Medicine & TechnologyAccording to calculations by scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Cambridge, not one, but at least two dwarf planets must exist beyond Pluto in order to explain the orbital behavior of extreme trans-Neptunian objects.
While space agencies and astronomers alike have found that the outer fringes of our very own solar system holds small asteroids and chunks of ice, as opposed to life, it turns out that our investigation of the relatively small solar system is far from over. In fact, a pair of new studies published just this week reveal that we may be adding new members to the roster as at least two new planets larger than Earth are likely hiding beyond Pluto.
Scientists have discovered eight more exoplanets with two planets located as little as 470 light years away that could, in fact, be much like Earth as we know it.
Knowing the level of a planet’s magnetic field can be an important fact to know in the study of how they interact. But studying the fields of an exoplanet, outside of our solar system and orbiting a foreign star, can be a difficult task that researchers have not yet been able to achieve. Though in nearly two decades of looking past our solar system to investigate exoplanets, researchers have developed several methods to estimate magnetic fields at quite a distance.