Planet 9 Challenged "There's Not 1 Planet, But Rather Several-Beyond Pluto"

In the race towards the finding of a ninth planet in our solar system, scientists from about the world strive to work out its orbit using the tracks left by the small bodies that move fine beyond Neptune. Now, astronomers from Spain and Cambridge University have established, with latest calculations, that the orbits of the 6 extreme trans-Neptunian substance that served as a orientation to announce the existence of Planet Nine are not as steady as it was thought.

t of this year, the astronomers K. Batygin and M. Brown from the California organization of Technology (Caltech, USA) announced that they had establish evidence of the existence of a huge planet with a mass ten times better than Earth's in the confines of the Solar System. Moving in an strangely stretched out orbit, the mysterious planet will take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to total one revolution around the Sun.
In order to arrive at this end, Batygin and Brown run computer simulations with effort data based on the orbits of six great trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs). Specifically, these ETNOs are: Sedna, 2012 VP113, 2004 VN112, 2007 TG422, 2013 RF98 and 2010 GB174.
Now, though, brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, 2 freelance Spanish astronomers, together with scientist Sverre J. Aarseth from the organization of Astronomy of the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), have considered the query the other way around: How would the orbit of these six ETNOs evolve if a Planet Nine such as the one future by K. Batygin and M. Brown actually did exist? The answer to this significant question has been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical civilization (MNRAS).
"With the orbit indicate by the Caltech astronomers for Planet Nine, our calculation show that the six ETNOs, which they think to be the Rosetta Stone in the solution to this mystery, would go in lengthy, unstable orbits," warns Carlos de la Fuente Marcos.
"These substance would escape from the Solar System in less than 1.5 billion years, -he adds-, and in the case of 2004 VN112, 2007 TG422 and 2013 RF98 they could dump it in less than 300 million years; what is more important, their orbits would turn out to be really unstable in just 10 million years, a actually short amount of time in astronomical terms."
According to this latest study, also based on numerical (N-body) simulations, the orbit of the latest planet proposed by Batygin and Brown would have to be modified slightly so that the orbits of the 6 ETNOs analysed would be really stable for a long time.
These results also guide to a new question: Are the ETNOs a transient and unstable inhabitants or, on the contrary, are they enduring and stable? The fact that these objects behave in one way or another affects the evolution of their orbits and as well the numerical modelling.
"If the ETNOs are transient, they are being continuously ejected and have to have a stable source situated beyond 1,000 astronomical units (in the Oort cloud) where they come from", notes Carlos de la Fuente Marcos. "But if they are stable in the extended term, then there could be a lot of in similar orbits although we have not observed them yet".
In any case, the statistical and numerical proof obtained by the authors, both through this and prior work, leads them to suggest that the most stable scenario is one in which there is not presently one planet, but rather several more beyond Pluto, in mutual resonance, which top explains the results. "That is to say we believe that in adding to a Planet Nine, there could also be a Planet Ten and even extra," the Spanish astronomer points out.
The debate is on. What all astronomers do agree on is the importance of intimately tracking the motions of the extreme trans-Neptunian objects to be clever to adjust the calculations that should guide the way to the location of Planet Nine, without forgetting that the top evidence will be its direct observation, a race which several study teams are fighting to win.