Evidence Shows a New Planet

If someone were to go up to you and ask, “What are the eight planets in order from the sun?”, someone would be able to respond with the correct order: Mercury; Venus; Earth; Mars; Jupiter; Saturn; Uranus and Neptune. About a decade ago, Pluto was demoted from its title of a planet. But, with evidence from the astronomers of the California Institute of Technology, it seems that a ninth planet will be added to the planetary sequence.

Astronomers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin published a paper in the Astronomical Journal. In the paper, they describe this mysterious planet, which is currently being called “Planet Nine,” is supposedly five to 10 times the size of our home planet Earth.

With this discovery, this new planet changes the model of the solar system. Pluto, which was discovered in 1930, spent three-quarters of a century as planet until it’s demotion in 2006. Brown was responsible for the controversial demotion.

Batygin and Brown aren’t completely sure of this planet’s existence, but they inferred it from the motion of some dwarf planets, saying that the motion is influenced by a “massive perturber”, or a massive upset. Brown says that he’s “maybe 90 percent” sure of Planet Nine’s existence. He also says that Planet Nine is “5,000 times the mass of Pluto”.

This new discovery definitely changes the solar system model. With the addition of this new planet, the potential for visiting this planet skyrocketed. We’ve had satellites in the orbit of some of the planets and, in the future, we could visit those planets and “Planet Nine”. This discovery could lead to the discovery to a tenth planet in the future.