![]() ![]() In a Newtonian coup, one French mathematician perfectly predicted Neptune's position. In the mid-1800s, European astronomers noticed something funky in Uranus' orbit, and posited that there might be another planet tugging on it. ![]() "There are dozens, if not hundreds of examples where researchers have said there must be another planet to explain some orbital anomaly," says Mike Brown, Caltech astronomer and co-author of the new planet paper. The hypothesis, published by a pair of Caltech researchers, says the planet is probably a gas giant that was punted out of the ecliptic plane, in which all the other planets orbit, eons ago.īut phantom planets are nothing new. According to new analysis in the Astronomical Journal, few things besides gravitational nudging from a large, ninth planet would explain the several dozen rogue Kuiper Belt objects with highly elliptical orbits. The evidence might be sparse, but it is also compelling. The only evidence comes from a half dozen dwarf planets circling the sun in strange, skewed, far-away orbits. It might be a planet, slowly orbiting, and pitched away from the rest of the solar system. Something big-two to four times larger than Earth-and dark. Something could be lurking at the edge of the solar system. ![]()
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