The orbit of the most distant object in the solar system can be determined by an undetected planet.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

Astronomers have discovered the most distant object of the solar system of all currently known. It is three times farther from the Sun than Pluto. The dwarf planet has already received its catalog number - V774104. Its diameter is from 500 to 1000 kilometers, but this parameter requires clarification.

The study of the orbit of the planetoid will take about a year, but now scientists say that the strange orbit of V774104 may indicate the presence in the solar system of other, still unknown objects. “We cannot explain the orbit of this object with the current dataset about the solar system,” says Scott Sheppard, a spokesman for the team that discovered V774104.

Now this planetoid is located at a distance of 15.4 billion kilometers from the Sun, which is about 103 AU 1 a.u. - the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

While astronomers are pondering which class of objects V774104 belongs to. If this planetoid approaches the Sun at distances shorter than current, then it can be reckoned with more or less ordinary cold worlds, whose orbit is explained by the gravitational influence of Neptune. But if the dwarf planet does not approach the Sun, then it is a "relative" of two other similar worlds, Sedna and 2012 VP113. These two worlds never come closer to the Sun at a distance less than 50 AU But they are deleted by 1000 AU from the sun. Thus, their orbit is very elongated. Sheppard calls these planetoids "internal objects of the Oort cloud" in order to distinguish them from the icy worlds of the Kuiper belt, located at distances of 30-50 AU from the sun.

The elongated orbit of the “internal objects of the Oort cloud” is interesting in that it cannot be explained by the current set of data on the solar system. Something warped their orbit. This something may be a very distant giant planet at the outer edge of the solar system. Or maybe these are echoes of the time when our system itself was formed, being surrounded by other stellar "manger".