Recently have been binge-ing on planets and cosmos, and I saw this youtuber mentioned that we might discover the next planet after Neptune.
However from my understanding, humanity has discovered black holes, magnetars, stars and so on that are hundreds, thousands or even more than that in terms of the measurement of light years.
Our solar system is not in the measurement of light years, yet we can’t discover the next planet after Neptune. Why ?
In: Technology
What we discover is based on the photons we receive. Stars emit photons, so we know a fair bit about stars. Planets pass in front of stars and so block photons. So we’ve learned a fair bit about those planets. Some bodies in our solar system are close enough to us and our sun that they reflect the sun’s photons towards us, so we know about those objects.
Planet X fits none of those profiles. We know something is there not because of photons but because of the gravitational effect it has on us and the objects we can observe.
Once we have better gravitational sensors in space, we’ll probably learn more.
Latest Answers