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Planet 9; does it exist?
Since the start of everything there has always been much speculation about our Universe,
as it is a very in-depth topic and its ever still expanding galaxies makes it an exceedingly
intriguing one too .
Lately, there has been news of the possibility of a new planet, and at the minute, it is being
refereed to as Planet 9 or sometimes Planet X. Planet 9 takes around 15,000 years to orbit the sun due to how far away it is. It was discovered by a duo of scientists Konstantin
Batygin and Mike Brown. This planet is expected to be around 10 times the size of earth
and 5000 times the size of Pluto. The orbit of this planet is said to be slightly tilted and
quite irregular compared to the other planets of our solar systems orbits, and is said to orbit on average 20 times further away than that of Neptune. Earth is 149.6 million Km away
from the sun, and Planet 9 is said to be up to 100 billion km
away from the sun and s in the far reaches of the solar system.
Planet 9 is found in the Kuiper belt along with many icy bodies
and dwarf planets like Eris, but it mostly contains debris from
the birth of our solar system.
However this possible planet hasn't actually yet been spotted, it
has only been located due to scientists studying the dwarf planets of this area which have
seemingly been disturbed by an object, and named for the time being, Planet 9. This planet may be exceedingly hard to spot due to the fact that little light is sent back to the end
of our solar system and then hardly any light may reach back to Earth for us to be able to
spot this mysterious planet.
News of this planet was actually brought up around a decade ago and researchers who
were looking for this planet ended up finding Pluto, and maybe other dwarf planets.
You may have recently heard about the ‘New Horizons NASA mission’ to the outer reaches of the solar system, which managed to bring back some incredibly detailed images of
Pluto which you may have recently seen on the news. This mission is now being extended
to the Kuiper belt where this mysterious planet 9 is thought to be the hiding.
Miss Morgan a science teacher at Newbridge school had very specific and well informed
views this subject:
When you heard this news of this possible ninth planet did you think it could possibly be
true?
Yes, as we are currently in the space age we are discovering many new facts about our solar system, galaxy and universe, and this is probably one of the new discoveries in a long
line of others to follow.
Do you think we will ever be able to locate this planet as it is so far away from Earth and
little light may get there?
Yes, I think with today’s technologies, eventually this planet will be spotted from Earth and
existence will be proved.
When researchers started looking for this planet, Pluto was found. I am aware this is no
longer a classified planet but do you think there may be other ‘proper planets’ in the
Kuiper Belt?
As this region has not been explored fully I think that it is likely there are other planets in
it, but they may be dwarf planets like Pluto, Eris and Makemake (to name a few rather
than) ‘real’ Planets.
Just inside our solar system, excluding all others, do you think there is a possibility of intelligent life other than that on Earth?
I think that if there was any intelligent life other than that on Earth it would be known to
us, and there are not any other planets in the habitable zone that we have not yet seen.
Although there is evidence that Mars did have liquid water on its surface billions of years
ago, which was discovered by the two drones, Opportunity and Spirit. But it seems the
space age has come too late for us to be able to witness it. Although in other solar systems
there is an immense possibility that intelligent life could be out there.
————————————————————————————————————————My opinion on this matter is that us humans on earth can only begin to imagine all of the
possibilities linked to the universe and this possible planet is another one of those great
new discoveries. I am extremely intrigued and hope that Batygin and Brown find this planet or even the New Horizons mission might locate it, but as the Kuiper Belt is such an extensive band of icy bodies (like the abundance of asteroids that fall between Mars and Jupiter.) I hope that during this mission, many other discoveries are made and this may hold
the key to the birth of our solar system and maybe more extensive clues to the existence
of the universe, as this contains the remnants from the beginning of the solar system.
Finally, within this upcoming annum, hopefully this planet will be spotted from Earth and
we will be able to say there are 9 planets in our solar system. But does it actually exist,
who knows? We’ll just have to rely on the telescopes on Earth in the hope that this planet
will finally be seen by the human eye. This discovery may even re-write our knowledge on
the solar system, who knows?
By Grace Year 9 Newbridge School