Can We Settled This! How Many Planets Are There in Our Solar System?

Amaze Lab

Does our Solar System have 9 planets or only 8? Astronomers have gone back and forth on that a lot, with Pluto now being classified as a dwarf planet. However, out beyond Neptune there could be another elusive object orbiting the Sun and experts say they have the best evidence we’ve ever found for its existence.

Transcript

00:00does our solar system have nine planets or only eight astronomers have gone back and forth on

00:08that a lot with Pluto now being classified as a dwarf planet however out beyond Neptune there

00:14could be another elusive object orbiting the Sun and experts say they've found the strongest

00:18statistical evidence yet of its existence orbiters in the distant reaches of our system are called

00:24trans-Neptunian objects Pluto is amongst them many are often overlooked by astronomers because

00:29of Neptune's mass and its gravitational impact on the objects around it Neptune's mass impacts

00:34other nearby objects making their orbits unstable and difficult to interpret because of this a lot

00:40of data is overlooked as it's too difficult to say for sure what's going on but a new study has

00:44used computer simulations to suss it out with the researchers writing in their paper quote

00:49accounting for observational biases our results reveal that the orbital architecture of this

00:54group of objects aligns closely with the predictions of the p9 inclusive model with

00:59researchers adding that the movements of these trans-Neptunian objects would be extremely unlikely

01:03without a ninth planet orbiting out there still direct observations will need to be made and that

01:08could be a long way off as the hypothetical planet would be around 500 times the distance of the earth to

01:14the sun

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