https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. The Subaru Telescope has made an exciting discovery: a small body beyond Pluto, with implications for the formation, evolution, and current structure of the outer solar system. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-subaru-telescope-fossil-outer-solar.html Astronomy Wed, 16 Jul 2025 07:12:15 EDT news671868731 New evidence suggests that billions of years ago, a star may have passed very close to our solar system. As a result, thousands of smaller celestial bodies in the outer solar system outside Neptune's orbit were deflected into highly inclined trajectories around the sun. It is possible that some of them were captured by the planets Jupiter and Saturn as moons. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-solution-cosmic-mystery-eccentric-orbits.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 06 Sep 2024 11:11:03 EDT news644839861 The solar system has eight planets. In 2006, astronomers reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet, the same class that contains Eris, Sedna, Quaoar, Ceres and perhaps many more solar system small bodies. These are defined approximately as bodies that orbit the sun but that are not massive enough (unlike regular planets) to gravitationally dominate their environments by clearing away material. Astronomers wonder, though, whether there might not really be a ninth planet previously undiscovered but lurking in the outer reaches of the solar system, perhaps in the giant Oort cloud of objects that begins hundreds of astronomical units (au) from the sun and extends outward. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-planet.html Astronomy Mon, 14 Mar 2022 12:50:02 EDT news566477137 A team of astronomers, including associate professor Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University's Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, have confirmed a planetoid that is almost four times farther from the Sun than Pluto, making it the most distant object ever observed in our solar system. The planetoid, which has been nicknamed "Farfarout," was first detected in 2018, and the team has now collected enough observations to pin down its orbit. The Minor Planet Center has now given it the official designation of 2018 AG37. https://phys.org/news/2021-02-astronomers-orbit-distant-solar.html Astronomy Wed, 10 Feb 2021 15:00:01 EST news532174874 Beyond the orbit of Neptune, a diverse collection of thousands of dwarf planets and other relatively small objects dwells in a region called the Kuiper Belt. These often-pristine leftovers from our solar system's days of planet formation are called Kuiper Belt objects, or trans-Neptunian objects. NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will examine an assortment of these icy bodies in a series of programs called Guaranteed Time Observations shortly after its launch in 2021. The goal is to learn more about how our solar system formed. https://phys.org/news/2020-10-nasa-webb-graveyard-solar.html Astronomy Thu, 29 Oct 2020 09:04:08 EDT news523181045 The outermost reaches of our solar system are a strange place—filled with dark and icy bodies with nicknames like Sedna, Biden and The Goblin, each of which span several hundred miles across. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-power-solar-dark-icy-bodies.html Astronomy Tue, 07 Jul 2020 11:01:14 EDT news513338471 A Southwest Research Institute team using internal research funds has made several discoveries that expand the range and value of a future Pluto orbiter mission. The breakthroughs define a fuel-saving orbital tour and demonstrate that an orbiter can continue exploration in the Kuiper Belt after surveying Pluto. These and other results from the study will be reported this week at a workshop on future Pluto and Kuiper Belt exploration at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee. https://phys.org/news/2018-10-team-breakthroughs-pluto-orbiter-mission.html Space Exploration Wed, 24 Oct 2018 16:28:33 EDT news459617303 Carnegie's Scott Sheppard and his colleagues—Northern Arizona University's Chad Trujillo, and the University of Hawaii's David Tholen—are once again redefining our Solar System's edge. They discovered a new extremely distant object far beyond Pluto with an orbit that supports the presence of an even-farther-out, Super-Earth or larger Planet X. https://phys.org/news/2018-10-extremely-distant-solar-planet.html Astronomy Tue, 02 Oct 2018 10:00:01 EDT news457686574 The solar system was formed from a protoplanetary disk consisting of gas and dust. Since the cumulative mass of all objects beyond Neptune is much smaller than expected and the bodies there mostly have inclined, eccentric orbits, it is likely that some process restructured the outer solar system after its formation. Susanne Pfalzner from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, and her colleagues present a study showing that a close fly-by of a neighbouring star can simultaneously lead to the observed lower mass density in the outer part of the solar system and excite the bodies there onto eccentric, inclined orbits. Their numerical simulations show that many additional bodies at high inclinations still await discovery, perhaps including the sometimes postulated "planet X." https://phys.org/news/2018-08-impact-stellar-intruder-solar.html Astronomy Thu, 09 Aug 2018 10:35:46 EDT news453029535 Bumper car-like interactions at the edges of our solar system—and not a mysterious ninth planet—may explain the dynamics of strange bodies called "detached objects," according to a new study. https://phys.org/news/2018-06-gravity-planet-orbits-detached.html Astronomy Mon, 04 Jun 2018 13:00:03 EDT news447328422 The combined power of three space observatories, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, has helped astronomers uncover a moon orbiting the third largest dwarf planet, catalogued as 2007 OR10. The pair resides in the frigid outskirts of our solar system called the Kuiper Belt, a realm of icy debris left over from our solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago. https://phys.org/news/2017-05-hubble-moon-largest-dwarf-planet.html Astronomy Thu, 18 May 2017 13:00:01 EDT news414328079 The dynamical properties of these asteroids, observed spectroscopiccally for the first time using the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS, suggest a possible common origin and give a clue to the existence of a planet beyond Pluto, the so-called 'Planet Nine.' https://phys.org/news/2017-02-distant-asteroids-clue-planet.html Astronomy Tue, 21 Feb 2017 12:40:59 EST news406903223 (Phys.org)—A team of space scientists at the University of Michigan has discovered a dwarf planet that is approximately half the size of Pluto and twice as far from the sun. The sighting was reported by NPR, which interviewed team lead physicist David Gerdes. He told them credit goes to a group of students who were challenged to find some new objects to add to the ongoing construction of a galaxy map. Their efforts led to software that can be used to analyze imagery from the Dark Energy Camera (the camera used as part of the ongoing Dark Energy Survey). It looks for objects that are moving in any given patch of sky—a sure sign that they are in our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2016-10-dwarf-planet-solar.html Space Exploration Wed, 12 Oct 2016 08:30:02 EDT news395478225 The search for distant solar system objects has found two more small worlds far outside the orbit of Neptune. The new objects are located beyond the Kuiper Belt, which is a belt of small icy objects just beyond Neptune, of which Pluto is a member. They have the third and fourth most-distant perihelia, which is when an object has its closest approach distance to the Sun, of any known solar system objects. https://phys.org/news/2016-07-newly-solar-resonate-neptune.html Astronomy Thu, 21 Jul 2016 08:42:55 EDT news388309364 Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun. https://phys.org/news/2016-01-evidence-real-ninth-planet.html Astronomy Wed, 20 Jan 2016 12:11:23 EST news372514264 The 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera, built at DOE's Fermilab and mounted on the 4-meter Victor Blanco Telescope in Chile, delivers some of the most detailed images of celestial objects. While about a third of the camera's observing time goes to scientists working on the Dark Energy Survey, dozens of other teams share the remaining time. While the majority of them focus on observing objects far away, five groups recently highlighted in Symmetry magazine are investigating things close to Earth, looking for "space junk" that could damage satellites, large rocks that could hit Earth and other objects traversing our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2015-02-dark-energy-camera-unveils-small.html Space Exploration Tue, 10 Feb 2015 09:12:46 EST news342781957 The Solar System has a new most-distant member, bringing its outer frontier into focus. https://phys.org/news/2014-03-edge-solar.html Astronomy Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:00:08 EDT news315050914 The Binary Research Institute (BRI) has found that orbital characteristics of the recently discovered planetoid, "Sedna", demonstrate the possibility that our sun might be part of a binary star system. A binary star system consists of two stars gravitationally bound orbiting a common center of mass. Once thought to be highly unusual, such systems are now considered to be common in the Milky Way galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2006-04-evidence-mounts-sun-companion-star.html Mon, 24 Apr 2006 17:15:58 EDT news65117758