Nasa recruitment

1930, clyde tombaugh, a newly recruited observation assistant at Lowell Observatory, discovered Pluto for the first time on the cold Arizona Plateau after eight months of hard observation and careful comparison.

This is the first time that American astronomers have discovered a new planet by using American observation equipment, and it is one of the important events that marks the transfer of the world science center from the European continent to the United States. Americans are proud of this and affectionately call Pluto the "American planet".

At this point, people have long thought that there are nine planets in the solar system. However, at the International Astronomical Union in 2006, a new definition of planet was given.

Planets are celestial bodies that revolve around the sun (stars). They have enough mass to turn themselves into spheres due to gravity and can clean up nearby small celestial bodies.

You need to meet these three conditions at the same time to become a big planet, so Pluto is downgraded to a dwarf planet, and there are only eight planets in the solar system.

For many years, astronomers have been debating whether there is an elusive ninth planet in the solar system besides Pluto.

The researchers discovered a distant rocky celestial body, which they thought was attracted to a special orbit by an undiscovered planet. This discovery supports an increasingly convincing view that the so-called ninth planet should exist.

The ninth planet was first discovered by California Institute of Technology experts Mike Elbrown and Constantine Batkin in 20 16. They found that six celestial bodies in the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system have strange orbits. The probability that this phenomenon happens by chance is only 0.007%. After excluding other possibilities, they speculated that the reason for this phenomenon may be that a real planet is exerting its gravitational effect.

They found that the orbits of a group of cold celestial bodies on the edge of the solar system were tilted, and said that these cold celestial bodies were tilted due to the gravity of the ninth planet in the solar system. The orbits of these celestial bodies are oval, pointing in the same direction and inclined by 30 degrees compared with the plane in which the planets revolve around the sun.

Although the ninth planet has not been confirmed, many astronomers, including NASA scientists, have published many papers supporting this theory.

Among them, a research team of the University of Michigan described a distant celestial body discovered in 20 14, which was about the size of a dwarf planet and was called "20 15 BP5 19", which aroused the interest of the team. Because its orbit is unusually inclined to the plane where most celestial bodies in the solar system revolve around the sun, they use the computer simulation system of the solar system to study how its strange orbit is formed.

The simulator shows that the eight planets in the solar system will not let 20 15 BP5 19 rotate in such an orbit. When the researchers added the ninth planet to the simulation system, the current orbit of 20 15 BP5 19 was simulated. University of Michigan astronomer David Geddes said:

"This can't prove the existence of the ninth planet, but I can think that the existence of 20 15 BP5 19 in the solar system supports the theory of the existence of the ninth planet."

Although astronomers are still using telescopes to find traces of the ninth planet, this study adds to the evidence of the existence of the ninth planet.

This star with a mass of 20 15 BP5 19 is about 5000 times that of Pluto, so its gravity is enough to affect the operation of several dwarf planets at the edge of the solar system. It fundamentally interferes with the operation of objects in the Kuiper belt on the edge of the solar system.

In fact, because it is very far away, it takes 1000 ~ 20000 years for this planet to orbit the sun.

At present, the latest research by astronomers at the University of Rand in Sweden shows that the ninth planet is likely to be an exoplanet. They believe that in the early evolution of the universe, the planet was "stolen" by the sun when it was running closer to the sun. It is an unexplored part of the solar system, and it will become the first exoplanet discovered in the solar system.

There are various hypotheses as to why 20 15 BP5 19 has not been observed. Some people think it is still at the far end of the orbit, so it is difficult for us to find it. Others think that it is actually a small "black hole" the size of a bowling ball, so it is difficult to be found.

But in any case, because its cycle around the sun has reached tens of thousands of years, the last perihelion must have been in prehistoric times. Even if humans observed it at that time, there was no relevant record.

I think if we can find 20 15 BP5 19, it will be a great victory for mankind. With the continuous development of science and technology, any planet, especially the planet whose mass may be 10 times that of the earth, will be found more and more easily.