English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The hypothesis that a massive Planet Nine exists in the outer solar system ona distant eccentric orbit was inspired by observations showing that the objectswith the most distant eccentric orbits in the Kuiper belt have orbits which arephysically aligned, that is, they are clustered in longitude of perihelion andhave similar orbital planes. Questions have remained, however, about theeffects of observational bias on these observations, particularly on thelongitudes of perihelion. Specifically, distant eccentric Kuiper belt objectstend to be faint and only observable near their perihelia, suggesting that thelongitudes of perihelion of the known distant objects could be strongly biasedby the limited number of locations in the sky where deep surveys have beencarried out. We have developed a method to rigorously estimate the longitude ofperihelion bias for Kuiper belt observations. We find that the probability thatthe 10 known Kuiper belt objects with semimajor axis beyond 230 AU are drawnfrom a population with uniform longitude of perihelion is 1.2%. Combined withthe observation that the orbital poles of these object are also clustered, theoverall probability of detecting these two independent clusterings in arandomly distributed sample is 0.025%. While observational bias is clearlypresent in these observations, it is unlikely to explain the observed alignmentof the distant eccentric Kuiper belt objects.

Observational bias and the clustering of distant eccentric Kuiper belt objects