It’s been four years since Mike Brown, the astronomer who removed Pluto’s status as a planet, added a hypothetical one back in to explain strange orbits in the outer Solar System. In another two years the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will map those celestial backwaters to help find Brown’s Planet Nine. But what if this target can’t be seen? It’s a possibility that hit the headlines last year when Planet Nine was replaced, at least in excited media headlines, by an ancient black hole. Brown himself addressed the possibility, writing on Twitter: “P9 could definitely be a black hole, as long as it is the right mass. In fact, it could also be a six-Earth-mass hamburger.” So is a black hole lurking in the outer Solar System a statistical possibility worth considering? Or a whopper of a stab in the dark?
FINDING THE PHANTOM PHOTOBOMBERS
By monitoring a billion stars, we are finding the fingerprints of rogue planets, stars and possibly black holes
1 Like a converging lens
When an object of mass passes in front of a distant star, it can actually make the star brighter. While some stellar radiation will be blocked, more light rays become bent towards Earth by the foreground object’s gravity.
2 Setting stars aflicker
A number of objects are capable of producing the microlensing effect. These include rogue planets, brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, neutron stars and possibly PBHs.
3 A mysterious gravitational fingerprint
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MYSTERIES OF THE UNI WHERE ARE ALL THE SPIRAL GALAXIES?
There are far fewer spiral galaxies than elliptical ones in the Supergalactic Plane, and scientists are keen to discover why
ZOMBIE STARS
+10 OTHER TERRIFYING SPACE OBJECTS
HOW TO BEAT LIGHT POLLUTION
Thought it was impossible to observe the wonders of the night sky from towns and cities? Think again. Follow our tips and tricks on successfully observing through sky glow
15 STUNNING STAR CLUSTERS
These beautiful stellar groupings are spattered across the cosmos
Eileen Collins "It was a difficult mission...we were the first to see Mir"
Having served as both the first female pilot and first female commander of NASA's Space Shuttle, Collins boosted the involvement of women in space exploration to a whole new level
MARS LEAKS FASTER WHEN IT'S CLOSER TO THE SUN
The Red Planet has lost enough water to space to form a global ocean hundreds of kilometres deep
FUTURE TECH KANKOH-MARU
This ambitious reusable spacecraft will be capable of taking 50 people to and from orbit
THE FINAL FRONTIER
Beyond the reach of the Sun is a fascinating region of the cosmos that were only just beginning to explore
A long-lost moon could explain Mars' weird shape and extreme terrain
A long-lost moon could explain why Mars is so different from the other rocky planets in the Solar System. Today Mars has two tiny moons.
A sprinkling of cosmic dust may have helped kick-start life on Earth
Cosmic dust may have helped kick-start life on Earth. New findings challenge a widely held assumption that this wasn't a plausible explanation.