USA TODAY
Scientists discovered an extremely distant object billions of miles beyond Pluto.
The object has an orbit that hints at an even-farther-out “Super-Earth” or larger “Planet X” that could be lurking out there.
The findings were announced Tuesday by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.
The object, which researchers have nicknamed “the Goblin,” was discovered as part of astronomy’s hunt for unknown dwarf planets and Planet X, aka “Planet Nine,” an as-yet-undiscovered world that could have a mass about 10 times that of Earth.
According to NASA, “the existence of this distant world is only theoretical at this point, and no direct observation of the object nicknamed have been made.”
The new research, led by the Carnegie Institution for Science, is the largest and deepest survey conducted for distant solar system objects. “These distant objects are like bread crumbs leading us to Planet X,” astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution said in a statement.
The object, a 200-mile-wide rock with the rather inelegant name of 2015 TG387, is about 7.9 billion miles from the sun. That’s about two and a half times as far away from the sun as Pluto.
“We think there could be thousands of small bodies like 2015 TG387 out on the solar system’s fringes, but their distance makes finding them very difficult,” said the University of Hawaii’s David Tholen, a member of the research team.
Telescopes in Chile, Hawaii and Arizona were used to discover and confirm the existence of the distant object.
This isn’t the first discovery this group of researchers has made. This year, again while searching for Planet X, the team found 12 additional moons of Jupiter.
More:Astronomers discover 12 more moons orbiting Jupiter, including an ‘oddball’
“What makes this result really interesting is that Planet X seems to affect 2015 TG387 the same way as all the other extremely distant solar system objects,” said researcher Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University. “These simulations do not prove that there’s another massive planet in our solar system, but they are further evidence that something big could be out there.”
The findings were submitted for publication to the Astronomical Journal.