Astronomers spotted a faint, distant object located in the outer region of the solar system. Using the Atacama large millimetre/submillimetre array (ALMA), a powerful telescope located in Chile, the scientists said that this object could possibly be the ninth planet of the solar system.

The object can possibly be a super-Earth, a planet with a mass higher than Earth but substantially below that of Neptune and Uranus. However, other scientists have doubted the discovery. Mike Brown, an astronomer from the California Institute of Technology, remarked that the evidence to support the claim is too little and finding a ninth planet is very unlikely.

"One possibility (and I think the most likely) is that it's an extreme trans-Neptunian object about 100 astronomical units (AU) away from the Sun," claimed astrophysicist Brian Koberlein, Christian today notes. "Another possibility (which seems more likely to the object's discoverers) is that it is about 300 AU away and about 1.5 times the size of Earth, making it the first 'super-Earth' found in our solar system."

The discovery has been submitted but has not been peer-reviewed or formally published yet due to scepticism. However, the discoverers defend that they need other scientists’ opinion to confirm the discovery. If proven to be incorrect , they will fully withdraw the papers.

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