Mysterious Planet 9 and the Interstellar Messenger Hypothesis

Over the past twenty years, we have taken important steps in the study solar system Abroad. We are talking about the so-called trans-Neptunian space, the eternal night beyond the realm of the giant planets. And in this study, we encountered a surprising population of inhabitants, the so-called extreme trans-Neptunians, whose idiosyncratic characteristics have sparked heated debate in the scientific community.

Some researchers see in this population the manifestation of an invisible presence, a new planet not yet discovered in the dark and cold limits of our planet. solar system. Others, however, think that such a planet does not exist and that these extreme trans-Neptunian features are due to imperfections in our limited observations, so-called observational errors.

Hypothetical vast and distant world

This hypothetical planet, although confirmed or ruled out, is tentatively known as Planet 9. Remember that there were only eight left in the solar system in 2006 when Pluto was dropped from that category.

Planet 9 will not be as small as Pluto or many of the other trans-Neptunians discovered in recent years. Detailed modeling of the characteristics of the body that should cause the observed effects was carried out, and it was concluded that it must be a very large planet, with a mass of 4-8 times the mass of the Earth. In addition, it will be very far from the Sun: about ten times farther from Pluto. Probably even more.

If it existed, it would be a planet of a new type, different from other planets known to us in the solar system. Our planetary neighbors are basically divided into two types. These are either small rocky worlds with a solid surface (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars), or gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune).

Planet 9 would fall somewhere in between those categories. It could be what is known as a super-Earth, a rocky planet larger than our own, or sub-Neptune, a gaseous world less massive and slightly smaller than Neptune.

We have found such planets in other stars, but being so far away, we know very little about them. The discovery of one in our solar system would open the door to a detailed study of a category of planets that are almost unknown today.

Long way asteroid CNEOS14

How could we detect this Planet 9? Not easy. Being so far away, its brightness would be extremely dim, and we would need powerful telescopes. The problem is that these telescopes usually have a very small field of view. It’s like using a microscope to search a very large area for something small that we’ve dropped. Significant surveillance efforts have been made in recent years to try and discover this elusive world, but so far without success.

A few months ago, a scientific article was published by two researchers from Harvard, which stated that the meteorite (CNEOS14), which fell in the Pacific Ocean in 2014, is not an object of our solar system. This will be the first interstellar object we have discovered, a small asteroid about one meter in diameter that collided with our planet while traveling through the solar system at a speed of 60 kilometers per second.

It was this high speed that led the researchers to the conclusion that it was an alien from other stars. To do this, they first had to rule out that the object was accelerated or deflected by the gravity of a planet in the solar system, which is easy to verify by reconstructing its trajectory and seeing that it did not pass close to any of the planets in the solar system. known planets.

What if CNEOS14 interacted with a yet unknown planet during its journey through the solar system? This was the question we asked ourselves and opened up a new direction of work.

amazing coincidence

The first hint that there might be a connection between the CNEOS14 meteorite and Planet 9 came when we plotted on the sky the orbit that the planet would have chosen according to the most detailed simulations and overlaid the origin of CNEOS14. We have found a striking match (see the figure below) between the meteorite’s origin and the region where the simulations are most likely to find Planet 9. There is about a 1% chance that such a match is the result of chance.

Following this theme, we ran simulations to reconstruct the trajectory of CNEOS14 and found three other statistical anomalies that would be extremely unlikely for an object coming directly from the interstellar medium. Summing up the probability of these anomalies, we get that either we do not understand something about objects in the interstellar medium, or there is a 99.9% chance that CNEOS14 collided with an unknown planet in the outer solar system. And this new world will be located right in the area predicted by the simulations.

These coincidences and statistical anomalies have led us to formulate the “messenger hypothesis”, referring to the use of the term delivery courier in astrophysics to refer to particles that bring us information from celestial bodies such as neutrinos, cosmic rays or gravitational waves. According to this hypothesis, CNEOS14 must have been deflected towards us by an unknown massive object in the outer solar system, possibly Planet 9, between 30 and 60 years ago.

If the hypothesis is correct, by following CNEOS14’s trajectory back in time, we will find the location of Planet 9, which, according to our calculations, will currently be very close to the point where the constellations of Aries, Taurus, and Cetus meet. We are conducting an observational campaign at the Javalambre Observatory (Teruel) to conduct this search. The task is still difficult and will take time and work because the field to scan is still large and the target is very weak, but now it is covered.

Of course, today our hypothesis is nothing more than an assumption, like the very existence of Planet 9. However, it is a well-founded assumption that meets three requirements that should be taken seriously in science: a) it is physically plausible; b) well motivated; and c) it is empirically verifiable.

CNEOS14 may be pointing us to the position of Planet 9. Or perhaps it is a great cosmic coincidence. In any case, this is a beautiful story that can be said that If it’s not true, then it’s ben trovato (if this is not true, then well sought after), an expression that, by the way, is attributed to the astronomer, the Renaissance monk Giordano Bruno.

Hector Sokas-Navarro, Research Astrophysicist. Director of the Tenerife Science and Space Museum, Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands and Ignacio Trujillo Cabrera, Research Fellow in Astrophysics, Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.

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