A group of astronomers points out that there may be a planet hidden in the Oort cloud, which surrounds the Solar System. This disc-shaped region is known to harbor chunks of ice and comets. A study that hypothesizes the existence of a distant neighbor to Earth at this location has been accepted for publication in the scientific journal MNRAS Letters.
ice giant
At the time it was forming, around 4.5 billion years ago, the Solar System was an unstable place. At that time, the gravitational force flung fragments of the rapidly cooling protoplanetary dust cloud, causing them to ricochet through space. According to the scientists, large debris could have been propelled away, like “rogue planets” that completely escaped the Sun’s gravitational pull.
Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt (Image: NASA/Disclosure)
According to the researchers, there is about a 0.5% chance that one of these planets could have formed in our Solar System and ended up in the Oort cloud as it moved away from the Sun. But, according to the study, it is more likely that an errant planet from another solar system has been caught in the Sun’s gravity and has stopped somewhere in the Oort cloud. The chances of that happening are about 7%, say the study authors.
Still according to scientists, if there is a planet in the Oort cloud, he would probably be a frost giant, like Uranus or Neptune. “It’s completely plausible that our Solar System captured such a planet in the Oort cloud,” said Nathan Kaib, study co-author and astronomer at the Institute of Planetary Sciences in Arizona, United States. But the researchers clarify that this star would be too far away to be Planet 9, whose hypothesis of existence was raised more than a century ago.
2023-07-01 11:00:22
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