Planeta Dziewiąta： pierwsza prawdziwa wskazówka po dziesięcioleciach poszukiwań!

For decades, astronomers have been suspecting that there is something unknown in the outer areas of the Solar System. Except for Neptune, where the Sun is only a weak light point, the sea orbiting the planet has not yet been discovered. The hypothetical celestial body is known as Planet 9, and its existence could explain why some transneptune objects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond it move in such a strange way. Despite numerous studies, Planet 9 has so far lost sight of us, but now new studies may finally provide a breakthrough clue. A recent analysis of two research missions carried out over 20 years revealed a weak signal, which over time has undergone a slight change. This is exactly what you might expect after a distant, slowly moving celestial body, and if the discovery is confirmed, it will be an absolute milestone for astronomy. But what exactly did the experts in the depths of our homeland discover? What speaks for the existence of Planet 9, and what is against it? Stay with us to the end and find out with us. The idea that there is an undiscovered planet outside of Neptune is not new at all. In fact, astronomers were looking for additional planets over 100 years ago to explain the strange deviations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. At the beginning of the 20th century, theoretical considerations led to targeted searches and eventually to a sensational discovery. However, it turned out that Pluto, discovered in 1930, was simply too small to cause observed anomalies. As we know, Pluto was then removed from the list of official planets, but the search for an unknown world continues. In recent years, trans-Neptune objects, in short TNO, have become a subject of research. They are ice worlds such as Sedna and 2012 VP113, which surprised experts with their unexpected movements. Their orbits are strikingly similar in terms of orientation and you might think that these objects are under the influence of a powerful, but so far invisible force. In 2016, astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown confirmed this assumption during a detailed analysis. They studied the orbit of several TNOs and confirmed a similar orientation of the objects. However, since a purely random constellation of this type is statistically very unlikely, they needed a different explanation. The most likely was ultimately the impact of a large planet, about 5 to 10 times larger than Earth, orbiting in an eccentric orbit And once again, briefly for context, the length of an astronomical unit corresponds to the average distance between the Sun and Earth, which is about 150 million kilometers. And although it is known that our Earthly planet needs 365 days to make one orbit around our mother star, Planet 9 would need several thousand years to do this. For this reason, a planet of this size and distance could have a significant impact on TNO orbits thanks to its gravitational force. This constant, invisible force would maintain the orbits of distant objects in a stable position in certain directions for a long time. Almost as if they were run by an invisible barrier system. So far, everything looks good, but it's just a theory. Although Planet 9 is able to provide consistent explanations of observed phenomena on paper, its real existence has not yet been confirmed. But why is that? How is it possible that James Webb telescopes of our time look deeper than ever into the oldest mysteries of the universe, and yet we are not able to detect planets just beyond the threshold? This is mainly due to its remote location. If it really exists, Planet 9 receives only about 0.01% of the sunlight that reaches the Earth. This means that it would be practically invisible in the visible light, and that's not all. Such a distant planet would also move very slowly in the sky, which means that during normal research, not only light problems would be encountered, but also too short periods of observation to detect such a slow movement. A new trend. The discovery of the Irasi-Akari mission. But what does this difficult situation really mean? Will we ever be able to add Planet 9 to space maps? Fortunately, this is not impossible. Quite the opposite, because a re-analysis of data from two research missions revealed a breakthrough detail, but more on that in a moment. To overcome the problem of optical telescopes, experts looking for planets rely on observations in infrared. They do not rely on reflected sunlight. Even after billions of years, a large planet still emits enough residual heat to be able to measure it in the appropriate wavelengths. This means that infrared data are particularly valuable in searching for distant, cold planetary worlds, but we should not underestimate the astronomical perspective of the past. Instead of conducting only new observations, scientists also analyzed data from two space telescopes. The Iras, which was launched into space in 1983, and the Akari, which appeared in 2006. More than 20 years have passed between these two missions and this is the key issue. After all, this period will enable the detection of the slow movement of distant objects. For this purpose, scientists monitor how an object moves over the years compared to distant stars in the background. This allows you to detect even the smallest movements and identify celestial bodies that would be completely invisible in a short period of observation. Using the simulation of models relating brightness, temperature and the expected movement of a hypothetical planet, a team led by astronomer Terry Long Fan from Tsinghua National University in Taiwan was able to analyze thousands of infrared signals. Thanks to careful filtering, they narrowed the number of potential candidates to just a few objects and discovered something absolutely unusual. One of the objects showed all the features that could be expected from Planet 9. Appropriate brightness, probable movement during the Iras and Akari missions and lack of trace during periods of observation when it should be invisible. Have we found Planet 9? What information does the next discovery provide? The promising candidate from the Iras and Akari data could indeed be a long-sought-after Planet 9, although in this case the emphasis is placed on the word could. It is still not entirely clear what appeared in the data. Theoretically, this may be a really desired planet, an impressive celestial body 5 to 10 times larger than the Earth's mass, orbiting at distances of 400 to 800 astronomical units. However, we could also catch a large trans-Neptunian object, or even a brown dwarf, which has only properties similar to planets. Another possibility is that we are dealing with a wandering planet, which was originally formed outside our Solar System, and only later was captured by the gravity of our mother star. To finally discover the identity of the candidate, a fan and his team propose to study it in the future with the help of the Dark Energy Camera at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. This instrument can capture very low light and at the same time observe a large area of the sky, which would allow to detect even distant, slowly moving objects such as Planet 9. However, this is only applicable when Planet 9 actually exists. Unfortunately, this idea is once again questioned as a result of another exciting discovery. But one by one. A few weeks ago, astronomers discovered a new dwarf planet in the outer part of the Solar System. This small but impressive cousin of Pluto, called 2017 OF201, has a diameter of about 700 km. Its closest point to the Sun is at a distance of about 44.5 astronomical units, while the farthest from the Sun is over 1600 times further from our star than Earth. As a result, the dwarf planet takes about 25,000 years to make a full object, but fortunately at the time of its discovery it was close enough to our planet to be captured by the Dark Energy Camera. In fact, this object spends less than 1% of its time in regions that can be observed with our telescopes, but what does all this have to do with Planet 9? Quite a lot. Although it is known that in the Kuiper Belt, apart from Neptune, there are only about 5,000 trans-Neptunian objects, their orbits, as mentioned above, show a striking alignment that suggests the influence of a massive planet. However, the new dwarf planet breaks this pattern. At a time when the eccentric orbits of many trans-Neptunian objects are often about 60 degrees, the alignment of the perihelion of the space novitiate is 306 degrees. This is quite problematic for the possible existence of Planet 9. Model calculations have shown that the orbit of the dwarf planet will remain stable for at least a billion years, even without a planetary phantom. And if we now add Planet 9 in its supposable form, the image changes diametrically. It would affect the orbit of the object in such a way that it would eventually get too close to Neptune and after about 100,000 years it would be thrown out of the Solar System. But does this mean that we can categorically exclude the existence of Planet 9? Not quite so unambiguous, but the probability of the existence of a ninth planet of the size of Neptune in this part of the Solar System has been significantly reduced. So Planet 9 remains a mystery, at least for now, and only the future will show And if you click on our subscription system now, you will never miss a new video from us. Click I like it and subscribe to stay up to date. See you!