Beyond the orbit of Pluto, in the far reaches of the solar system, there could be a frozen world which takes a huge 20,000 years to complete one orbit of its parent star, the Sun. Recently scientists have discovered a new icy planet which is travelling through the solar system, something which has never been seen before.
The cold world has been dubbed as L91, and the frozen rock piece takes about 20,000 Earth years to orbit the sun once. L91 is located at the limits of what we can detect. The latest discovery was made by the French/Canadian -Hawaii Telescope at Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The discovery was made during the Outer Solar System Origins Survey. What has left the astronomers scratching their head is the strange shape of its orbit.
L91 is believed to be slowly moving inwards from the Oort cloud which is a collection of comets and icy bodies towards the Kuiper belt. Such a phenomenon has never been seen with any other body. The closest the body ventures towards the sun is still 50 times the distance of the Earth from its parent star and almost 1,430 times further away than the space between our planet and the life-giving star.
It has led to speculation that there could be a massive planet beyond the orbit of L91 which is pulling it into such strange orbit with its gravitational pull.
It has once again ignited the debate that it could be the mystical Planet Nine or Planet X. It could also explain the elongated orbit on half a dozen bodies in the Solar System. Many sceptics have questioned this theory but still there are numerous scientists who say that it is a possibility which cannot be ignored and needs further studies.
