Madrid Complutense University researchers may have found Solar System 'Planet Nine'
Saturday, July 15, 2017 @ 10:03 PM
SCIENTISTS at Madrid's Complutense University have assured that there is definitely a ninth planet in our Solar System.
The campus' pioneering space-matter detection system has found a planet 10 times the size of Earth and at a distance from the latter of 300 to 400 times that of the gap between the Earth and the sun.
Debates among astronomers have been ongoing since early 2016 when California Technology Institute's researchers claimed to have evidence of 'Planet Nine', based upon the unique distribution of orbits found in so-called Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) in the Kuiper belt.
But scientists from the Ossos Project, run by French, Canadian and Hawaiian researchers, found flaws in the hypothesis, saying it could have been an illusion created by random orbit distribution.
Now, though, Complutense astronomers have applied a more exacting and accurate technique allowing them to observe what are known as Extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects (ETNOs) at distances exceeding 150 UA and which never cross Neptune's orbit, and for the first time ever, have studied the distances from the nodes of ETNOs to the sun.
Their results, published in the space magazine MNRAS, suggest there may be a planet in the Solar System even further afield than Pluto.
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