10 years after the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet status, evidence of a “Planet X” beyond Neptune may return the solar system to its former size.

Evidence of the planet was discovered by Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology. Although they did not actually observe it, these scientists used observations of the orbits of six objects in the Kuiper Belt (which begins just beyond Neptune). They concluded that the most reasonable explanation for the strange orbits of these objects was a planet with a mass of ten times the earth, orbiting twenty times further from the sun than Neptune.

Mike Brown, coincidentally, is most commonly known as the man who killed Pluto, after his discovery of the dwarf planet Eris led to Pluto’s demotion.

Because of the predicted distance of this potential planet, it takes between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete an orbit. Depending on where it is in this orbit, there are several telescopes that could find it.

This object, if found, would definitely be large enough to qualify as a true planet. After ten years of a solar system with eight planets, we might finally have a replacement for Pluto.