This is rather good timing. My latest book features a mystery object beyond Neptune that, initially, cannot be explained.
And suddenly there is one! Check it out on New Scientist
“I hope everyone has buckled their seatbelts because the outer solar system just got a lot weirder.” That’s what Michele Bannister, an astronomer at Queens University, Belfast tweeted on Monday.
She was referring to the discovery of a TNO or trans-Neptunian object, something which sits beyond Neptune in the outer solar system. This one is 160,000 times fainter than Neptune, which means the icy world could be less than 200 kilometres in diameter. It’s currently above the plane of the solar system and with every passing day, it’s moving upwards – a fact that makes it an oddity.
“Whenever you have some feature that you can’t explain in the outer solar system, it’s immensely exciting because it’s in some sense foreshadowing a new development,” says Konstantin Batygin at the California Institute of Technology.
The team also tried to see if an undiscovered dwarf planet, perhaps similar to Pluto, could supply an explanation, but didn’t have any luck. “We don’t know the answer,” says Holman.
In Orb Station Zero, it turns out – spoiler alert kinda-but-not-really – that the mystery object beyond Neptune is… a gigantic alien space station that hosts mortal combat between warring alien races and maintains an intergalactic wormhole network. So… just saying. That’s probably / almost certainly what this is.
You’re welcome, science.
