2023-11-03 18:01:00
On October 24, 2023, the American media relayed the study of an astronomy journal: a planet was discovered in the solar system. Named Sedna, it would look a lot like Earth.
Would a star similar to ours gravitate not far from us? On the scale of the universe, a planet similar to Earth called Sedna is next door.
The existence of this element reclassified as a planet by The Astronomical Journal last August stirred up the scientific community. And for good reason: Sedna looks like a blue planet.
“The Kuiper Belt Planet Scenario”
It is through this scenario that the hypothesis of such a planet was born in 2003. The American astronomer Michael Brown then observed a reddish and icy star which appeared in the field of telescopes.
Sedna is located on the Kuiper belt, a disk-shaped region located beyond the orbit of the last recognized planet in the solar system, Neptune. This space is home to other spherical stars which have long been the subject of debate as to their naming, Pluton at the top of the list, demoted in 2006.
Michael Brown’s discovery marks the beginning of a scientific intrigue: on the one hand we must succeed in observing this obviously very distant star and on the other hand succeed in determining its main characteristics. This is where the work of the American Astronomical Society published this summer adds several elements.
Similar
THE gravitational phenomena observed in the Kuiper belt provide rich insights into the most likely characteristics of Sedna. Considering the movements observed, its mass would be similar to that of the Earth.
Indeed, the theories of gravity developed over three centuries posit that the mass of elements located in space influences the attraction they exert between them. Sedna would have to be as massive as Earth to produce the phenomena in the region.
This planet would be 1.5 to 3 times heavier than the blue planet, pose the authors of the study Patryk Sofia Lykawka and Takashi Ito, from Japanese universities.
“We should refine the definition of a planet, because an Earth-like planet located well beyond Neptune would likely belong to a new class of planets,” they surmise. It remains to find a set of objects in the outskirts of Sedna, marks of its gravitational force.
A (very) distant cousin
Sedna would take 11,400 years to circle the sun, a period of time significantly longer than that of the Earth which gives their rhythms to our years. Its orbit, eccentric and elongated, makes its trajectory a long oval distant from the Earth 250 to 500 times the Earth-Sun distance.
This is the main reason why she is so intriguing, why she is so difficult to observe. The Earth is located 149 million kilometers from the sun, Sedna is far from 37 to 74 billion kilometersseven thousandths of a light year.
And if the discovery may seem anecdotal, the researchers’ eye sparkles: “The discovery of a single or a few new trans-Neptunian objects might revolutionize our theories on the formation of the solar system.”
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