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There may be a hidden super-Earth in our solar system: incredible evidence found
There may be a ninth planet in our solar system, a Super-Earth hiding in the cold depths of space in the so-called trans-Neptunian space. Legends have long been circulating about the existence of such a planet, but now scientists claim to have found evidence that cannot be just a coincidence.
Hector Socas-Navarro, a research scientist in astrophysics, and Ignacio Trujillo Cabrera, a researcher at the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics, told The Conversation in an article. They remind us that there is plenty of evidence that cosmic bodies beyond Neptune are influenced by some unknown force: it could be a planet unknown to us, or humanity simply does not have complete data about what is happening there.
A hypothetical Planet 9 (known as Planet X at the time Pluto was thought to be a planet, as well as the ominous Nibiru) is supposed to be a Super-Earth, according to them. These are the type of planets that are larger than Earth, but smaller than gas giants. Usually such planets have between 5 and 10 Earth masses. Planet 9, if it exists, must have a mass that is 4 to 8 times the mass of Earth. This is not just a guess, but the result of a simulation that gives an explanation for what scientists observe beyond Neptune.
Scientists are also convinced that this planet must be extremely far from the Sun: about ten times the distance to Pluto (the average distance is 5.913 billion km).
Scientists know for sure that Super-Earths exist by studying distant worlds, but knowledge about them is extremely scarce, so finding such a planet within the solar system would be quite a feat.
The problem with proving the existence of Planet 9 is that it is too far away from the Sun and therefore would be very dim. In addition, it would require an extremely powerful telescope to detect it, and such instruments have a very small field of view, so finding a dark planet in a dark, vast expanse of space is a challenge.
But, as the authors of the article point out, proof of the existence of Planet 9 may not only exist, but also be on Earth.
We are talking about the meter-long meteorite CNEOS14, which fell into the Pacific Ocean in 2014. In a recent scientific paper, Harvard scientists stated that this meteorite was not an object from our solar system. That is, it was an interstellar object that was pulled into the solar system at a speed of 60 kilometers per second.
It was given the speed of the meteorite that scientists assumed its alien origin, because its path in the solar system showed that no other planet gave it gravitational acceleration.
But the authors of the article are ready to argue with the scientists from Harvard, because they suggest that it was Planet 9 that accelerated the meteorite.
The scientists base their assumption on a study in which they mapped the orbit that the Super Earth should have according to detailed simulations, and then superimposed it on the origin of CNEOS14.
"We found a striking coincidence between the location of the meteorite and the region where the simulations predict Planet 9 is most likely to be found. The probability that this coincidence is the result of chance is about 1%," the scientists wrote.
Further simulations showed three more anomalies in CNEOS14's trajectory that should not have existed if the meteorite had entered our system from interstellar space.
"Combining the probability of these anomalies, we found that either there is something we don't understand about objects in interstellar space, or with 99.9% probability CNEOS14 collided with an unknown planet in the outer solar system - and this new world would be located in exactly the region that the simulations suggested," the authors said.
They suggested that Planet 9 and CNEOS14 "met" between 30 and 60 years ago, and if you track the movement of a meteorite in the past can be found yet unknown to mankind planet.
The authors of the article suggest that it will be near the point where the constellations of Aries, Taurus and Whale meet.
The search is already underway, but given its scale, scientists warn that it will take a long time, as the scanning field is still large and the object sought is very dim.
Earlier OBOZREVATEL also told about a planet with a glowing atmosphere that confused and surprised scientists.
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