If there was another planet in our solar system why can't anyone find it?
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Hello JadeRose,
There is a reasonably easy answer to this one, JadeRose. <smile> It's DARK out there. <chuckle>
Stars emit their own light so they are much, much easier to see... A planet is a lumpy ball of rock or a big gassy giant and they certainly don't reflect very much light in the scale of things.
And if the sun has a planet is waaaaay out there, in the dark, where the sun itself appears no bigger than a particularly bright star... you can see why it might take awhile to find the planet. Space is BIG; it's the very biggest thing there is.
Hope this helps,
Tara
PS I did NOT like Pluto being demoted from planet status to dwarf planet. Astronomers seem to forget that those hairs they split sometimes have wider impact than merely as a negotiation point in a theoretical debate. People liked Pluto, darn it.
Pluto isn't really that large, that's one of the reasons its status as "planet" was taken away (Pluto is actually more like a big comet).
If no-one can find another planet in our orbit, that probably means there isn't one.
Very likely there are many other planet or near-planet sized objects in the Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud, but they're hard to find because (a) they're far from the sun, therfore dark, (b) do not strongly effect the planets gravitationally because of their distance. There are no real methods of locating planets except by the light they shine or their gravitational influence. The latest extra-solar planet (Gliese 876 d) was located by its gravitation influence on its parent star.
That would be very easy to find based on gravitational effects. There isn't another one closer than Pluto.
Uranus was discovered by accident, but Neptune was discovered through its gravitational effect on the motion of Uranus. Additional searching based on suspected unexplained gravitational influence led to the discovery of Pluto. Were there another planet closer than Neptune (which is 2.7 billion miles from the Sun), its gravitational effects would have led to its discovery by now.
Planets the size of Pluto and more than five billion miles from the Sun will be hard to discover because they will have little gravitational effect, and reflect little sunlight. Despite this, a couple have been found. It was partially because some astronomers were reluctant to expand the solar system to include two or three more planets almost all at the same time that led to Pluto's demotion. The issue is going to be raised again at the next international conference of astronomers.
Well, we can. It all depends on gravitational effects. We're able to view bodies outside our system. So, either scientists aren't focused or the thorough search has been done. Much of our solar system has been discovered, if not all. Many of the researchers are more focused on farther bodies. Hope this helps.
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