ASTRONOMY Two researchers observatories of Paris and French Riviera claimed to have restricted the area where the search giant distant …
the horizon is vast, but french astronomers have slightly reduced. Two researchers from Paris Observatory and the Côte d’Azur have told AFP on February 23, have managed to restrict the areas in which could be the ninth planet in the solar system.
the hypothesis of the existence of the ninth body, which would be ten times more massive than Earth, was seriously reinforced January 20 with the publication of calculations Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the Institute of California technology (the Caltec).
it gravitate to 600 times the earth-sun distance
According to the mathematical models used by these American researchers, that mysterious body turn around the sun at a distance twenty times greater than that of Neptune, which is the eighth and final (by its distance from the sun) world recognized as such in our system. Pluto, which was considered a ninth planet until 2006, is now “decommissioned”.
The astronomers worldwide now hope to find the giant distant, but at a distance equivalent to 600 times the Earth-Sun distance is like finding a needle in a haystack. “Many researchers are trying to mobilize to find it visually,” says Francis Rocard, head of exploration programs in the solar system at CNES (CNES).
& gt; & gt; read also: ninth planet “ten or fifteen years it takes to reach observe”
research by both French Agnes Fienga and Jacques Laskar could so give them a serious hand, limiting the area to which guide the hunt.
Based on the observations of the European probe Cassini
the two astronomers of the Coast Azur and Paris based their estimates on the evolution of the distance from Earth to Saturn. The presence of a massive object such as the 9th planet theoretically has a predictable effect on the distance.
Introducing the planet in an astrophysical model, they were able to determine how disruption it caused. It only remained to determine what positions were consistent best with the real evolution of the distance from Earth to Saturn, which is measured precisely (within 100 meters) since 2004 by the European Cassini probe.
Result: “We remove half of the possible directions” to seek the hidden giant assures Jacques Laskar, whose work is published in the journal Astronomy & amp; Astrophysics Letters . The researcher thinks even have identified a “probable” zone presence, while remaining cautious. “I would not put my life on it,” he said.
According to him, the area searching the planet could still be halved if the activity of the Cassini probe was extended until 2020 instead of 2017 currently being considered.
the famous “ninth planet” could have been evicted from their initial orbits in the early days of the solar system, due to the vicinity of Jupiter.
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