New area discoveries have scientists asking the place ‘Planet X’ is in photo voltaic system

Scientists have been left scratching their heads for hundreds if not thousands of hours over where the elusive ‘Planet X’ might be after making new space discoveries.

The hunt for the so-called ‘Planet Nine’ or ‘Planet X‘ has been ongoing for years with experts saying our solar system doesn’t make sense without it – and there’s plenty of indirect evidence.

It’s as the relatively new discovery of dwarf planets like Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris has given the professionals an even bigger reason to think that something else might be lurking in the outskirts of the Solar System.

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Experts say strange groupings of celestial bodies’ orbits at the edge of the Solar System could be being caused by a large, distant and currently undiscovered ‘Planet Nine’. It’s because every object in our Solar System orbits around the Sun, all abiding by the laws of gravity but these exhibit strange movements.

While our Sun has the largest gravitational pull of any object in the Solar System it’s understood that there must be a mass at least ten times the size of Earth out there because dwarf planets beyond Pluto are showing unexpected orbit movements.

Science Alert reports that they move on very large oval-shaped orbits, are grouped and exist on an incline compared to the rest of the Solar System. Yet despite this, there’s been no visible signs of ‘Planet X’ just yet.

According to research and computer models if the planet does indeed exist it will be 20 times farther away from the Sun than Neptune and so will be in a tricky spot to locate even for our most advanced telescopes.

And while the intriguing possibility of a ninth planet is a topic of significant interest this is just one of several reasons why it remains elusive. Another is that the proposed orbit of ‘Planet X’ is highly elliptical, meaning it spends much of its time in the far reaches of the solar system, where it is even harder to observe

The area of the sky that needs to be searched is also vast and some astronomers propose that the observed gravitational effects attributed to ‘Planet X’ might be caused by multiple smaller objects rather than a single large planet.

Despite these challenges, the search continues and advances in a number of areas of astronomy will hopefully eventually lead to the discovery of Planet X, if it indeed exists.

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