The hunt for a hypothetical “Planet X” has so far been fruitless, but this does not mean that astronomers have stopped searching.
A new analysis of the data obtained using the wide-angle camera (WISE) spacecraft NASA, did not reveal any signs of the mysterious Planet X, which presumably exists in the outer solar system. But scientists do not leave hope to find a planet or a dim star far from the sun.
Brown (left) and Batygin (right)
"I think astronomers continue to search for a distant neighbor of the Sun each time with great persistence and more sophisticated methods," said Kevin Luhman of the University of Pennsylvania. Luhman, who studies low-mass stars and “failed stars”, known as brown dwarfs, recently published the results of his search for Planet X using WISE.
“We have a natural desire to better explore the contents of our solar system,” said Luhman. "There is a huge amount of space in the outer solar system, and we would like to know what is there." A recent discovery may give impetus to the search for Planet X. On Wednesday, March 26, researchers announced that they had discovered a dwarf planet orbiting the Sun in a distant, little-studied area known as the Oort Cloud.
Estimated orbit of planet X (ninth planet)
In addition, the orbit of a new object known as 2012 VP113 and some of its neighbors (whose existence still needs to be proved) indirectly confirms the existence of a “perturber” sized planet far from the Sun, so far away that it cannot be detected using existing tools.
For more than a century, astronomers have been considering the possibility of the existence of a massive body in the outer solar system.
Percival Lowell coined the term "Planet X" at the turn of the 20th century to refer to an undiscovered large planet that could be the cause of the perturbation of the orbit of Uranus and Neptune.
