Is there a missing planet in our solar system

Could astronomers find a ninth planet beyond Neptune?

In fact, researchers have spent decades combing the night sky for evidence of other planets at the far end of our own solar system. In February, researchers announced they had narrowed the search field for a hypothetical ninth planet beyond Neptune by nearly 80%, raising hopes that astronomers might soon solve this mystery.

Can astronomers find unidentified planets in our Solar System?

GBH's All Things Considered host Arun Rath spoke about the search for unidentified planets in our own solar system with Matthew Holman, an astrophysicist for the Smithsonian and lecturer at Harvard University. Arun Rath: So first, tell us more about this Planet Nine hypothesis and the evidence that astronomers see for it.

Is a planet hiding in the Solar System's backcountry?

Brown and Batygin originally announced their prediction of Planet Nine in 2016, but the pair is hardly the first to suggest that an undiscovered world is hiding in the solar system’s backcountry. For more than a century, astronomers have mused about such a planet, erroneously believing that something hefty was perturbing Neptune’s orbit.

Is there a planet that is unseen?

The unseen planet is predicted to exist based on its apparent gravitational influence on a group of small objects with odd, clustered orbits. But so far, searches for it have come up empty, and critics contend that the hints of its presence are just ghosts in the data.

Is the search for Planet 9 coming to a close?

Astronomers have predicted how big this hypothetical world could be, how far away it could lie and even where it should be in its orbit around the sun. Yet actually finding Planet Nine, sometimes called Planet X, has eluded scientists for nearly a decade. But the hunt for the solar system's potential ninth planet may soon be coming to a close.

Is the Solar System difficult to understand without Planet Nine?

The solar system is very difficult to understand without Planet Nine." He continues by telling Universe Todaythat "…Planet Nine explains many things about orbits of objects in the outer solar system that would be otherwise unexplainable and would each need some sort of separate explanation.