Renowned string theorist proposes new way to hunt our solar system's mysterious 'Planet 9'

[Admin]

A new paper by physicist Edward Witten proposes hunting Planet 9 using a fleet of laser-launched probes like Breakthrough Starshots'.

Renowned string theorist proposes new way to hunt our solar system's mysterious 'Planet 9' : Read more

 

[rod]

Interesting idea about planet hunting for #9 here. What I note is from the arxiv report, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.01120.pdf "The clustering of orbits for a group of extreme trans-Neptunian objects suggests the existence of an unseen planet of mass M ∼ 5 − 10M⊕, so-called Planet 9, at a distance of ∼ 400 − 800 AU from the Sun"

I checked this site for exoplanets, 4265 confirmed,

 

[rod]

Okay, I hit the button too soon . http://exoplanet.eu/ There are 107 exoplanets with masses in the range of 5 to 10 earth masses, they are all very close to their host stars. Semimajor axis 0.0116 a.u. out to 3.94 a.u. Looking for a similar sized object in our solar system some 400 to 800 a.u. from the Sun is very intriguing when compared to the known exoplanets documented now in this mass range.