A team of uranologist pore through old galactic data may have seen a candidate for the elusive Planet Nine – a hypothetical 9th major planet in the Solar System , far beyond the celestial orbit of Neptune .

In 2016 , two astronomers at Caltech presented evidence that six object past the orbit of Neptune were cluster together in a way that advise they were being " herded " by something with a large gravitational clout . Since then , Konstantin Batygin , Mike Brown , and others have attempted to search for such a planet .

While it remain subtle , many stargazer believe that it could explain puzzles such as the tilt of the orbit of prospicient - menstruum Kuiper belt ammunition object , and objects that orbit the Sun in a retrograde centering between the jumbo planets .

" It could also make our Solar System seem a lilliputian more ' normal',“NASA explains . " Surveys of planet around other stars in our galaxy have found the most common types to be ' super world ' and their cousin — grownup than Earth , but smaller than Neptune . Yet none of this form be in our Solar System . Planet Nine would facilitate fill that break . "

While we have found thousands of exoplanets – or planets orbiting other stars – finding planets in our own Solar System isnot quite so promiscuous . We can see the effect that an exoplanet has on its star through its gravitative influence , or simply jam out light from the star from our view and do it dimmer , among other methods .

But for our own Solar System , and from the advantage point of Earth , only Venus and Mercury pass in front of the Sun . planet large enough and close down enough to the Sun to reflect sunshine like Jupiter and Saturn were discern as they orbit the Sun , while Neptune , much further out , was discovered through its gravitative effect on Uranus .

Planet Nine – should it actually exist – is predicted to be farbeyond the field of Neptune , perhaps 500 - 700 astronomical units ( AU ) from the Sun , with one AU being the aloofness between the Earth and the Sun . At those distance , despite a prognosticate massive size of it , it would not reflect much sunlight at us .

But in a newfangled paper , one team attempted to count for evidence of the planet by look through data point spanning decennary from two infrared surveys of the sky .

" We searched for Planet Nine candidates in a heliocentric length chain of 500 – 700 AU and a mass orbit of 7 – 17M⊕ by using two far - infrared all - sky surveys with a 23 - twelvemonth epoch difference , " the team explains in their pre - print newspaper , which has not yet been peer reviewed . " Planet Nine is expected to move slow on the sky due to its great distance beyond Neptune ’s ambit . Therefore , we searched for slow - moving objects that moved from an IRAS position to another AKARI position after 23 years . "

The team initially detect 13 prospect that warrant close inspection , before narrowing this down to just one .

" After the stringent choice , including the visual image review , we discover one good candidate pair , in which the IRAS rootage was not notice at the same position in the AKARI icon and vice versa , with the expected angular separation of 42′ – 69.6′ , " the squad explained . " The AKARI spotting probability mathematical function indicated that the AKARI germ of our candidate pair satisfy the requirements for a slow - make a motion object with two detections on one date and no spying on the date of 6 month before . "

While the team believes that the candidate warrants play along - up investigations , the data is not enough to anticipate an cranial orbit of the aim , if it chance to be the subtle Planet Nine . Further observation will be need to close in on the planet , if it exist at all .

The study is uncommitted to register on the pre - print serverarXiv .