(ORDO NEWS) — There is a mystery in our solar system surrounding the orbits of Kuiper belt objects. More than one trillion icy objects smaller than our Moon orbit the Sun beyond Neptune.
Oddly enough, all clusters of outer Kuiper belt objects have the same elliptical orbit, as if they are being pulled in the same direction by gravity.
The main hypothesis is that the effect of attraction is caused by an invisible object whose mass is 5-10 times the mass of the Earth. The mysterious object has been named Planet 9.
Scientists speculate that it could be the core of a rogue planet, a small black hole, or even a cluster of dark matter.
An unconventional approach to detection has been proposed by Man Ho Chan, Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Sciences and Environmental Studies at Hong Kong University of Education.
“What If Planet 9 Has Moons?”
Chan focuses on the potential existence of satellites orbiting Planet 9. Chan illustrates that if Planet 9 has satellite objects,
then they will have varying thermal characteristics in their orbit due to the tidal heating process.
These heat signatures would be 2.5 times the expected range for Planet 9 itself, and would also be much higher than any known Kuiper belt objects.
Signatures in this range should be detected by the ALMA observatory, which has recently been upgraded.
Astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin of the California Institute of Technology published an article in the Astrophysical Journal in 2016 titled “Evidence for the Existence of a Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System.”
Since then, astronomers have narrowed down the possible mass range for Planet 9 and determined its potential orbital locations. Given the proposed mass range, Planet 9 could have up to 20 moons, Chan said.
If it is a rogue planet or a remnant of a planetary core, it may have an eccentric orbit that is extremely difficult to track.
If gravity is caused by a black hole measured in Earth masses rather than ordinary solar masses, then it would be small enough to fit in a school backpack. This small size makes gravitational lensing and gamma rays too weak to detect.
And dark matter is so named precisely because it has eluded all methods of detection except gravitational influence on a large scale.
However, any of these possible objects could have satellites.
Since there are no other astrophysical mechanisms outside of Neptune that could increase the temperature to the values described in the article, the satellites should stand out against a colder background and give a clear signal that planet 9 is somewhere there.
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