圍繞太陽運行的9號行星——可能是一個黑洞

圍繞太陽運行的9號行星——可能是一個黑洞

Astronomers have come up with a new theory explaining why they can't find the hypothesised 'Planet Nine' - it's not actually a planet, but a black hole.

天文學家們提出了一個新的理論來解釋為什么他們找不到假設的“第九顆行星”——因為它實際上不是一顆行星，而是一個黑洞。

There's evidence of a ninth planet beyond the orbit of Neptune - scientists can see its gravitational effects on the orbits of dwarf planets like Pluto and other objects in the distant Kuiper Belt.

有證據表明，在海王星軌道之外還有第九顆行星——科學家可以看到它對冥王星等矮行星軌道的引力作用，以及柯伊伯帶中其他天體的引力作用。

NASA in 2017 said it almost definitely exists, and it's likely to be about 10 times bigger than Earth - but it probably only orbits the sun every 20,000 years, and is very, very far away, so no one's actually seen it yet.

美國航天局在2017年表示，它幾乎肯定存在，而且可能比地球大10倍左右——但它可能每20000年才繞太陽運行一次，而且非常非常遙遠，所以還沒有人真正看到它。

In a new paper however, scientists from the US and UK say there could be a good reason for that - it's a minuscule black hole that's existed since the beginning of time itself.

然而，在一篇新的論文中，來自美國和英國的科學家表示，這可能有一個很好的理由——這是一個自時間起源以來就存在的極小的黑洞。

"There is a growing body of observational anomalies connected to the orbits of trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs)," authors Jakub Scholtz and James Unwin wrote in the new paper.

作者jakub scholtz和james unwin在新論文中寫道：“越來越多的觀測異常與跨海王星天體(tnos)的軌道有關。”

"These observations have been taken as evidence of a new ninth planet in our solar system, called Planet Nine."

“這些觀測結果被認為是太陽系新發(fā)現的第九顆行星的證據，它被稱為第九顆行星。”

But it could also be a primordial black hole, they say. Primordial black holes differ from other black holes in that they're not created in star collapses - they've existed since the first second after the Big Bang, created by gravitational perturbations in the fabric of spacetime, according to research by the late Stephen Hawking.

但他們說，它也可能是一個原始黑洞。原始黑洞不同于其他黑洞，因為它們不是在恒星崩塌中產生的——根據已故斯蒂芬霍金(stephen hawking)的研究，它們從大爆炸后的第一秒就存在了，大爆炸是由時空結構中的引力擾動造成的。

No one's ever found one, but Dr Hawking's calculations show they can be much smaller than normal black holes.

從來沒有人找到過它們，但霍金博士的計算表明，它們可以比普通黑洞小得多。

"These primordial black holes can be much lighter; for example, an Earth mass, or in fact, even lighter," Dr Scholtz told Vice.

“這些原始黑洞可以更輕，比如是一個地球的質量，或者事實上，甚至更輕。”Scholtz博士告訴Vice。

If Planet Nine is actually a black hole, that would explain why no one's found it yet - not only might it be as small as a tennis ball, according to the paper, but the methods used for finding planets are different to those used to detect black holes.

如果行星9實際上是一個黑洞，這就可以解釋為什么還沒有人發(fā)現它——根據這篇論文，它不僅可能只有網球那么小，而且發(fā)現行星的方法與探測黑洞的方法是不同的。

"If conventional searches fail to find Planet Nine and the evidence for TNO anomalies continues to grow, the primordial black hole Planet Nine hypothesis will become a compelling explanation," the authors say.

“如果傳統的搜索未能找到第九顆行星，而TNO異常的證據繼續(xù)增加，那么原始黑洞第九顆行星假說將成為一個令人信服的解釋。”作者說。