The Goblin: hunt for Planet X turns up a new solar system object
Story highlights The discovery of a distant object hints that a giant planet may exist on the edge of our solar system Its elongated orbit suggests that it is shepherded by a massive planet CNN — While searching for the mysterious Planet X that some astronomers believe lurks on the edge of our solar system, researchers instead found an extremely distant object they dubbed “the Goblin.” And this object provides compelling evidence for the existence of Planet X. “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,” Tholen said in a statement. “The more of them we can find, the better we can understand the outer Solar System and the possible planet that we think is shaping their orbits – a discovery that would redefine our knowledge of the Solar System’s evolution.” Sheppard and his colleagues continue their survey, the largest and deepest ever for distant solar system objects, by observing the northern and southern skies at all times of year. “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.
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