Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

Researchers at Cal Tech have uncovered indirect evidence of a planet with about ten Earth masses orbiting the Sun in an odd and highly eccentric orbit about 20x farther out than Neptune. Its orbital period around the Sun (its year) would be 10,000 - 20,000 Earth years. Weighing in at maybe 5,000x the mass of Pluto, this would be a real planet, probably a very small gas 'giant'. They hypothesize that it was flung gravitationally into its odd orbit during the early days of the solar system.

Its mass would place it about midway between the rocky inner planets and the other gas giants. Interestingly, many extrasolar planets with that kind of mass have been detected around other stars, but until now none here in our own solar system.

It still hasn't been observed through a telescope. Its presence was indirectly deduced from peculiarities in the motions of various Kuiper belt objects like Sedna. Some appear to have harmonic orbits that show the influence of a gravitational attractor located in the same place for each of them, others have been flung out of the plane of the ecliptic by a gravitational force. Apparently calculating what might be responsible for these independent observations all came together to point to a single object.

http://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-rese...anet-49523

(Jan 20, 2016 06:44 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]. . . with about ten Earth masses orbiting the Sun in an odd and highly eccentric orbit about 20x farther out than Neptune.

At least it's plenty far enough out to keep the Nibiru folk at bay and their clamor that Planet X is fast approaching Earth to induce its "devastatingly periodic effects".