The Student News Site of Neshaminy High School

The Playwickian

The Student News Site of Neshaminy High School

The Playwickian

The Student News Site of Neshaminy High School

The Playwickian

Planet Nine or Planet None

By Spencer Potts
Op-Ed Editor

An icy giant, ten times the mass of the Earth, is orbiting the sun in its furthest reaches — at least according to the math of two CALTech scientists. As observing the orbits of Kuiper Belt Objects, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown noticed unexplained abnormalities in the paths and decided to investigate. What the two found may be the most convincing evidence for a ninth planet yet, but is it enough and how can we know?

“Regarding the new possible planet being discovered, we have to remember that Neptune was discovered by mathematics before it was seen,” Neshaminy Earth and Space Sciences teacher Eric Horchheimer asserted. “However, this planet has not been seen yet and other planets have been mathematically determined to be in place but we haven’t found those either.”

Kuiper Belt Objects are bodies found in the Kuiper Belt, a circumstellar disc similar to the asteroid belt resting beyond Neptune. Pluto, a controversial dwarf planet, is the most famous member of the belt along with many comets as well as two other officially-recognized dwarf planets, Haumea and Makemake. Due to the distance from the Sun, approximately 4,488,000,000 kilometers away, the objects are difficult to observe. However, the strange paths of these objects have been documented. Batygin and Brown took to the difficult task of calculating why the objects have such odd orbits.

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The two observed six of these objects. Their calculations of the strange orbits concluded that the orbits could not occur in a unifying and off manner as they do alone. There must be an object or objects altering their paths. Through simulations, they found that the paths could be explained by one force, they added a ninth planet to the simulation.

The math they offered seemed to fit the gaps, however there has been no direct observation of such a planet.

According to their calculations, the planet would ten times the mass of the Earth and two to four times the diameter. It would take around 20,000 years for the planet to orbit the Sun. This could be attributed to an aphelion, the furthest point in its orbit from the Sun, 600 to 1200 times that of the Earth’s orbit and a perihelion, the closest point in its orbit to the Sun, 200 to 300 times that of the Earth’s. It would be the fifth largest planet in the solar system.

The search for a ninth planet has been commonplace with academic dreamers since before the 1930 discovery of Pluto, the original “ninth planet”. During the span of Pluto’s life as a planet, the search for another planet remained, the unseen tenth planet became known as “Planet X”, but it never came to fruition. Since the demotion of Pluto, this is the closest yet to a new ninth planet but there still isn’t any concrete evidence.

“We may find that this planet exists or not exists. I would wager that this planet probably doesn’t exist,” Horchheimer added, “but I bet you there’s something out there that we haven’t seen yet.”

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/0004-6256/151/2/22;jsessionid=9DAB98EED9CB30448604A2F4CA0F8752.c5.iopscience.cld.iop.org

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Planet Nine or Planet None