Planet Nine might exist after all as scientists detect something lurking way beyond Pluto

Planet Nine might be a reality after all. A new study states that a body lurking on the outskirts of the solar system fits the bill. The study, published by Terry Long Phan and colleagues in Cambridge University Press, proposes that a giant planet might exist beyond Pluto. 

After Pluto was downgraded to a dwarf planet, astronomers have believed there must be a ninth planet somewhere. This is because of some strange occurrences that were observed. They noted that a tilt of the orbit of long-period Kuiper belt objects can be explained by the presence of Planet Nine. 

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Planet Nine has been largely theoretical since 2016. Astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown noticed an unusual orbital clustering among several trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). This led them to believe that a massive body is likely exerting gravitational pull on them.

It was theorised to lie way beyond Pluto's orbit. If Planet Nine is real, then it would have a mass greater than Neptune's. It would lie anywhere between 400 and 800 AU (Astronomical Units) from the Sun. Notably, one AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun. In comparison, Pluto is only 30 to 50 AU from our Sun. This humongous distance explains why no one has ever spotted a ninth planet.

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Scientists of the new study compared a 23-year gap between the IRAS and AKARI infrared all-sky surveys. "Planet Nine is expected to move slowly due to its great distance beyond Neptune’s orbit. Therefore, we searched for slow-moving objects that moved from an IRAS position to another AKARI position after 23 years," the paper's authors note.

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The team identified 13 candidate pairs that exhibited separations consistent with Planet Nine’s predicted orbit. They put all of them to the test and came down to only one pair that can qualify as Planet Nine.

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"The AKARI detection probability map indicated that the AKARI source of our candidate pair satisfied the requirements for a slow-moving object with two detections on one date and no detection on the date 6 months before."

Scientists state that more observations are needed to know the exact orbit of this supposed object that could be Planet Nine.