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      Evidence for a Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System

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          Abstract

          Recent analyses have shown that distant orbits within the scattered disk population of the Kuiper belt exhibit an unexpected clustering in their respective arguments of perihelion. While several hypotheses have been put forward to explain this alignment, to date, a theoretical model that can successfully account for the observations remains elusive. In this work we show that the orbits of distant Kuiper belt objects cluster not only in argument of perihelion, but also in physical space. We demonstrate that the perihelion positions and orbital planes of the objects are tightly confined and that such a clustering has only a probability of 0.007% to be due to chance, thus requiring a dynamical origin. We find that the observed orbital alignment can be maintained by a distant eccentric planet with mass greater than ~10 Earth masses, whose orbit lies in approximately the same plane as those of the distant Kuiper belt objects, but whose perihelion is 180 degrees away from the perihelia of the minor bodies. In addition to accounting for the observed orbital alignment, the existence of such a planet naturally explains the presence of high perihelion Sedna-like objects, as well as the known collection of high semimajor axis objects with inclinations between 60 and 150 degrees whose origin was previously unclear. Continued analysis of both distant and highly inclined outer solar system objects provides the opportunity for testing our hypothesis as well as further constraining the orbital elements and mass of the distant planet.

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          Most cited references42

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          Origin of the orbital architecture of the giant planets of the Solar System.

          Planetary formation theories suggest that the giant planets formed on circular and coplanar orbits. The eccentricities of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, however, reach values of 6 per cent, 9 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively. In addition, the inclinations of the orbital planes of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune take maximum values of approximately 2 degrees with respect to the mean orbital plane of Jupiter. Existing models for the excitation of the eccentricity of extrasolar giant planets have not been successfully applied to the Solar System. Here we show that a planetary system with initial quasi-circular, coplanar orbits would have evolved to the current orbital configuration, provided that Jupiter and Saturn crossed their 1:2 orbital resonance. We show that this resonance crossing could have occurred as the giant planets migrated owing to their interaction with a disk of planetesimals. Our model reproduces all the important characteristics of the giant planets' orbits, namely their final semimajor axes, eccentricities and mutual inclinations.
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            Tidal dissipation by solid friction and the resulting orbital evolution

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              A Sedna-like body with a perihelion of 80 astronomical units

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                2016-01-20
                Article
                10.3847/0004-6256/151/2/22
                1601.05438
                2d05ad17-e43e-4301-b6c7-c5fb4c1f6abc

                http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

                History
                Custom metadata
                13 pages, 9 figures, published in the Astronomical Journal, 151, 22
                astro-ph.EP

                Planetary astrophysics
                Planetary astrophysics

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