More evidence to support the existence of Planet Nine: a six degree tilt in the ecliptic plane, relative to the Sun.
Astronomers presented new research on the possibility of a gigantic, unseen planet beyond Neptune on Wednesday, saying the hypothetical world may have set the solar system at a tilt.
Researchers first suggested a massive ninth planet in January, saying that although this putative world would be about 10 times the size of Earth, it could have escaped a telescope’s notice because of its extreme distance from the sun. One year on this planet, according to their calculations, would last 17,000 years on Earth, and it would travel as far away as 93bn miles from the sun, where it would take light a week to arrive.
On Wednesday, astronomers at the California Institute of Technology presented their new evidence in Pasadena, California, at the annual meeting of planetary scientists of the American Astronomical Society.
“The search for planet nine,” Caltech astronomer Mike Brown said, “is as much about understanding the effects of planet nine on the solar system, the physics of planet nine, as it is about understanding where it is.”
Brown said that his team had calculated how a hypothetical planet could be responsible for making the sun appear to tilt at an angle. Though the eight planets orbit in an essentially flat plane around the sun, the plane itself rotates at nearly a six-degree angle, making it look like the sun itself is angled. A giant planet with a strange orbit, about 30 degrees off the other planets’ plane, could account for that wobble, the scientists suggested.
“Because Planet Nine is so massive and has an orbit tilted compared to the other planets,” said Elizabeth Bailey, the study’s author, “the solar system has no choice but to slowly twist out of alignment.
“It’s such a deep-rooted mystery and so difficult to explain that people just don’t talk about it,” said Brown. “If you ask yourself where the sun is tilted in real life there’s where we predict it should be,” he added, noting that the calculations of mass and orbital angle had results of six degrees.
“The amazing thing is for these very standard [observations],” Brown said, “it tilts it nearly exactly correctly.
“At this stage we have so many lines of evidence that there’s a massive planet out there,” he added, “that if there’s not a massive planet out there it has to be that there was one there yesterday and disappeared.”
Brown suggested that scientists may be able to locate the planet, if it exists, in the next few years, and that his team’s work would be published in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Full article:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/19/planet-nine-solar-system-tilt-astronomers