Researchers at Harvard University and their collaborators have used a specially designed microscope to probe the properties of supermoiré patterns in trilayer graphene to an extent that was never possible before.
Using the unique microscope, they detected many new states of matter in which electrons would get stuck or form unusual groups, leading to changes in the entire system’s electronic behavior and opening doors to studying layered materials with precisely controllable properties.
The ultra-long supermoiré patterns visible in twisted trilayer materials had been considered by some to be imperfections of little consequence amidst the simpler moiré structures that emerge when only two layers are present. The new paper challenges that assumption and introduces the concept of supermoiré engineering – how that additional pattern-on-pattern could be used as a probe to uncover the overall properties of these special materials. The supermoiré pattern is relatively large and can be easily controlled, introducing potential for designing exotic new materials for thin electronics and other applications.
“Going into this study, if you asked me if I thought the supermoiré was good for anything, I probably would’ve said it’ll just be a nuisance,” said co-author Andrew Pierce, now a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell. “But it turned out to give us new information about the system – information that would’ve been hard to get with other techniques besides ours.”
Understanding of supermoiré patterns had been limited by the fact that the patterns can vary significantly across different regions in a sample. To solve this problem, the researchers used their single-electron transistor microscope, developed in Amir Yacoby’s lab at SEAS, that’s capable of examining materials with spatial resolution of about 100 nanometers and is sensitive to perturbations in individual electrons. A sharp needle with a sensor at its tip scans the sample and captures these details.
The microscope allowed the team to detect very slight changes in moiré and supermoiré patterns in two- and -three-layer graphene, and the resulting electronic properties per pixel. By analyzing the correlations between these quantities, they gleaned new insights into how the supermoiré patterns in particular influence the entire system.
“This additional long-range pattern that until now was largely overlooked could be used as a probe to understand the material properties of the parent material,” said co-author Yonglong Xie, now an assistant professor at Rice University.
The results could enhance understanding of quantum phenomena, including the lossless conduction of electrons known as superconductivity, and lead to next-generation materials that contain multiple tunable properties.
The paper was co-authored by Jeong Min Park, Daniel E. Parker, Jie Wang, Patrick Ledwith, Zhuozhen Cai, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Eslam Khalaf, Ashvin Vishwanath, and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero. The research received federal support from the Army Research Office, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense.
We still get transits of Titan’s shadow across Saturn for a few more months — catch this one early in the morning.
Saturn’s moon Titan throws its shadow onto the planet’s disk twice this month. Note that while 13th-magnitude Mimas and its shadow are also transiting at the same time on July 18, they will likely be invisible. Credit: Astronomy: Roen Kelly
The transit lasts over two hours, with the shadow’s midpoint around 4:30 A.M. CDT.
Titan itself remains visibly separate from Saturn during the event.
Observe before sunrise to avoid interference.
Titan’s shadow transits the cloud tops of Saturn this morning, beginning around 2:50 A.M. EDT. At that time, Saturn (in the constellation Pisces) should be above the horizon for most of the U.S., with the Last Quarter Moon a good distance away, straddling the border of Pisces and Aries.
Saturn, at magnitude 0.9, is the brightest object in its vicinity, below the Circlet of Pisces. Center it in your telescope and note how Titan itself is still some 20” from the planet’s northeastern limb, where its shadow will appear. It’s a long transit, with the shadow reaching roughly midway across the saturnian disk around 4:30 A.M. CDT, as the East Coast is now losing its view to the sunrise. The shadow continues across for more than two hours and leaves the northwestern limb as dawn is breaking for those along the western coast of the U.S. Make sure to keep an eye on the time and stop your observations several minutes before sunrise.
You’ll note that the entire time, Titan remains well away from the planet — it will appear to pass well north of the ringed world during daylight, around noon Eastern daylight time. The moon won’t appear to transit Saturn from our point of view until later this year.
Sunrise: 5:47 A.M. Sunset: 8:25 P.M. Moonrise: 12:08 A.M. Moonset: 2:25 P.M. Moon Phase: Waning crescent (42%) *Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40° N 90° W. The Moon’s illumination is given at 12 P.M. local time from the same location.
For a look ahead at more upcoming sky events, check out our full Sky This Week column.
Human eggs are some of the most patient cells in the body, lying dormant for decades until needed. A study published today in The EMBO Journal shows that the cells deliberately slow the activity of their internal waste disposal systems as they mature, most likely an evolutionary design which keeps metabolism low and damage at bay.
By looking at more than a hundred freshly donated eggs, the largest dataset of its kind, we found a surprisingly minimalist strategy that helps the cells stay pristine for many years.”
Dr. Elvan Böke, corresponding author of the study and Group Leader, Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona
Women are born with one to two million immature eggs, a stock that dwindles to a few hundred by menopause. Each egg must avoid wear-and-tear for up to five decades before it can support a pregnancy. The new study suggests how they manage it.
Protein recycling is essential housekeeping, and lysosomes and proteasomes are the cell’s main waste disposal units. But every time these cellular components degrade proteins, they consume energy. This in turn can create reactive oxygen species (ROS), harmful molecules that can damage DNA and membranes. The team did not measure ROS directly, but hypothesise that by tapping the brakes on recycling, the egg keeps ROS production to a minimum while still doing enough housekeeping to survive.
The idea meshes with the group’s previous work, published in 2022, which showed that human oocytes deliberately skip a fundamental metabolic reaction to curb ROS production. Taken together, the two studies suggest that human eggs power down in different ways to keep potential damage as low as possible for as long as possible.
The discovery was made possible by collecting over 100 eggs from 21 healthy donors aged 19–34 at Dexeus Mujer, a Barcelona fertility clinic, 70 of which were fertilisation-ready eggs and 30 still-immature oocytes. Using fluorescent probes, they tracked lysosome, proteasome and mitochondrial activity in live cells. All three readouts were roughly 50 percent lower than in the eggs’ own surrounding support cells and fell even further as the cells matured.
Live-imaging showed the eggs literally jettisoning lysosomes into the surrounding fluid during the last hours before ovulation. At the same time, mitochondria and proteasomes migrated to the cell’s outer rim. “It’s a type of spring cleaning we didn’t know human eggs were capable of,” says first author Dr. Gabriele Zaffagnini.
The research is the largest-scale study of healthy human eggs collected directly from women. Most laboratory research to date has relied on eggs that have been ripened artificially in a dish, yet such in-vitro-matured oocytes often behave abnormally and are linked to poorer IVF results.
The study could lead to new strategies to improve success rates for the millions of IVF cycles attempted worldwide each year. “Fertility patients are routinely advised to take random supplements to improve egg metabolism, but evidence for any benefit for pregnant outcomes is patchy,” says Dr. Böke.
“By looking at freshly-donated eggs we’ve found evidence to suggest the opposite approach, maintaining the egg’s naturally quiet metabolism, could be a better idea for preserving quality,” she adds.
The team now plans to examine eggs from older donors and failed IVF cycles to see whether throttling the activity of cellular waste disposal units falters with age or disease.
Source:
Center for Genomic Regulation
Journal reference:
Zaffagnini, G., et al. (2025). The proteostatic landscape of healthy human oocytes. The EMBO Journal. doi.org/10.1038/s44318-025-00493-2.
A Martian meteorite, weighing 54.388 lbs. (24.67 kg), said to be the largest piece of Mars on Earth, at Sotheby’s, in New York, July 9, 2025. (PHOTO / AP)
NEW YORK – A 54-pound (24.5-kg) Martian meteorite that is the largest known piece of Mars found on Earth has sold for $5.3 million at Sotheby’s, setting a new auction record for a meteorite.
The auction on Wednesday for the rock known as NWA 16788 sparked a 15-minute bidding war between online and phone bidders.
“This is an amazing Martian meteorite that broke off of the Martian surface,” said Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s vice-chairman and global head of science and natural history, ahead of the auction.
READ MORE: Scientists identify molten layer deep within interior of Mars
The fragment was discovered in November 2023 by a meteorite hunter in the Sahara Desert, in Niger’s remote Agadez region.
“The people there knew already that it was something special,” said Hatton. “It wasn’t until it got to the lab and pieces were tested that we realized, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s Martian.’
And then when those results came back and we compared and saw, OK, it’s not just Martian, it is the biggest piece of Mars on the planet.”
About 5 million years ago, an asteroid or comet slammed into Mars so hard that rocks and other debris launched into space.
“So it comes hurtling… 140 million miles through space, makes it through Earth’s atmosphere,” said Hatton, noting that most things burn up in our planet’s atmosphere.
“It’s incredible that it made it through and then that it crashed in the middle of the desert instead of the middle of the ocean, in a place where we could find it, and that somebody who could recognize what it was found it.
READ MORE: China’s AI robotic chemist finds way to make oxygen on Mars
“So there’s a whole kind of process or a layer of things that have to happen in order for this to become reality and be here in front of us.”
Just like its mother planet, NWA 16788 has a distinctly reddish hue, as well as signs of fusion crust from its violent descent through Earth’s atmosphere.
There are about 400 officially recognized Martian meteorites on Earth, of which NWA 16788 is by far the largest.
Did Neanderthals have family recipes? A new study suggests that two groups of Neanderthals living in the caves of Amud and Kebara in northern Israel butchered their food in strikingly different ways, despite living close by and using similar tools and resources. Scientists think they might have been passing down different food preparation practices.
“The subtle differences in cut-mark patterns between Amud and Kebara may reflect local traditions of animal carcass processing,” said Anaëlle Jallon, PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lead author of the article in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. “Even though Neanderthals at these two sites shared similar living conditions and faced comparable challenges, they seem to have developed distinct butchery strategies, possibly passed down through social learning and cultural traditions.
“These two sites give us a unique opportunity to explore whether Neanderthal butchery techniques were standardized,” explained Jallon. “If butchery techniques varied between sites or time periods, this would imply that factors such as cultural traditions, cooking preferences, or social organization influenced even subsistence-related activities such as butchering.”
Written in the bones
Amud and Kebara are close to each other: only 70 kilometers apart. Neanderthals occupied both caves during the winters between 50 and 60,000 years ago, leaving behind burials, stone tools, hearths, and food remains. Both groups used the same flint tools and relied on the same prey for their diet — mostly gazelles and fallow deer. But there are some subtle differences between the two. The Neanderthals living at Kebara seem to have hunted more large prey than those at Amud, and they also seem to have carried more large kills home to butcher them in the cave rather than at the site of the kill.
At Amud, 40% of the animal bones are burned and most are fragmented. This could be caused by deliberate actions like cooking or by later accidental damage. At Kebara, 9% of the bones are burned, but less fragmented, and are thought to have been cooked. The bones at Amud also seem to have undergone less carnivore damage than those found at Kebara.
To investigate the differences between food preparation at Kebara and at Amud, the scientists selected a sample of cut-marked bones from contemporaneous layers at the two sites. They examined these macroscopically and microscopically, recording the cut-marks’ different characteristics. Similar patterns of cut-marks might suggest there were no differences in butchery practices, while different patterns might indicate distinct cultural traditions.
The cut-marks were clear and intact, largely unaffected by later damage caused by carnivores or the drying out of the bones. The profiles, angles, and surface widths of these cuts were similar, likely due to the two groups’ similar toolkits. However, the cut-marks found at Amud were more densely packed and less linear in shape than those at Kebara.
Cooking from scratch
The researchers considered several possible explanations for this pattern. It could have been driven by the demands of butchering different prey species or different types of bones — most of the bones at Amud, but not Kebara, are long bones — but when they only looked at the long bones of small ungulates found at both Amud and Kebara, the same differences showed up in the data. Experimental archaeology also suggests this pattern couldn’t be accounted for by less skilled butchers or by butchering more intensively to get as much food as possible. The different patterns of cut-marks are best explained by deliberate butchery choices made by each group.
One possible explanation is that the Neanderthals at Amud were treating meat differently before butchering it: possibly drying their meat or letting it decompose, like modern-day butchers hanging meat before cooking. Decaying meat is harder to process, which would account for the greater intensity and less linear form of the cut-marks. A second possibility is that different group organization — for example, the number of butchers who worked on a given kill — in the two communities of Neanderthals played a role.
However, more research will be needed to investigate these possibilities.
“There are some limitations to consider,” said Jallon. “The bone fragments are sometimes too small to provide a complete picture of the butchery marks left on the carcass. While we have made efforts to correct for biases caused by fragmentation, this may limit our ability to fully interpret the data. Future studies, including more experimental work and comparative analyses, will be crucial for addressing these uncertainties — and maybe one day reconstructing Neanderthals’ recipes.”
Astronomers capture the birth of planets around a baby sun outside our solar system
FLORIDA: Astronomers have discovered the earliest seeds of rocky planets forming in the gas around a baby sun-like star, providing a precious peek into the dawn of our own solar system.
It’s an unprecedented snapshot of “time zero,” scientists reported Wednesday, when new worlds begin to gel.
“We’ve captured a direct glimpse of the hot region where rocky planets like Earth are born around young protostars,” said Leiden Observatory’s Melissa McClure from the Netherlands, who led the international research team. “For the first time, we can conclusively say that the first steps of planet formation are happening right now.”
The observations offer a unique glimpse into the inner workings of an emerging planetary system, said the University of Chicago’s Fred Ciesla, who was not involved in the study appearing in the journal Nature.
“This is one of the things we’ve been waiting for. Astronomers have been thinking about how planetary systems form for a long period of time,” Ciesla said. “There’s a rich opportunity here.”
NASA’s Webb Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory in Chile teamed up to unveil these early nuggets of planetary formation around the young star known as HOPS-315. It’s a yellow dwarf in the making like the sun, yet much younger at 100,000 to 200,000 years old and some 1,370 light-years away. A single light-year is 6 trillion miles.
In a cosmic first, McClure and her team stared deep into the gas disk around the baby star and detected solid specks condensing — signs of early planet formation. A gap in the outer part of the disk gave allowed them to gaze inside, thanks to the way the star tilts toward Earth.
They detected silicon monoxide gas as well as crystalline silicate minerals, the ingredients for what’s believed to be the first solid materials to form in our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago. The action is unfolding in a location comparable to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter containing the leftover building blocks of our solar system’s planets.
The condensing of hot minerals was never detected before around other young stars, “so we didn’t know if it was a universal feature of planet formation or a weird feature of our solar system,” McClure said in an email. “Our study shows that it could be a common process during the earliest stage of planet formation.”
While other research has looked at younger gas disks and, more commonly, mature disks with potential planet wannabes, there’s been no specific evidence for the start of planet formation until now, McClure said.
In a stunning picture taken by the ESO’s Alma telescope network, the emerging planetary system resembles a lightning bug glowing against the black void.
It’s impossible to know how many planets might form around HOPS-315. With a gas disk as massive as the sun’s might have been, it could also wind up with eight planets a million or more years from now, according to McClure.
Purdue University’s Merel van ‘t Hoff, a co-author, is eager to find more budding planetary systems. By casting a wider net, astronomers can look for similarities and determine which processes might be crucial to forming Earth-like worlds.
“Are there Earth-like planets out there or are we like so special that we might not expect it to occur very often?“
In India’s Sigur region, study coauthors Priya Davidar and Jean-Philippe Puyravaud of the Sigur Nature Trust observed feeding interactions with 11 male Asian elephants, four of which died from suspected human causes. One elephant was successfully rehabilitated and returned to natural foraging behavior.
“Many people, especially foreign tourists, think Asian elephants are tame and docile, like domestic pets,” said de Silva, a faculty member in the Department of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution and founder of the non-profit conservation organization Trunks & Leaves. “They don’t realize these are formidable wild animals and try to get too close in order to take photographs or selfies, which can end badly for both parties.”
Of the 800 to 1,200 elephants estimated living in Udawalawe National Park, the study found that 66 male elephants, or nine to 15% of the local male population of Asian elephants, were observed begging for food. Some elephants, including a popular male named Rambo, became local celebrities as they solicited food from tourists over several years.
“Food-conditioned animals can become dangerous, resulting in the injury and death of wildlife, people or both,” the researchers note in their paper. “These negative impacts counteract potential benefits.”
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The complex pattern of gravitational waves emitted by a pair of black holes circling each other before merging.
| Photo Credit: Henze/NASA
Scientists working with a network of observatories located around the world recently reported that they had detected a powerful and unusual burst of gravitational waves, which they called GW231123. The signal was traced back to two black holes colliding into each other on November 23, 2023.
This isn’t the first time the observatories have detected gravitational waves, but the event is special because of the extraordinary size of the black holes involved: they are much heavier than most seen before. More interesting is the fact that the heavier black hole appeared to have a “forbidden” mass — a value inside a range called the pair instability mass gap — which challenges what physicists thought was possible for black holes created from dying stars.
Imagine a massive star at the end of its life. Usually, very heavy stars explode in supernovae, leaving behind black holes. But theory predicts that no black holes should form with masses between about 60 and 130 times the mass of our sun. This is the pair instability mass gap: it’s thought to exist because stars this large explode so violently that nothing remains, not even a black hole, just scattered gas.
Above 130 solar masses, stars may skip the explosion and directly collapse to create supermassive black holes.
So finding black holes in the mass gap raises important questions about how they got there.
On November 23, 2023, the two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories (LIGO) in the U.S. detected a burst of gravitational waves, faint ripples in spacetime created by massive objects accelerating and colliding. The GW231123 event lasted only about one-tenth of a second and the signal was strong and clear. The collision happened about 2 billion lightyears away.
Scientists at the LIGO as well as Virgo and KAGRA observatories in Italy and Japan, respectively, conducted a detailed analysis and determined the pre-merger mass of the two colliding black holes. The heavier one had 120-159 solar masses but likely centred at 137 solar masses. The lighter one weighed 51-123 solar masses but likely centred at 103 solar masses. The total mass involved in the collision was thus likely 190-265 solar masses, rendering GW231123 the most massive black hole merger ever seen with high confidence.
The mass of the heavier black hole in the merger is right inside, or just above, the pair instability mass gap. The mass of the lighter one could also be in or near the gap, given the large uncertainty. According to theory, stars can’t leave behind black holes in this range, so the scientists figure something else must be going on.
They are already considering several explanations. One, for example, is called a hierarchical merger: smaller black holes could merge inside dense star clusters, then the resulting larger black holes merge again, building up over time and ending up inside the gap. This possibility finds some support from the fact that both black holes were spinning rapidly. Usually, black holes formed from individual stars aren’t spinning this fast.
Another possibility is a stellar merger. Sometimes, two stars might merge before they die, creating a much larger star that might collapse to form a black hole whose mass lands inside the gap. It’s also possible these two black holes formed right after the Big Bang, by a process unrelated to stars, although this idea is in the realm of speculation. Yet other potential explanations include some stars losing less mass before exploding or hitherto entirely unknown processes.
The main idea is that the detection of GW231123 suggests the universe can make black holes in the mass gap after all, and not just through the collapse of single stars. And that this fact means scientists’ theories about the lives and deaths of massive stars need updating.
Despite the powerful telescopes that modern astronomers have to work with, the distant reaches of the Solar System are still mysterious. Not much sunlight pierces these regions, and there are strong hints that undiscovered objects lurk there.
The objects that astronomers have discovered in these dim reaches are primordial, and their orbits suggest the presence of more undiscovered objects. Piecing it all together is a challenge.
While some objects announce themselves with fiery explosions or streaks of light across the sky, distant Solar System objects don’t attract much attention. They reveal themselves in tiny hints; a nearly imperceptible tug on another object, a nearly-invisible and short-lived glimmer of light. Yet these objects have something important to tell us about how our Solar System formed and evolved.
Astronomers have detected hints of a ninth planet in the Solar System’s distant reaches. This hypothetical and elusive Planet Nine is held up to explain the puzzling orbital groupings of a family of distant objects called Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNO).
Related: ‘Strongest Statistical Evidence Yet’ For Planet Nine Has Been Found, Scientist Says
Astronomers working with Japan’s Subaru Telescope in Hawaii found evidence of a new distant object in the Solar System. It’s a Trans-Neptunian Object, meaning it orbits the Sun at a greater average distance than Neptune, the outermost planet.
But it’s also a member of an important and puzzling sub-class of objects: Sednoids. It’s name is 2023 KQ14, but its nickname is Ammonite, after the fossilized cephalopod.
Sednoids follow more extreme orbits than TNOs. Their orbits are extremely elongated, with high eccentricity, distant perihelia, and large semi-major axes. They’re named after the dwarf planet Sedna, and the new discovery is only the fourth Sednoid ever detected.
A new paper in Nature Astronomy presented the discovery. It’s titled “Discovery and dynamics of a Sedna-like object with a perihelion of 66 au.” The lead author is Ying-Tung Chen from the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taipei, Taiwan.
“Understanding the orbital evolution and physical properties of these unique, distant objects is crucial for comprehending the full history of the Solar System.” – Dr. Fumi Yoshida, co-author.
Ammonite was first detected with the Subaru Telescope during observation efforts in March, May, and August 2023. Those observations alone weren’t sufficient to confirm the dim object’s existence, and follow-up observations in July 2024 with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, as well as a search through archived data from other observatories, provided confirmation. Overall, the researchers tracked Ammonite’s orbit for 19 years.
Ammonite was found as part of the FOSSIL (Formation of the Outer Solar System: An Icy Legacy) observing program. It uses the Subaru Telescope’s powerful HyperSuprimeCam to measure the populations and sub-populations of the objects that populate the outer Solar System.
The FOSSIL team used computer numerical simulations to determine that Ammonite has followed a stable orbit for at least 4.5 billion years, dating all the way back to the Solar System’s earliest times. Ammonite’s orbit is currently different from the other Sednoids, but the simulations show that their orbits were all similar about 4.2 billion years ago.
There’s an odd gap in distant Solar System objects when it comes to their perihelion distances and Ammonite sits in that gap.
“The orbit of Ammonite does not align with those of the other Sedna-like objects and fills the previously unexplained ‘q-gap’ in the observed distribution of distant Solar System objects,” the authors explain in their paper.
This figure is divided into two panels divided by a vertical black line, and shows the orbital data for outer Solar System objects. The left side shows the semi-major axis versus perihelion distribution, with the red vertical dashed line representing the approximate region where galactic tides and passing stars can perturb the orbits of TNOs. The horizontal black lines show the upper boundary of chaotic diffusion and gravitational scattering by Neptune. The named objects all have large perihelia, and it clearly shows how Ammonite is different from the others. It’s in the region that currently lacks any other detections. The right side shows how Ammonite falls outside the proposed clustering of objects with large perihelia. (Chen et al., NatAstr. 2025)
Dr. Yukun Huang of the NAOJ is a co-author of the paper who conducted simulations of Ammonite’s orbit. “The fact that 2023 KQ14’s current orbit does not align with those of the other three sednoids lowers the likelihood of the Planet Nine hypothesis,” Huang said in a press release.
“It is possible that a planet once existed in the Solar System but was later ejected, causing the unusual orbits we see today.”
Neptune is the only known massive object near the outer Solar System that could have shaped the orbits of the TNOs and Sednoids. But according to study co-author Dr. Fumi Yoshida, Ammonite is beyond its reach.
“2023 KQ14 was found in a region far away where Neptune’s gravity has little influence. The presence of objects with elongated orbits and large perihelion distances in this area implies that something extraordinary occurred during the ancient era when 2023 KQ14 formed,” Yoshida said.
“Understanding the orbital evolution and physical properties of these unique, distant objects is crucial for comprehending the full history of the Solar System. At present, the Subaru Telescope is among the few telescopes on Earth capable of making such discoveries.
“I would be happy if the FOSSIL team could make many more discoveries like this one and help draw a complete picture of the history of the Solar System.”
Ammonite’s orbit is now different from the other Sednoids, and that fact needs an explanation. It’s evidence that there’s more complexity and diversity among distant Solar System objects.
Astronomers have long wondered if our Solar System hosts a ‘Planet Nine’ that has shepherded the orbits of these distant objects. If there is, then Ammonite’s discovery places more constraints on its orbit, and where it may be hiding. It effectively reduces the number of hiding spots for this hypothetical planet.
An artist’s illustration of the mysterious, elusive, hypothesized Planet Nine. (NASA)
“Sedna-like objects with large semi-major axes (a > 200 au) and large perihelia (q > 60 au) appear to evolve in stable orbits that have remained largely unchanged and not altered by the gravity of Neptune since the formation of the Solar System,” the researchers explain in their paper.
“No viable transfer mechanisms to raise their perihelia exist with the current configuration of planets. Their stability suggests that an external gravitational influence beyond those of the currently known Solar System planets is required to form their orbits.”
Astronomers have proposed many sources for this external gravitational influence, including interactions with a rogue planet or star, ancient stellar interactions from when the Sun was still in its natal cluster, and the capture of objects from other lower-mass stars in the Solar System’s early times.
But the explanation that gets the most attention is interactions with a hypothetical planet, Planet Nine.
While this study neither confirms nor disputes the existence of Planet Nine, it does place further constraints on its orbit. In fact, each time another Sednoid is discovered, it constrains Planet Nine. Astronomers now know of four of them, but they don’t know how many may still be hiding out there, potentially shepherded by the elusive, hypothetical, Planet Nine.
If Planet Nine exists, it has a huge area to hide in. Some astronomers who have studied its potential existence think it could be the fifth largest planet in the Solar System. It would be so far away that it would be extremely dim. However, we may be on the cusp of detecting it, if it exists.
The Vera Rubin Observatory recently saw first light and will begin its decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The LSST will find transient events and objects in the Solar System like no other telescope before it. It’s purpose-built to find hard-to-detect objects, and not even an elusive object like Planet Nine may be able to hide from it.
This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.
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