Super Earth

[voguy]

Strong Evidence Suggests a Super Earth Lies beyond Pluto
Astronomers have found compelling hints of a huge, unseen world that may reside in the murky reaches of the Kuiper Belt

“New Planet Found” is about as exciting a headline nowadays as “Dog Bites Man,” which is to say, not very. Thanks largely to the space-based Kepler Mission, astronomers have identified about 2,000 new worlds, orbiting stars that lie tens or even hundreds of light-years from Earth, in the last two decades. Collectively, these are scientifically important, but with so many in hand no single addition to the list is likely to be much of a big deal. But a new planet announcement today from the California Institute of Technology is a very different proposition, because the world it describes does not circle a distant star. It is part of our own solar system—a place you would think we had explored pretty well by now.

Evidently not: in an analysis accepted for publication at The Astronomical Journal, California Institute of Technology planetary scientists Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown present what they say is strong circumstantial evidence for a very large undiscovered planet, perhaps 10 times as massive as Earth, orbiting in the solar system’s outer darkness beyond Pluto. The scientists infer its presence from anomalies in the orbits of a handful of smaller bodies they can see. “I haven’t been this excited about something in quite a while,” says Greg Laughlin, an expert on planet formation and dynamics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the research.

The object, which the researchers have provisionally named “Planet Nine,” comes no closer than 30.5 billion or so kilometers from the sun, or five times farther than Pluto’s average distance. Despite its enormous size, it would be so dim, the authors say, that it is unsurprising that nobody has spotted it yet.

If it exists, that is. “Sadly,” Brown says, “we don’t have an actual detection yet.” But the evidence is strong enough that other experts are taking very serious notice. “I think it’s pretty convincing,” says Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii. David Nesvorny, a solar system theorist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), in Boulder, Colo., is impressed as well. “These guys are really good,” he says. “They make a good case.”

More/Video @: http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... nd-pluto1/