Does an unknown planet from the solar system have moons?

The history of the planet began when Chad Trujillo, a former graduate student of Professor Mike Brown at Caltech, and Scott Sheppard published a paper claiming that unusual orbits with similar properties of dozens of distant objects could be explained by the presence of a small, unknown object. planet. Brown thought it unlikely, but he teamed up with Professor Konstantin Batygin to find out.

In early 2016, a paper by both scientists was published. Scientists have calculated that the odds that the unusual orbits of Kuiper Belt objects are a matter of chance are very small. Therefore, their orbital-forming mission may have been affected The existence of an unknown planet. Batygin and Brown assumed that such a planet would have a mass 10 times that of Earth, would be on average 20 times farther from the Sun than Neptune, and would have an orbital period of 10 to 20 thousand years. years. In recent years, more and more scientific teams have put forward hypotheses that the alien planet was left behind “Stolen” from the sun Another star, and that there is a primordial black hole in the solar system. To date, however, none of the hypotheses have been proven.

And since we don’t know if the planet even exists, it seems strange to think of its satellites. However, it makes sense. Thanks to the potential moons, spotting Planet 9 will be easier. Chan argues that if he had moons, they would have a changing heat signature caused by tidal forces on the planet. This heat signature should be 2.5 times stronger than the heat signature of the planet itself, and much larger than any object in the Meruer belt.

Chan says the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array Observatory, which recently underwent an upgrade, should be able to detect it. The Hong Kong scientist notes that if Batygin and Brown are right about their estimates of Planet 9’s mass, it could contain as many as 20 satellites, which increases the chances of discovering their heat signatures. Outside of Neptune’s orbit, as there is no mechanism that could increase temperatures in the range described by Kahn, the detection of such a signature would be a strong indication of the existence of Planet 9.