An example is the process aptly called “spaghetti”, which is often illustrated by the fable of an astronaut who ventured too close to the event horizon of a black hole – the point beyond which no light can escape – and fell on his head. . Although her head and legs were only a few meters apart, the difference between the gravitational forces acting on them would be so great that they would be stretched like spaghetti.
Curiously, the effect should be even more dramatic, the smaller the black hole. Sholtz explains that these are relative distances – if you are two meters tall and fall through an event horizon one meter from the center of a primordial black hole, the discrepancy between the location of the head and feet is larger compared to the size of the hole. black. This means that you will be stretched much further than if you fell into a stellar one over a million miles.
“And they’re particularly interesting,” says Scholtz. Spaghetti was already seen through a telescope when a star got too close to a black stellar hole 215 million light-years from Earth and was torn apart (no astronauts were injured). But if there is a primordial black hole in our own solar system, it would give astrophysicists the opportunity to study this behavior – and more – closely.
So what does Batygin do about the possibility that the much-sought-after new planet may actually be a black hole? “It’s a creative idea and we can’t force its composition even in the smallest,” he says. “I think maybe it’s just my bias, being a professor of planetary science, but the planets are a little more common …”
While Unwin and Scholtz root out a primitive black hole to experiment with, Batygin is just as eager for a huge planet – citing the fact that the most common type in the entire galaxy is those that have about the same mass as the New Planet.
“Meanwhile, most exoplanets orbiting Sun-like stars are in this strange range of being larger than Earth and considerably smaller than Neptune and Uranus,” he says. If scientists find the planet missing, it will be closest to a window to the other side of the galaxy.
Only time will tell if the last mission will be more successful than Lowell’s. But Batygin is confident that their missions are totally different. “All the proposals are quite distinct both in the data they seem to be trying to explain and in the mechanisms they use to explain them,” he says.
In any case, the search for the legendary nine planets has already helped us transform our understanding of the solar system. Who knows what else we’ll find before the hunt ends.
Zaria Gorvett is a senior journalist for BBC Future and Tweets @ZariaGorvett
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