http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...0709313&PID=6149995&SID=ijn285ishj00deno00dth (more at the link, but the pertinents) Caltech researchers say they have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a "bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system." Dubbed Planet Nine, it has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does distant Neptune. The researchers say it would take Planet Nine up to 20,000 years to orbit the sun. "This would be a real ninth planet," said researcher Mike Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg professor of planetary astronomy. "There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It's a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that's still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting." Brown says the planet has 5,000 times the mass of Pluto and is so big there should be no debate about whether it is a true planet. "There is no planet found. It's all circumstantial evidence," Sheppard said. "It's like we're at a crime scene looking at the blood on the wall, and we're trying to explain how the person died." But there's no other good explanation for the orbits of the planetoids in the cold, dark reaches of the outer solar system, Sheppard says. If the find is confirmed, "it's kind of mind-boggling that something larger than the Earth could be sitting in our backyard.
i'm confused by that last statement. unless they are saying it's mind boggling that there is a terrestrial planet bigger then earth? i'm pretty sure all 4 of the planets beyond mars (jupiter, saturn, uranus and neptune) are bigger then earth.
News story I saw said they can't see the planet, but could tell there were moons orbiting something big out there.
Cant they just say it orbits in the Kuiper belt if indeed it is 20 times further then Neptune. im guessing that would put it in the Kuiper belt also they have been looking for a extremely large or high gravity object in the Kuiper belt for a very long time. A high gravitational object is the only thing they could think of that randomly throws crap flying around in the solar system from the Kuiper belt.
