(Science Alert) – Somewhere in the outer reaches of the Solar System, beyond the orbit of Neptune, something wonky is happening. A few objects are orbiting differently from everything else, and we don’t know why. A popular hypothesis is that an unseen object called Planet Nine could be messing with these orbits; astronomers are avidly searching for this planet. But now physicists have come up with an alternative explanation they think is more plausible. Instead of one big object, the orbital wobblies could be caused
by the combined gravitational force of a number of smaller Kuiper Belt or trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). That’s according to astrophysicists Antranik Sefilian of the University of Cambridge in the UK and Jihad Touma of the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. If it sounds familiar, that’s because Sefilian and Touma are not the first to think of this idea – but their calculations are the first to explain significant features of the strange orbits of these objects, while taking into account the other eight planets in the Solar System. READ MORE
