Now that Pluto is no longer considered a planet, researchers are in search of a ninth planet in our solar system, and the commissioning of a new telescope superpower could well accelerate the occurrence of this potential discovery.
A ninth planet? Really ?
Until 2006, it was taught that 9 planets were present in our solar system, namely Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto. Nevertheless, Pluton has not been part of this list sincethis having been declassified by the International Astronomical Union because it did not meet the criteria to be a planet in its own right, in particular the fact that it “did not clear the surroundings of its orbit of any body likely to to be there.”
However, since then, astronomers have not given up hope of finding a ninth planet in our solar system. However, if this hypothetical planet was actually present in orbit around the sun, would we not have already seen it thanks to telescopes and space probes?
Unfortunately no, it’s a little more complicated than that. Indeed, if there is a ninth planet, this one is located way too far from the Sun and therefore does not reflect enough light from our star to be visible by the means of observation available to us today. According to researchers, this ninth planet would be located far beyond the Kuiper beltthe collection of orbiting orbiting bodies located after Neptune.
However, the indications of the presence of this planet are indeed present. Indeed, the OTNEs (extreme trans-Neptunian objects) located at this distance having already been detected by the dozen (but which do not meet the criteria to be considered as planets), have an orbit too “abnormal” to be influenced only by the attraction of Neptune.
In other words, these are necessarily influenced by another celestial body imposing located at the edge of our solar system. Indeed, if these were only pushed by the force emanating from Neptune, they would not follow such an orbit around the Sun. For this reason, another unknown planet should be in a very distant orbit around our star.
-Will we soon be able to detect this ninth planet?
According to astronomers’ calculations, this ninth planet would be ten times heavier than Earth and would be at a distance of 700 astronomical units (AU) of the Sun, knowing that one AU is equivalent to 150 million kilometersthe distance between the Earth and the Sun, and that Neptune is located approximately 30.1 AU of our star.
In order to precisely scan this part of the sky in search of this still invisible and hypothetical planet, but not only that, a new telescope at the cutting edge of technology will soon be put into service in Chile, at the observatory Vera C. Rubin. This will notably be equipped with a 3,200kg “camera”, the largest in the world, a 3,200 megapixel resolution.
This camera, put into service at the start of 2025, will take every night images of the entire night sky visible from the Southern Hemispherecollecting light from very distant stars, which means that almost anything that sparkles or moves will be captured. These captured images will then be processed by algorithms, identifying previously discovered objects and new celestial objects before forwarding them to astronomers.
Thus, researchers will be able to study the orbital parameters of these new OTNEs in order to consolidate their theory of a ninth planet and potentially accurately identify its orbit in order to point other telescopes in its direction. With any luck, the resolution of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory telescope will be sufficient to directly capture this ninth planet and thus achieve a major scientific discovery in the field of astronomy.
Nevertheless, uncertainties remain great, on the one hand regarding the very existence of this very distant ninth planet and on the other hand about the capacity that this telescope will have to truly detect it. In any case, astronomers around the world have looking forward to seeing future images of this new sky observation instrument.
Article reference:
We May Be on the Brink of Finding the Real Planet Nine, ScientificAmerican (17 décembre 2024), Robin George Andrews
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