Two Caltech astronomers, Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin, have observed some strange behavior in the outer solar system, which according to them has been caused by an unseen world orbiting about 500 times farther from the Sun than Earth does.

The proof included an odd alignment of some so-called Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), ice-bound orbs that are Pluto’s cousins. The huge hailstones are scattered across the dim and far away areas of our solar system. Their nearly a decade old discovery resulted into loss of membership in the pantheon of planets for Pluto.

Apparently roughly a dozen of the Kuiper Belt objects have similarly aligned orbits, both in direction and in tilt to the ecliptic plane.

Without even knowing the meaning of the word ‘ecliptic’, any intelligent reader will make out that this is an unlikely situation, similar to spilling some pencils onto a table and discovering that they all pretty much point in the same direction.

The Caltech researchers said that the odds of this taking place by chance are at a minimum hundreds to one.

Based on computer simulations, the astronomers think that the Kuiper Belt objects have been pushed around by gravitational interactions with a planet about twice the diameter of our planet Earth. The object would be present on the side of the solar system which is opposite to the lined-up KBOs.

Until now nobody has seen this putative planet using a telescope. Even if the planet is really present, it could take years before somebody can capture a photo. This is because the sunlight falling on this huge -sized world would be 300 thousand times weaker as compared to that on Earth. Furthermore, the hefty planet’s accurate position isn’t known so far. Astronomers need to do a lot of investigation.