Planet 9 may have been exiled by the sun

Risingbd Desk: Whether or not there is a ninth planet lurking in our solar system far beyond Neptune is still a mystery.

Since it was hypothesised last year, many theories have come out regarding how the planet could have got there – some suggesting it may have been floating out in space on its own and been 'captured' by our sun.

Now, a new study suggests the mysterious planet, if it exists, was not captured by our sun but instead it formed close to the other planets and was banished further out by the sun.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield in the UK and ETH Zurich ran simulations of a variety of scenarios, including those that a free floating planet (FFLOP) was captured by our own star.

They found that the chances of a planet like this being captured are only one in six, at best, meaning this scenario is unlikely.

'Depending on the initial conditions of the star-forming regions, only 5 - 10 of 10,000 planets are captured onto orbits that lie within the constraints for Planet 9,' the authors, led by Richard Parker, wrote.

The study is yet to be published in a journal, but is online on the preprint server arXiv.

'Even if the sun formed in a very hostile, very dynamic, very violent environment, in one of these densely populated clusters, it's still unlikely that it captured Planet Nine,' Mr Parker told New Scientist.

Since its existence was first suggested, Planet Nine has caused a lot of debate in the community.

Source: Agencies




risingbd/Sept 13, 2017/Mukul