Mysterious ‘Planet Nine’ lurking in our solar system

Now scientists have found more signs that the unseen planet is out there – in the form of the wonky orbits of two ‘extreme trans Neptunian objects’ (ETNOs), according to researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in collaboration with the Complutense University of Madrid.

The orbits of asteroids 2004 VN112 and 2013 RF98 suggest that the two were once a binary asteroid which separated after an encounter with a planet beyond the orbit of Pluto.

‘The similar spectral gradients observed for the pair 2004 VN112 – 2013 RF98 suggests a common physical origin,’ explains Julia de León, the first author of the paper, an astrophysicist at the IAC.

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‘We are proposing the possibility that they were previously a binary asteroid which became unbound during an encounter with a more massive object.’

The team performed thousands of numerical simulations to see how the poles of the orbits would separate as time went on.

The results of these simulations suggest that a possible Planet Nine, with a mass of between 10 and 20 Earth masses orbiting the Sun at a distance between 300 and 600 AU (astronomical units) could have deviated the pair 2004 VN112 – 2013 RF98 around 5 and 10 million years ago.

One astronomical unit is 93 million miles.

Source: http://metro.co.uk/2017/02/22/new-proof-that-there-could-be-a-mysterious-planet-nine-lurking-in-our-solar-system-6464812/