Washington: scientists have discovered a new strange object far beyond Neptune, in one of the coldest and most distant parts of our solar system.
The object, called 2017, is frozen, far and possibly large enough to be called the Dwarf Planet. It takes about 25,000 years to surround the sun only once.
Researchers say it is one of the most distant things we have seen in space, and it could be a clue that many more hidden worlds are still waiting to be found.
The researchers called it one of the most distant visible objects in our solar system and said that its existence indicates that a large extension of space beyond the outermost planet Neptune, and a region called Kuiper belt, may not be deserted, while thinking a lot. Kuiper’s belt is populated by numerous frozen bodies.
The object falls into a category called Trans-Neptunian objects that orbit the sun at a distance beyond that of Neptune.
The researchers said that 2017 of 2017 was identified in observations for telescopes in Chile and Hawaii that covers seven years.
“It is potentially large enough to qualify as a dwarf planet. His orbit is very wide and eccentric, which means he experienced an interesting orbital migration route in the past,” said astrophysicist Sihao Cheng, of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, who directed the study with Jiaxuan Li and Eritas Yang collaborators, graduates Princeton
It is estimated that its size is a little smaller than Ceres, which is the smallest of the five recognized dwarf planets in the solar system and has a diameter of approximately 590 miles (950 km). Pluto, the largest of those dwarf planets, has a diameter of approximately 1,477 miles (2,377 km).
The 2017 mass of 2017 is estimated at approximately 20,000 times smaller than the Earth and 50 times smaller than Pluto.
“We still don’t know the form. Unfortunately, it’s too far and it’s a bit difficult to solve it with telescopes,” Cheng said. “Its composition is still totally unknown, but probably similar to other frozen bodies.”
The discovery was announced by the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union, an International Astronomer Organization, and detailed in a study published on the Arxiv Open Access Research Site. The study has not yet been reviewed by pairs.
The orbital distance of the Earth of the Sun is called astronomical unit. 2017 of 2017 is currently at a distance of 90.5 Astronomical Units of the Sun, which means 90.5 times more than the Earth.
But at its most remote point during its orbit, 2017 of 2017 it is more than 1,600 astronomical units of the sun, while the closest point in its orbit is approximately 45 astronomical units. That means that it is sometimes closer to the sun than Pluto, whose orbital distance varies from 30 to 49 astronomical units while traveling an elliptical road around the sun.
The researchers suspect that the 2017 extreme orbit of 2017 may have been caused by a close meeting for a long time with the gravitational influence of a giant planet.
“We still do not know much about the distant solar system because it is currently difficult to see things directly beyond about 150 astronomical units,” Cheng said. “The presence of this only object suggests that there could be another hundred or other objects with similar orbit and size. They are too far to be detectable at this time.”
The five dwarf planets recognized by the International Astronomical Union are, in order of distance from the Sun: Ceres, which is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter; Then Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris, which all are beyond Neptune.
The organization defines a planet and a dwarf planet differently. A planet must orbit its host star, in our case, the sun, and must be mainly round and large enough for its gravitational force to clear any other object of similar size near its orbit. A dwarf planet must orbit the sun and be mainly round, but has not eliminated its orbit of other objects.
Cheng said that the 2017 2017 discovery has implications for the hypotheses that imply the potential existence of a ninth planet in our solar system, called Planet X or Planet Nine.
This is because the 2017 orbit of 2017 does not follow the pattern exhibited by other known trans-neptunian objects, which tend to group together. Some scientists had raised the hypothesis that this group was caused by the seriousness of a planet not yet discovered.
“The 2017 existence of 2017 as an atypical for such a group could challenge this hypothesis,” Cheng said.
