Searching for Planet 9

• Watchlist

At the edge of our solar system, a mysterious giant planet is said to be hidden, with a mass equivalent to five times the Earth. The year there would last more than ten thousand years, so far from the Sun it orbits. Several teams of astronomers, including the Americans Chad Trujillo and Scott Sheppard, are relentlessly tracking down this hypothetical exile. With what clues? And why is it so difficult to detect? On the eve of the year 2000, the declassification of Pluto as the ninth planet, relegated to the status of "dwarf planet" following the discovery of a population of celestial objects of similar size, caused an earthquake in the astronomical community. The same people who were at the origin of this discovery are now the most persistent hunters of an elusive planet 9, like Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown.