In brief: Scientists have potentially discovered a ninth planet

by Derek Yen, Reporter

Two researchers at Caltech announced evidence for the existence of a ninth planet beyond the orbit of Neptune in the Astronomical Journal’s January edition.

The researchers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, both Caltech professors, claim that the existence of a ninth planet ten times the mass of the Earth and 20 times farther from the sun would be able to explain the anomalous orbits of six Kuiper Belt objects, including Haumea. According to Brown and Batygin’s publication, “such a clustering has only a probability of 0.007 percent due to chance.”

They predicted that such a planet would also force other Kuiper Belt objects into an orbit perpendicular to the plane of the solar system. This behavior is consistent with the observed orbits of four other objects.

This planet would be unique in several ways: it would have a perihelion, or closest point to the sun, on the opposite side of the sun than the other eight planets’ perihelions and also have an orbital period of between 10 to 20 thousand years.