Free Republic

The map of our solar system has changed. For most of history, we viewed our neighborhood as a tidy, organized place. We thought it was a simple system with eight planets orbiting a star, surrounded by a clean void. We assumed there was a clear finish line where the solar system stopped and "deep space" began. The Kuiper Belt proves that this model is wrong. The solar system does not have a hard edge. It does not just end. Instead, it fades away into the galaxy. What we once thought was empty space is actually a massive, chaotic frontier. It...

The search for a ninth planet in our solar system could reach a turning point as soon as this year, according to a planetary scientist involved in the hunt for a mysterious object believed to be lurking in the outer reaches of the Solar System. For the past decade, astronomers around the world have been searching for evidence of another resident in our planetary neighborhood. As far back as 2016, there were already hints that something might be out there, given the odd orbits of distant objects like Sedna, discovered in 2003. Now, two astronomers—California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers...

PASADENA, Calif. - Between feedings and diaper changes of his newborn daughter, Michael E. Brown may yet find an 11th planet. Once conducted almost exclusively on cold, lonely nights, observational astronomy these days is often done under bright California sunshine. When he has a few spare minutes, Dr. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, downloads images taken during a previous night by a robotically driven telescope at Palomar Observatory 100 miles away. Each night, the telescope scans a different swath of sky, photographing each patch three times, spaced an hour and a half apart....