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rfmcdonaldThe Dragon's Tales linked to an arXiv preprint of a paper, "Coralling a distant planet with extreme resonant Kuiper belt objects", that aims to constrain the possible location of Planet Nine.
The Planetary Society Blog's Emily Lakdawalla has more analysis.
The data, Lakdawalla and the authors note, is still uncertain. This constrains the possible location of Planet Nine, and does not provide proof of its existence. It merely demonstrates that, if Planet Nine exists, this is what it will hve to look like.
The four longest period Kuiper belt objects have orbital periods close to small integer ratios with each other. A hypothetical planet with orbital period ∼17,117 years, semimajor axis ∼665 AU, would have N/1 and N/2 period ratios with these four objects. The orbital geometries and dynamics of resonant orbits constrain the orbital plane, the orbital eccentricity and the mass of such a planet, as well as its current location in its orbital path.
The Planetary Society Blog's Emily Lakdawalla has more analysis.
Malhotra points out that because the orbits of the extremely distant Kuiper belt objects like Sedna, 2010 GB174, 2004 VN112, 2012 VP113, and 2013 GP136 are so eccentric, then they are likely to have had close encounters with the putative planet. Close encounters with a massive planet change orbits of smaller worlds. It's relatively easy for small worlds, so tenuously connected to the Sun, to get ejected from the solar system entirely. If there is an undiscovered distant planet affecting their orbits, the fact that the little worlds still remain in our solar system means either that they've had relatively few encounters, or else they're protected from close encounters with the planet by being in resonances. This is how Pluto is still a member of our solar system even though its orbit crosses Neptune's: because Pluto orbits the Sun twice for every three times Neptune does, Pluto and Neptune are never actually close to each other, so Neptune doesn't get a chance to eject Pluto.
Armed with this hypothesis, Malhotra, Volk, and Wang investigated whether the worlds we know about could be in resonances with the one that Batygin and Brown suggested. In short, they can. It's complicated because we have short observational arcs on these distant, slow-moving worlds, so the analysis has to include a detailed understanding of the uncertainties on the worlds' orbits. The analysis suggests that Sedna's orbital period is in a 3:2 resonance with the putative planet; 2010 GB174 in a 5:2; 2994 VN112 in a 3:1 resonance; 2004 VP113 in 4:1; and 2013 GP136 in 9:1.
If all this is true (and I should note here that the paper has not been peer-reviewed yet), Malhotra et al.'s work constrains the mass and location of the possible planet in different ways than Batygin and Brown's does. In this new paper, in order to keep the smaller worlds corralled into resonant orbits, the possible planet has to have a mass of at least 10 times that of Earth. The orbital plane can be one of two: either inclined at 18 degrees or 48 degrees. In the low-inclination case, the orbit eccentricity would be less than 0.18; in the high-inclination case, it could be much larger. There are many places along the possible orbits that the putative planet could not be, or else it would have close encounters with the discovered worlds.
The data, Lakdawalla and the authors note, is still uncertain. This constrains the possible location of Planet Nine, and does not provide proof of its existence. It merely demonstrates that, if Planet Nine exists, this is what it will hve to look like.
