Scientists from Kindai University and Japan’s National Astronomical Observatory claim to have identified a newly discovered planet in the solar system that is remarkably Earth-like in size.
A possible planet discovered by Japanese scientists has a mass similar to that of the Earth. Photo: NASA/Reproduction/NDPatrick Sofia Likavka and Takashi Ito were analyzing the Kuiper belt when they noticed some properties that could indicate the existence of a planetary mass, but it wasn’t necessarily “Planet Nine”.
This belt is a ring of giant icy boulders, meteors and asteroids orbiting the Sun just beyond Neptune’s path. The ninth planet is a theory explaining the possibility of the existence of a ninth planet surrounding our star, but much later than Kuiper.
New Earth found?
During the study, Japanese astrophysicists realized that the frozen pieces behave similarly to other rotating planets, that is, their orbits are affected by the gravity of some body.
“More detailed knowledge of the orbital structure of the far Kuiper belt could reveal or rule out the existence of any hypothetical planets in the outer solar system,” the team wrote.
Intrigued, they ran several computer simulations that revealed the likely existence of a planet inside the Kuiper belt that could be between 1.5 and three times the size of Earth.
In addition to being between 250 and 500 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, Neptune is about 30 AU by comparison. from a star.
Even if the existence of a celestial body is confirmed, this still does not automatically make it a planet. There are certain criteria that a space body must meet in order to be considered a planet, including having a certain size.
According to the portal R7.
Source: Ndmais