Astronomer responsible for demoting Pluto narrows search for hypothetical 'Planet Nine'
Fox News
In the continued search for the speculated ninth planet in our Solar System, Michael Brown, the CalTech astronomer who led the demotion of Pluto to a dwarf planet in 2006, has co-written a new study that claims to have narrowed the region the planet could be located.
The scientists first proposed Pluto had a replacement in a controversial study that came out in 2016 that said the clustering of asteroids and comets and other objects that orbit the sun in the Kuiper Belt suggests the existence of a large planet, National Geographic reported. While some astronomers said the clustering reported in the 2016 study could be a fluke or actually a black hole since Planet Nine has never been seen, Brown and Batygin determined in the study, published last month in the Astronomical Journal, that the clustering is not a coincidence with 99.6% confidence. The new study also includes a "treasure map" of the planet’s likely orbit that the scientists said lasts around 7,400 Earth years and is closer to the Sun than the 2016 study found, according to Extreme Tech.More Related News