List of All Articles with Tag 'an'

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.

Liverpool midfielder Thiago Alcantara decides against taking up a lucrative offer from Saudi Arabia. The 32-year-old will stay at Anfield to fight for his place under Jurgen Klopp.

By Elizabeth Pineau PARIS (Reuters) -A crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the family of the policeman who shot dead

Minister Catherine Martin announces an independent, root and branch examination of broadcaster RTÉ.

An Eritrean asylum seeker angry with officials murdered a girl and wounded her friend.

By Alexander Hübner MUNICH Up to half of the 100 billion euro ($109 billion) special fund set up

Just weeks after hugely disruptive protests and strikes over pension reforms in France finally died down, businesses in the country are grappling with the fallout from a week of rioting.

Major League Soccer has began to foster young talent in recent years, as clubs from abroad have taken notice.

Belarus let Russian forces invade Ukraine from its territory and is now hosting its nuclear weapons.

Damian Lillard has requested a trade from the Trail Blazers and the Miami Heat are one of his top destinations. The Miami Heat has been on the cusp of winning the NBA Championship over the last 4 seasons. They have made the Eastern Conference Finals three times and the NBA Finals twice.In bo...

A chronological rundown of all the transfer links between Manchester United and Barcelona's Frenkie de Jong over the years

The Boston Celtics might be on the outskirts of a Damian Lillard trade unless they leverage a sign-and-trade with a still-unsigned player.The flurry of NBA rumors are behind us with free agency having settled down, but a few shoes still need to drop. The biggest one, of course, is the Damian Lil...