Planet X

Statistics:

* This guess comes from Kepler's Third Law; that is, planets that orbit further away from the Sun will take a longer period of time to complete one orbit.
 

It has been speculated in the past that there could exist a tenth planet beyond Pluto.  This mythical world is known as "Planet X" where the X stands for the Roman numeral ten.  Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto, continued his search for another planet beyond Pluto but to no avail.  No other optical searches of the heavens beyond Pluto have yielded any evidence for a tenth planetary body.  However, the infrared satellite IRAS has recorded the presence of thousands of smaller objects by receiving their infrared radiation; Whether or not any of these objects is an actual planet is still a mystery.  In addition, the Pioneer 10 space probe has by now moved beyond the planetary limits of the solar system; Pioneer 10's trajectory has shown no known deviations due to the gravitational interaction of a tenth planet.  Thus, astronomers think that if a tenth planet exists, then it has an extremely small mass.
 

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M. Lowry -- 1-19-98