Probably everyone remembers the order of the planets in our solar system from elementary school. No wonder scientists were shocked to discover dark bodies beyond Neptune\’s orbit. The orbits of the planets closer to the sun are almost perfectly circular, like Mercury, but the further away a planet is from the sun, the more its orbit resembles an ellipse, like Neptune\’s. Space objects in the Kuiper Belt outside of Neptune\’s orbit, where asteroids, comets, and meteors are more densely populated, have extremely irregular orbits, and astronomers, based on their knowledge of gravity, wondered if objects with stronger gravitational fields were in the Kuiper Belt. Their speculation turned out to be true.
New Planet
The newly discovered planet was temporarily named “Planet Nine” by the scientists. They believe the object will be 10 times the size of Earth, suggesting that it will take a whopping 20,000 Earth years to complete one orbit around the Sun! In comparison, Neptune circles the sun in about 160 to 170 years; NASA\’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration has stated that mathematical calculations indicate that the ninth planet should be far beyond Pluto
.
Speculation
According to some astronomers, it may even be a small black hole the size of a baseball field rather than a planet. This is because there are enough cosmic objects in the immediate vicinity of Planet 9 that have been observed to potentially threaten or destroy its atmosphere, gravity, and magnetic field. [If Planet 9 really exists, shouldn\’t it have been observed by now? The answer is simple. The distance from the sun reveals its true shape. Furthermore, the planet is so dark that it does not reflect sunlight as well as other planets, making it almost impossible to see with binoculars or other techniques.
As for other options, we can really only speculate. After all, even the thought of a new planet in our solar system is impressive to scientists. But please explain this impression to the schoolchildren who, thanks to advances in astronomy and astrophysics, will have to learn about yet another planet.