The mysterious planet in the solar system

The existence of a planet that humans do not know in Solar System may be the cause of many celestial bodies with unusual orbits.

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Kuiper belt is made up of ice objects and lies just outside the orbit of Neptune. Rodney Gomes, an astronomer from the Brazilian National Observatory, said that with modern models on computers, astronomers could determine the orbits of every celestial body in the Kuiper belt based on forces. interact between them.

Illustration of a celestial body in the Kuiper belt. (Photo: National Geographic)

However, after analyzing the trajectories of 92 celestial bodies in the belt, he found that 6 bodies have elliptical orbits - a completely different trajectory than the model predicted, National Geographic reported. According to Gomes, the unusual trajectory of 6 bodies may be the result of many factors. But the simplest hypothesis is: They are attracted to a planet.

"It may be a planet that moves quite far from the sun, but its mass is large enough to affect objects in the Kuiper belt , " Gomes predicted.

Based on models, Gomes identified the "mysterious planet" as four times as large as the globe. It moves about 225 billion kilometers from the sun. Gomes thought that the planet once escaped the solar system, but then it was pulled back by the gravity of the sun. It is also possible that the planet once formed quite close to the sun, but then the gravity of other celestial bodies pulled it further.

However, searching for "mysterious planet" will be an extremely difficult task, Gomes admitted. "The planet is just a very low-brightness object. Models do not provide information for astronomers to determine its location , " Gomes said.