By Ana Verayo, | October 20, 2016
An artisitic rendering showing the distant view from Planet Nine towards the sun.
Astronomers believe that the mysterious Planet Nine is causing our sun to tilt. Planet Nine is a controversial planet that is believed to be somewhere beyond the orbit of Neptune. It also possesses a highly elliptical orbit which is so massive that it can take the planet 20,000 years to complete a journey around the sun.
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Now a team from Caltech (California Institute of Technology) suggests that Planet Nine may be the main culprit that is causing our sun to wobble and appear slightly tilting from its axis.
According to the lead author of the study, Elizabeth Bailey, since Planet Nine is so massive, its orbit is tilted as opposed to the other planets in the solar system and this causes the entire solar system to slowly become twisted out of this alignment.
In this new study, scientists say that the plane where all the planets orbit in the solar system is located six degrees higher than the sun's orbit. For years, astronomers have been investigating how this is possible.
However, this is difficult to accurately identify since Planet Nine is still hiding beyond the far reaches of the solar system, and there have been no direct observations yet of this mystery planet.
Scientists say that Planet Nine has 10 times the mass of Earth and possesses an orbit that is 30 degrees beyond the orbital plane of the other planets, producing a significant impact on the movement of our solar system.
Further research will aim to uncover how Planet Nine began orbiting in this odd angle and pattern. There are theories that this mystery planet was ejected out of the inner solar system due to the powerful gravitational forces of gas giants like Jupiter. This apparently occurred during the early formation stages of the solar system.
The team expects this mysterious planet's existence to be confirmed in a few years as they unravel more crucial clues.
This new study was published in the Astrophysical Journal.
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