What is known about the ninth planet at the moment?

Last year, the two astronomers studied the most distant object orbiting the Sun that we find in all time, when suddenly he saw something interesting. This ultra-long objects in the Kuiper belt, instead of having a randomly oriented orbit is like a stretched out and bent in a certain direction. If so did one or two objects, you could write it off on accident. There was six of them. The chances that it will be an accident, was about 0,0001%. Instead, astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike brown has proposed a radical new theory: somewhere out there is a distant ninth planet, more massive than Earth but less than Uranus and Neptune. She shifts all of the objects. Since then, it has been 16 months, and that's what we have in fact.

First, great idea. Every time you are trying to find an explanation, except for this idea do not seem very convincing. But, like many brilliant ideas, it is also possible that she is simply wrong. See six long objects that do something unusual, does not mean that there are six million such objects, we just can't see them. Perhaps this is quite normal behavior.

Astronomers call it a bias in any dataset you are looking at objects that are easiest to see/find/to measure, and these objects usually are outstanding in nature. If you look over tall grass and see only a giant elephant, it can be concluded that elephants do not exist, such is your prejudice. But there is a way to get rid of him: ask what happens if you collect new additional data, a more qualitative and accurate. What specific predictions can we do to confirm or deny your theory? In the case of the ninth planet their will be five.

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1. If the ninth planet real, it needs to spawn more distant objects with this strange unexpected alignment. If in the outer Solar system had long range massive planet, sometimes she would have a gravity to collide with other objects in the Kuiper belt. Some will collide with the planet, some will be ejected from the Solar system, some will be thrown into the orbit of the ninth planet the opposite direction. We can test this if we find more objects with larger maximum orbital distances from the Sun: hundreds of times more distant from the Sun than the Earth.

The Orbits of these objects should be tilted in the same direction as the original six. Unusual systematic shift for the six objects has a chance of about 1 in 1000. If you find a dozen sites with similar slope, the chance is one in a billion. Find even more objects and to measure their displacement is a great indirect test of the hypothesis of the ninth planet.

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3. Small group of objects, contrary to prediction #1, will have an orbit offset in the same direction as the ninth planet. Such a prediction did Batygin and brown in the second work on this subject, and it has an interesting grain, because such objects are never found.

The Orbital plane of these objects should be tilted in the same direction with small variation. This refinement of prediction #2, which determines the distribution of the systematic shifts. Additional modeling conducted by the team of brown and presented at the conference in October, showed where it should be "North pole" of the orbital planes of these objects. If a large number of these long range objects in the Kuiper belt will be discovered, their distribution can be compared with predicted.

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5. and more importantly, the ninth planet should be there and it could be detected from earth. If there is a large, massive planet, it should reflect enough sunlight to be able to catch even from earth, even through our modern telescopes.

With regard to circumstantial evidence, the idea of the existence of a ninth planet pretty good. Predictions one through four are indirect, and as long as the existence of a ninth planet was first predicted, it was found four objects: one team OSSOS and three team Sheppard and Trujillo. Green object, the orbit of which goes to the right, is the first example of prediction #3, which is interesting. But it will be even more interesting if we plot all the detected objects according to the modeling of their orbital planes. They coincide with the models of brown!

The more indirect evidence there are, the more you want to see a match, given the limitations of the available data. But there are drawbacks:

All these data are not devoid of prejudice; we found objects that fit relatively close to the Sun.

The Total number of detected objects — ten too small to be considered meaningful.

The Uncertainty of predictions #3 and #4 blurs the significance of the finds.

With all this, the ninth planet remains elusive.

But there is hope.

The Complete set of data allows us to impose more stringent restrictions on the location of a ninth planet, and the most likely scenario placing it in the constellation Taurus. When we were nearing the June solstice, this constellation becomes more visible and, therefore, the coming months will be the best to search for the ninth planet. A search will do as Amateur astronomers and professionals. Mike brown also has his own blog about the current status of the search for the ninth planet, despite the wild optimism, he was very reserved in his statements.

The Most surprising results of the Kepler mission was the fact that the vast majority of planets in the Universe were not small, solid worlds such as Earth or Mars, not the large gas giant worlds like Neptune or Jupiter, and a supersense that is somewhere in the middle. Since this discovery became known to the world, astronomers are wondering: why in our Solar system there is no such world? If the hypothesis is correct the ninth planet, such a world exists and now is the best time to find him.