A “captured” alien planet may be lurking at the edge of our solar system

Astronomers seek to explore billions of light years away; But sometimes they remain unaware of the space secrets around them. Because a conquered alien planet is hidden at a small distance from the solar system.

In 1906, an astronomer named Percival Lowell began his quest to find Planet X. This hypothetical giant planet was expected to orbit the Sun slightly further than Neptune. He was convinced that Planet X definitely had an extraterrestrial existence, based on some observed irregularities in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. His belief led to the discovery of Pluto in 1930.

The presence of an alien planet around the borders of the solar system and the Oort cloud

The distance of the Everett cloud from the sun

However, scientists later realized that this dwarf planet is too small to exert a gravitational influence on Neptune’s orbit. Naturally, this did not apply to the planet Uranus. Today, scientists largely discredit the Planet X theory. However, this issue has not stopped anyone from looking for other planets in the borders of the solar system.

Recently, a new article has been published that deals with the possibility of an alien planet outside the boundaries of the solar system. In fact, Lowell had to look a little further for the planet he wanted. The new paper is the result of the efforts of an international team that simulated the unstable conditions of the early days of the formation of the solar system.

They concluded that there may be one or more planet-sized objects in the Oort cloud. This cloud consists of icy bodies and covers from a distance of several hundred billion kilometers to several trillion kilometers from the sun. Approximately 4.5 billion years ago, the solar system was forming and had extremely unstable conditions.

The protoplanetary dust was cooling, and gravity was throwing the remaining dust around in cosmic balls. Researchers believe that perhaps planet-sized objects have been thrown out so much that they are no longer even captured by the Sun’s gravity. Astronomers have investigated such alien stars in other solar systems.

There is about a 0.5% chance that one of these exoplanets formed within our solar system: but it gradually escaped the Sun’s gravity and now resides in the Oort cloud. However, there is another possibility. Perhaps the sun has captured an alien planet similar to Neptune from another solar system and dragged it to the Oort cloud. The probability of such an issue is 7%.

However, most astronomers believe that the Oort cloud is full of small icy bodies and that a relatively large planet cannot be found in it. Considering the size and distance of the Oort cloud from Earth, it is unlikely that scientists will be able to obtain definitive information about the existence of an alien planet.