Megaconstellations of satellites will visually clutter the night sky, disrupting astronomical research. And the environmental damage caused by these satellites is still unknown.
An artist’s concept of a hypothetical planet with a distant sun.
(Shutterstock)
In the search for the hypothetical Planet Nine, scientists may have uncovered another explanation for the patterns in the orbits of Kuiper Belt objects.
A natural color image of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.
(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker)
It turns out that a common physical process called diffusion can explain the orbits of faraway minor planets – no need for a Planet Nine.
Artist’s impression: Looking back 12.9-billion km towards the sun and the inner solar system from Sedna, one of the recently discovered minor planets in the Kuiper belt.
NASA, ESA and Adolf Schaller
The search for new objects, including new planets, in our solar system has turned up some interesting finds. There have been a few failures over the years too.