A surprise monster may be lurking in our solar system.
A newly discovered dwarf planet has grabbed the crown as the most distant known object in our solar system – and its orbit hints at a giant, unseen rocky world, orbiting far beyond Pluto.
They also found a strange alignment when they looked at the orbits of 2012 VP113, Sedna and 10 other objects that lie closer to the sun. One explanation for the alignment could be the tug of a rocky planet that is 10 times the mass of Earth that orbits the sun at 250 AU.
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) scoured this region of space in 2010 and 2011 searching for the so-called Planet X and came up empty.
Despite the hunt for "Planet X" has been fruitless so far, but that doesn't mean astronomers are calling it off.
Image left: New view of the outer solar system and the possible new monster planet.
A new analysis of data collected by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft revealed no sign of the mysterious Planet X hypothesized to exist in the outer solar system.
But scientists are keeping up the search for a planet or dim star far from the sun.
Astronomers will continue to search for a distant companion to the sun with every new, deeper survey," Kevin Luhman of the University of Pennsylvania told Space.com 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.
The recent find of the dwarf planet 2012 VP113 may give a boost to the hunt for Planet X. Read more here and here
A newly discovered dwarf planet has grabbed the crown as the most distant known object in our solar system – and its orbit hints at a giant, unseen rocky world, orbiting far beyond Pluto.
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) scoured this region of space in 2010 and 2011 searching for the so-called Planet X and came up empty.
Despite the hunt for "Planet X" has been fruitless so far, but that doesn't mean astronomers are calling it off.
A new analysis of data collected by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft revealed no sign of the mysterious Planet X hypothesized to exist in the outer solar system.
But scientists are keeping up the search for a planet or dim star far from the sun.
Astronomers will continue to search for a distant companion to the sun with every new, deeper survey," Kevin Luhman of the University of Pennsylvania told Space.com 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.
The recent find of the dwarf planet 2012 VP113 may give a boost to the hunt for Planet X. Read more here and here