Since the last century, astronomers have been trying to find an invisible planet in the solar system that causes disturbances in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. For example, in 1972, Joseph L. Brady (Joseph LBrady proposes that a planet 64 AU away from our star will orbit it in 1,800 Earth years. Moreover, in his opinion, the celestial body has a retrograde orbit, and its ecliptic plane is at an angle to the ecliptic plane of other planets.
These assumptions partially coincide with the data of the ancient Sumerians about the Nibiru (some kind of bright object they observed in the sky). Scientists are trying to identify it with a star or a real planet like Jupiter. Despite Nibiru's appearance in various pseudoscientific theories, astrophysicists are still conducting scientific and practical explorations of Planet X.
After Brady, scientists often put forward hypotheses about the existence of another celestial body in our galaxy. In 1982, NASA, together with the U.S. Naval Observatory and the Soyuz orbital station, launched the IAS research satellite, which discovered an object the size of Jupiter in the outer reaches of the solar system.
After more theory and calculations, the entire press conference in 1987 was devoted to X-stars. It turns out that the entire scientific community believes in its existence. For official recognition, all that remains is to discover it at least somehow. In 1990, the mysterious planet was said to be 3 times farther from the Sun than Pluto and 5 times as heavy as Earth.
In 2016 and 2019, our compatriot Konstantin Batygin (Caltech Professor) published their work with Michael Brown. They say the orbit of a Kuiper Belt object could be affected by a planet that is about 10 times heavier than Earth. After analyzing the gravitational perturbations of celestial bodies, scientists came to the conclusion that new planets exist.
It revolves around the Sun in an elongated orbit with a period of 15,000 years. According to the data they modeled, the physical and chemical properties of Planet X are similar to those of icy Neptune and Uranus. Batkin and Brown believe that the object was culled from the disk of the protoplanet solar 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists estimate that the closest distance to the Sun from Planet X is 200 AU, with a maximum distance of 600 to 1200 AU. This is outside the Kuiper Belt, where Pluto is located. Batygin and Brown estimate the probability of error to 0007%。
Their Swiss colleagues, Esther Linder and Christophe Mordasini, concluded that the radius of Planet X is 37 times. The atmosphere is made up of hydrogen and helium, and the temperature drops to -226 ° C. This is followed by a layer of water ice at -63°C. Then there is a thin layer of silicate mantle that hides the core heated to 3400°C. According to them, the Earth is gradually cooling because it releases 1000 times more energy than it absorbs.
American astronomers call Planet X a deep blue, fainter than Neptune. Due to the extremely low temperature of its atmosphere, methane gas can condense at the bottom or in the clouds. Therefore, the planet is not particularly bright, which explains the difficulty of detecting it. After all, at such a distance, it is extremely difficult to see the sunlight reflected by it. One can only rely on the infrared radiation of Planet X.
Unlike Batykin and Brown, Swiss and French astronomers believe that Planet X is an exoplanet captured by the Sun from a neighboring star. This requires three conditions, which are likely to happen according to their model. The Sun must capture planet x at a distance of 150 astronomical units so as not to interfere with the Kuiper Belt.
Another star is about 100 astronomical units away from the exoplanet. Only in this way can the sun overcome the influence of another luminous body. Well, after our star captures an exoplanet, it will be possible to reproduce the current dynamic configuration of the solar system.
In other scientists' models, Planet X explains the perturbations in the orbits of extreme celestial bodies beyond Neptune. It even explains the inclination of the Laplace plane (the vector of the total orbital momentum perpendicular to all the planets and the rotational momentum of the sun) in the solar system. It turns out that its influence on the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune explains the six-degree tilt between the Laplace plane and the Sun's equatorial plane.
In the model, the magnitude of the inclination depends on the orbital elongation, mass, and semi-major axis of planet x interacting with the parameters of the giant planet. It is worth emphasizing that all these conclusions are based on the analysis of the influence of Planet X on other celestial bodies in computer models.
Astronomers believe that all it takes to discover it is to reserve time at the Japanese Subaru Observatory in Hawaii. Then, after just 20 days of observations, the existence of Planet X will finally be proven. This means that the matter has come to an end.