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NEWSLINE PAPER,- The solar system is a very crowded place; there are millions of moving objects, ranging from planets, moons, comets, and asteroids.
Every year, scientists continue to discover more and more objects (usually small asteroids or fast comets) that make the solar system home.
Astronomers had discovered eight major planets in 1846. However, that did not stop them from looking for more objects.
In the last 100 years, astronomers have discovered much smaller objects, called dwarf planet, and one of them is Pluto.
The discovery of some of these dwarf planets gives reason to believe that there is something else that may still be spying on the outskirts of the solar system.
That's why astronomers spend hundreds of hours trying to find the ninth planet or "Planet X." And that's because the solar system't make sense without it.
Everything in the solar system orbits the Sun. Some move fast and some slow, but all move according to the law of gravity. Everything that's massive has gravity, including humans. The heavier a thing is, the greater the gravity it has.
The gravity of a planet is so great that it affects the motion of objects around it. That's what's called the gravitational attraction. It's the Earth's gravity that keeps everything on Earth.
Besides, the Sun has the greatest gravitational attraction compared to anything in the solar system, and this is what causes the planets to orbit around it.
Through the understanding of gravitational attraction, astronomers get the greatest clue about the possibility of Planet Nine.
When looking at very distant objects, such as dwarf planets outside Pluto, experts found their orbits a little unexpected. They are moving in very large elliptical orbits, clustered together, and are on slopes compared to other parts of the solar system.
When astronomers used computers to model what gravitational forces were needed for these objects to move like this, they found that it took a planet at least ten times the mass of the Earth to cause this.
This is a very interesting thing. But the question is: where is the planet?
The problem now is trying to make sure that these predictions and models are correct. The only way to do that is to find Planet Nine, which is obviously very difficult to do.
Scientists around the world have been searching for real evidence of the existence of Planet Nine for years. Based on computer models, they estimate that Planet 9 is at least 20 times farther away from the Sun than Neptune.
They try to detect it by looking for the sunlight it can reflect, as the moon shines from the reflection of sunlight at night.
However, since Planet Nine is so far from the Sun, it is thought to be very thin and difficult to recognize, even by the best telescopes on Earth.
Besides, astronomers can't originally look for it at any time of the year. Specifically, they have to wait for the night without the moon, and the observation location facing the right side of the sky.
However, scientists never despair. In the next decade, new telescopes will be built and new observations will begin. They may finally be able to prove or deny the existence of Planet Nine.
(Newsline Paper Teams)