Planet Nine Slips Through the Fingers of Astronomers Yet Again

After a fresh hunt, there was still no sign of the mysterious Planet Nine in the distant solar system. As of yet, the speculative planet has escaped discovery; nevertheless, a six-year hunt at millimeter wavelengths has enabled researchers in the southern sky to exclude a body with Planet Nine’s hypothesized features.

The idea of a ninth planetary body in our solar system has gained a lot of traction in recent times. A report published in 2016 sparked a renewed interest in the possibility of a previously unknown planet in the farthest limits of the Solar System.

According to experts, tiny bodies in the Kuiper Belt of the outermost Solar System were circling in an unusual configuration as if they had been driven into one by the gravitational pull of something massive. They came to the conclusion that this “something” may be a planet luring little pebbles that had previously been unnoticed.

Uranus’ orbit was used to forecast the trajectory of Neptune until it was found by observatories in a comparable manner. It’s a lot harder to locate Planet Nine than it is to locate Neptune.

Simulations estimate that if Planet Nine exists, it might have a mass from 5 to 10 times that of Earth and travels at a distance spanning from 400 to even 800 astronomical units. This implies that a single orbit of the Sun could very well be approximately 10,000 to around 20,000 years. Planet Nine is located a great distance away, is fairly tiny, and is extremely chilly. As a consequence, it’s unlikely to scatter much sunlight or emit much heat.

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope from Chile was used by scientists to search for a glimmer of the distant world. There were 3,500 possible alternatives, but none were highly relevant or could be verified. A lot more territory remains to be explored, and the observatory wouldn’t be capable of observing Planet Nine in some of its orbits.