Analysis of decades-old data yields a faint, meandering point of light beyond Neptune—but many astronomers are skeptical.
Thx. Brown and Batygin are in the kw’s as well.
[snip] But if it does, the object lies on an orbit far outside the original Planet Nine prediction—rendering it an entirely different planet.
This mismatch “doesn’t mean it’s not there, but it means it’s not Planet Nine,” says Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology who, along with his colleague Konstantin Batygin, came up with the Planet Nine proposal nearly a decade ago. “I don’t think this planet would have any of the effects on the Solar System that we think we’re seeing.” [/snip]
The idea that the outer Solar System has more than one unverified planet doesn’t seem surprising, they are likely to be broadly speaking retrograde and probably eccentric orbits, diagnostic of capture, not unlike the minor moons of Jupiter.