“Killing Pluto was fun, but this is head and shoulders above everything else.” – Michael Brown, Caltech
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union [IAU] nullified Pluto from its status as a proper planet in the Solar System, due to the fact that it could not ‘clear the neighborhood’ around its orbit, it being only 0.07 times that of the mass of the other objects in its orbit. Michael E Brown, a professor at Caltech, was soon hailed as the ‘man who killed Pluto’. Heck, he even wrote a book about it. [He really did – It’s called How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it Coming. On top of that, his Twitter handle is @Pluto_killer.]
And so, for another 10 years, life went on and people came to grips with the reality that Pluto was gone for good. But then, a decade later, [rather convenient, don’t you think?] on the 20th of January, 2016, the same Michael Brown who demoted Pluto announced, along with his Caltech colleague Konstantin Batygin, that they had found near solid evidence of a new ninth planet in the Solar System.
Yup. A ninth planet. Just like that. Out of nowhere. As a matter of fact, we weren’t even searching for another planet in our Solar System. It just appeared.
In 2014, astronomers Chad Trujillo and Scott Sheppard became the first to hypothesize a planet beyond Neptune, with some minor evidence. Soon, Caltech professors Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin arrived and made attempts to actually refute the claims to a ninth planet. Figures. The Pluto killer had come back for more.
But instead, they found the evidence to be so strong that the refuters became the proponents of the theory of a ninth planet, Planet X, that lay in the Kuiper Belt, far away from Neptune. How was it found? Here goes.
So, the Kuiper belt is a vast expanse of asteroids, comets and dwarf planets [including Pluto.] But these researchers found that the orbits of many of the huge bodies in the Kuiper Belt were actually similar. They were just different-sized versions of each other, all in the same direction. Similar orbits, that too in such an arbitrary place involving random celestial bodies? That was no coincidence. Scientists don’t believe in coincidence.
The scientists were curious. Similar orbits require some kind of central body with a gravitational pull strong enough to make such similarities. The Kuiper Belt itself did not have enough mass and wasn’t strong enough to pull its surroundings. So, after much experimenting, the scientists came to the conclusion that there was indeed a planet that held the Kuiper Belt bodies in place and revolved around the Sun, and gave an answer to the bodies having similar orbits and lying in the same plane and direction.
You may say, Oh, that’s just a shot in the dark made to sound like something big. The similar orbit phenomenon could be anything. The Pluto-killer’s probably trying to apologise to us for his murder of Pluto. But no. The mathematics checks out. The measurements, the theorized impressions, they all work. And unlike Pluto, Planet X has the requirements to be dubbed a ‘planet’, as per the IAU:
- It is in orbit around the Sun.
- It has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium [Basically, it’s almost round in shape.]
- It has ‘cleared the neighbourhood’ around its orbit unlike Pluto, i.e., it has a strong dominant gravitational pull and there are no other bodies of comparable size or gravitational pull under its influence.
So there you have it. Planet 9. After a detailed scientific analysis of this discovery, scientists have found some properties of Planet 9 with respect to the Solar System –
- It has about 10 times the mass of Earth and about 4 times the diameter, but it is smaller in size to Neptune. Greater distance doesn’t mean greater size, folks!
- It is about 60 billion miles from the Sun and has a highly elliptical orbit.
- It is quite similar in properties and size to the icy duo of Uranus and Neptune.
- It has an orbital period of 20,000 YEARS, i.e., it takes 20,000 years for Planet 9 to orbit the Sun.
All these properties make Planet 9 highly likely to exist, but however, a planet that is incredibly hard to spot. And unless we spot this planet, unless we receive that hard evidence, only then will it gain official planetary status and become Pluto’s substitute.
At its aphelion [point where it is farthest from the Sun], its distance from the Earth is a hell of a lot. It is shrouded in the unexplored realm of the Kuiper Belt. And as you can guess from the amount of time and effort this discovery has taken, Planet Nine isn’t exactly crying out for attention.
It may take thousands of years for Planet 9 to even approach its perihelion, when we can actually catch a real glimpse of this celestial treasure. And hopefully, when it comes, we’ll be waiting. Waiting out in the open night with our telescopes. Or maybe even with our naked eyes, just hoping to witness this spectacle of space. All that is needed is a bit of curiosity: to look into the sky, and hope for a miracle. A passion to know, to see, to gaze into the unknown and understand its very being. After all, curiosity is what led to the discovery of Planet 9 – it is curiosity which fuels scientific progress.
Life is good. Adieu.
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