There are eight planets in our solar system – plus poor old Pluto, which was demoted in 2006 – but what if there were more? Turns out that might be the case. Astronomers have calculated there is a 7 per cent chance that Earth has another neighbour hiding in the Oort cloud, a spherical region of ice chunks and rocks that is tens of thousands of times farther from the sun than we are. “It’s completely plausible for our solar system to have captured such an Oort cloud planet,” said Nathan Kaib, a co-author on the work and an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Hidden worlds like this are “a class of planets that should definitely exist but have received relatively little attention” until now, he said.. If a planet is hiding in the Oort cloud, it’s almost certainly an ice giant. Large planets like Jupiter and Saturn are generally born as twins. They have huge gravitational pulls of their own, however, and sometimes destabilise one another. That could have led to a planet to be nudged out of the solar system entirely – or exiled to its outer reaches, where the Oort cloud resides. “The survivor planets have eccentric orbits, which are like the scars from their violent pasts,” said lead author Sean Raymond, researcher at the University of Bordeaux’s Astrophysics Laboratory. That means that the Oort cloud planet could have a significantly elongated orbit, unlike the near-perfect circle Earth tracks around the sun. Trouble is, when things are that far away, they’re pretty difficult to spot. “It would be extremely hard to detect,” added Raymond. “If a Neptune-sized planet existed in our own Oort cloud, there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t have found it yet,” said Malena Rice, an astronomer at MIT not involved in this work. “Amazingly, it can sometimes be easier to spot planets hundreds of light-years away than those right in our own backyard.” Time to crack out the telescope. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

NEPTUNE CITY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 14, 2023--

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Volodymyr Zelensky said an antisemitic rally in Russia’s Dagestan this week and an earlier military coup by Vladimir Putin’s former ally Yevgeny Prigozhin were clear signs the Russian president was “losing control”. The Ukrainian president on Monday said the invasion of his country by Mr Putin has only led to inadvertent effects for Moscow. “They have mobilised all their forces to try not to lose what they seized in Ukraine, but in doing so, they have contaminated their own territory with such a level of hatred and degradation that, for the second time this year, Russia is losing control over events,” said the war-time president. “We see that mutineers are heading to Moscow, and no one is stopping them,” he said, referring to now-deceased Prigozhin’s coup earlier this year. “We see that the power vertical in Dagestan is evaporating, leading to a real upheaval. “These are all signals that Russia can, for now, sustain military operations and increase pressure on the frontlines in some places, but is unable to withstand this confrontation strategically,” said the Ukrainian leader. The comments came as Kyiv’s military officials said Russia bulked up its forces around the devastated city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine and tweaked the manner of its operations. “In the Bakhmut area, the enemy has significantly strengthened its grouping and switched from defence to active actions,” general Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander of ground forces, wrote on Telegram. Kyiv’s officials also said Ukraine has been preparing to repel these attacks. Russian forces had been preparing since early this month to retake positions around Bakhmut that were lost in the months-long Ukrainian counteroffensive, according to Volodymyr Fityo, head of communications for Ukraine’s ground forces command. “We saw this, the intelligence reported everything. We had been preparing, strengthening our defensive positions, engineering fortifications and pulling up reserves,” Mr Fityo said. “This does not come as a surprise for us.” Both Mr Syrskyi and Mr Fityo said Russian forces were particularly active near the Ukrainian-held town of Kupiansk in the northeast. Mr Fityo said Russia had numerical superiority. Bakhmut was captured by Russia in May with help from private military company Wagner after witnessing some of the bloodiest fighting in the now 20-month-old war. But Ukraine has amped up military operations to retake Bakhmut in the counteroffensive that was launched in June and that aims to retake occupied land in the country’s south and east. Read More Russia accuses Ukraine of damaging a nuclear waste warehouse as the battle for Avdiivika grinds on UK ministers continue to resist calls for ceasefire in Middle East Russian drones likely targeted Khmelnytskyi nuclear power station, Zelensky says Zelensky vows to keep up pressure on Crimea: ‘This is historic achievement’ Timeline: Rishi Sunak’s first year in office Timeline: Rishi Sunak’s first year in office

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