Is Sedna the key to unraveling the mystery of the Solar System’s Nineth Planet?

When is the celestial body When Sedna was discovered, its unusual features caught the attention of astronomers In data collected by the Palomar Observatory on Palomar Mountain in the United States. One of the most remarkable features of this celestial body is that, unlike other objects at significant distances from the Sun, Sedna does not come close to Neptune during its orbit.

Sedna is a small celestial body located on the inner edge of the Oort cloud; in fact, it was one of the first objects detected in this remote region of the Solar System. It is named in honor of a sea goddess in the mythology of the indigenous Eskimo Inuit people.

The object was discovered in 2003 by a group of astronomers at the Palomar Observatory, but remains one of the targets of study today. Its orbit is highly elliptical and it takes about 11,400 years to complete one revolution around the Sun.With a minimum distance from the Sun of approximately 76 astronomical units (AU), one AU, Astronomical Unit, represents the average distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Some in the scientific community theorize that Sedna’s eccentric orbit could be the result of the influence of a so-called ninth planet in the Solar System, known as Planet X or Planet 9. In fact, this is one of the possible ‘evidences’ for the existence of this planet that has not yet been discovered; many scientists argue that when correlating this and other data, there must be a huge celestial body ‘hidden from our sight’.

“The observations of Sedna quickly raised a number of intriguing questions. Astronomers had thought that all objects in the outer solar system would be icy and therefore white or gray in appearance, but Sedna was almost as red as Mars… One idea that could explain Sedna’s orbit is that it is being propelled toward the inner solar system by the gravity of a passing star.”, describes the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Beyond Neptune: Sedna and the Ninth Planet

Sedna is considered a trans-Neptunian object and has an orbit well beyond Neptune. Like other objects in this category, it suggests that a large planet may have influenced its eccentric orbit.

Firstly, Astronomers believed that Sedna could be a dwarf planet, but it does not appear to have all the characteristics needed to fall into that category.However, some scientists debate the possibility of it being a dwarf planet, even though it has not been officially classified as such.

“Trans-Neptunian objects, which lie beyond the orbit of Neptune, are a diverse collection of icy objects that make up the Kuiper Belt, a vast region of space that includes dwarf planets like Pluto and is filled with countless objects that extend from the orbit of Neptune outward. They are generally no larger than a few kilometers in diameter, explains a study published in the scientific journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

In addition to the discovery of Sedna in 2003, other similar bodies have been found and are therefore classified as sednoids. In total, four sednoids have already been identified: Sedna, 2012 VP113, Leleakuhonua and 2021 RR205. To be considered a sednoid, scientists stipulate that the object must be trans-Neptunian, have a perihelion greater than 50 AU, and a semi-axis greater than 150 AU.

Sedna’s relationship with Planet X

In recent years, scientist Yukun Huang was one of those responsible for studying Sedna and other sednoids in an effort to learn more about their origins, including their possible relationship to Planet X. In a recent study published in the scientific journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, Yukun and his research partner Brett Gladman Explain that the odd orbits of these objects are probably not affected by Planet Nine.

Using computer simulations to understand what the orbits of these objects were like at the beginning of the universe, They discovered that interactions that occurred 4.5 billion years ago may be responsible for the peculiar orbits observed today.

It’s likely that an event during the formation of the Solar System caused these features to form. In any case, the scientists say they need to study the orbits of the sednoids further to confirm their theory.

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