This is an artist’s conception of Planet Nine. Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
Earlier this year scientists presented evidence for Planet Nine, a Neptune-mass planet in an elliptical orbit 10 times farther from our Sun than Pluto. Since then theorists have puzzled over how this planet could end up in such a distant orbit. New research by astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) examines a number of scenarios and finds that most of them have low probabilities. Therefore, the presence of Planet Nine remains a bit of a mystery.
“The evidence points to Planet Nine existing, but we can’t explain for certain how it was produced,” says CfA astronomer Gongjie Li...
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