Computer simulations of the gravitational interactions of solar system bodies suggest that a hypothetical Earth-like planet explains all of those anomalies. It would need to be around 1.5–3 times as massive as Earth and about 250–500 Earth-sun distances from the sun, in an orbit inclined by 30° to the plane of the solar system, according to the paper. They call this the “Kuiper Belt Planet scenario.
“We predict the existence of an Earth-like planet and several TNOs on peculiar orbits in the outer solar system,” write the authors, Patryk Sofia Lykawka of Kindai University, Japan and Takashi Ito of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. “The results of the Kuiper Belt Planet scenario support the existence of a yet-undiscovered planet in the far outer solar system [and] also predicts the existence of new TNO populations.
The theory is testable. If astronomers can find a cluster of TNOs at about 150 Earth-sun distances then they could be considered signatures of the existence of a ninth planet in the solar system, albeit one incredibly far away. Even a search for TNOs will likely turn up some extreme objects, which will provide valuable insights into the nature of the Kuiper Belt.
“Even the discovery of a single or a few such new TNOs could revolutionize our theories about how the solar system formed,” said Lykawka.
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