Astronomer: a new planet of the solar system can be found in a couple of years – RIA Novosti

WASHINGTON, January 21 – RIA Novosti, Alexei Bogdanovsky. Telescopes will probably be able to find a new planet of the solar system in the next few years, he suggested in an interview with RIA Novosti co-author of the hypothesis of a remote planet giant Constantin Batygin.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology Constantine Batygin and Mike Brown published on Wednesday in the “Astronomical Journal” in the US article that expressed the hypothesis of the existence of the solar system planets mass of 10 Earth and about the size of Neptune.

“The two telescopes are ideal for this (the opening of a new planet – Ed.) – Japanese telescope Subaru and Keck. Both are in Hawaii. We believe that, with enough time, “Planet 9″ can be opened for a couple of years “, – said Batygin.

© REUTERS / R. Hurt / Caltech / IPAC

and Batygin Brown analyzed the motion of the six objects of the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune’s orbit, and concluded that their situation can be explained by a very unlikely coincidence, or the existence of a distant giant planet.

According to the researcher, in a similar situation was discovered Neptune, whose location was first determined by calculation, and only then confirmed by telescopes.

“The only difference between the (opening) of Neptune, and our situation is that at a time when (the discoverer of Neptune Urbain) Verrier began his calculations were data about the entire orbit of Uranus. It was like a movie of the solar system, and we have like picture. We do not have information about the full orbits of Kuiper belt objects. Because of this, we can predict only orbit and can not predict a place in orbit where the “Planet 9″ – said Batygin.

According to scientists, the new planet has not yet been discovered because of the huge distance from the sun. The alleged “Planet 9″, according to their calculations, close to the sun no more than 200 astronomical units (30 billion kilometers – 200 times farther than Earth is from the Sun). The most distant point of the orbit of the planet may be 1200 AU (180 billion km).

Read the full interview & gt; & gt;