NASA: Despite a comprehensive scan of the solar system's environment, Wise did not discover Planet X

However, in a survey of hundreds of millions of objects in the sky, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope discovered masses of asteroids and comets, as well as small stars within a radius of up to 60 light years from us. Planet X enthusiasts will have to look for other reasons for the mass extinctions they attribute to its influence

After scanning hundreds of millions of objects in the sky, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope found no evidence of the existence of a hypothetical body in our solar system known as "Planet X".
In the previous centuries, researchers assumed, often based on incorrect calculations, that there existed in the solar system a large celestial body in the solar system that had not yet been observed, and estimated that it was somewhere behind the orbit of Pluto. In addition to "Planet X", they called the phenomenon by various names, including "Nemesis" and "Ticha".

The current study, which included a review of WISE data covering the entire sky in infrared light, failed to find any object the size of Saturn or larger up to 10,000 AU and not even an object the size of Jupiter or larger up to 26 AU. An astronomical unit is the distance between the earth and the sun - about 150 million kilometers. For comparison, Pluto orbits the Sun at a distance of 40 astronomical units.

"Most likely the outer solar system does not contain giant gas planets, or a small companion star," says Kevin Lohman of the Center for Extrasolar Planets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State University, and author of an article that appeared last week in the Astrophysical Journal.

However, the search in Wise's catalog did not end without results. A second study done on the same data revealed several thousand new stars in the Sun's backyard, mostly cold bodies called 'brown dwarfs'.

"Neighboring star systems that have been hidden are emerging in the WISE data," says Ned Wright of the University of California, Los Angeles, the mission's principal investigator.

Wise's second study, which focused on objects outside the solar system, discovered 3,525 stars and brown dwarfs within a radius of 500 light years from the Sun. "The findings we discovered have been completely missed until now," says Davy Kirkpatrick of NASA's Caltech Infrared Center. Kirkpatrick is the lead researcher on the second paper, also published in the Astrophysical Journal. Some of the 3,525 objects were also found in Lohmann's study, which cataloged 762 objects.

The Wise spacecraft operated in 2010 and at the beginning of 2011. During this period, it performed two full surveys of the sky - six months apart between the surveys. About 750 million asteroids, stars and galaxies were photographed in the survey. In November 2013, NASA published the AllWISE program data that allows astronomers to compare the two surveys to discover moving objects.

In general, the faster the objects in Wise's images move, the closer they are to us. This visual cue is similar to the difference between the apparent airspeed of an aircraft flying at low altitude versus an aircraft flying at high altitude. Even if they are flying at the same speed, the higher plane appears to be moving slower.

A search of the WISE catalog for these moving objects revealed some of the closest stars. The discoveries include a star 20 light-years away in the Norma group, and as reported about a year ago, a pair of brown dwarfs just 6.5 light-years away, making them the closest star system discovered in nearly a century.

Despite the large number of new neighbors to the solar system discovered by WISE, Planet X has not been found. Previous estimates about the hypothetical body stemmed in part from geological studies that claimed that there is a cyclic timing in the mass extinctions on Earth. The idea is that a large planet or a small star hides in the dark rear of the solar system and periodically sends bundles of comets that enter the inner solar system and in the process also to Earth. Mass extinction theories based on Planet X were largely dismissed even before Wise's new research.

Other theories based on the irregular orbits of comets postulate a Planet X-type body. The new data from Wise also strengthens the arguments against these theories. Both searches of WISE data made it possible to discover objects that other surveys missed, which indicates that additional celestial bodies may be discovered in the future in WISE data.

"We believe that there are many more stars out there still waiting to be discovered through WISE data. We don't know our Sun's backyard as much as we thought." Wright said.

The WISE Space Telescope was put into hibernation after completing its primary mission in 2011. In September 2013, it was reactivated and named NEOWISE. In his new mission, he will assist NASA's efforts to identify the dangerous populations of near-Earth objects. NEOWISE (NEO=NEAR EARTH OBJECTS) will begin to characterize asteroids and comets already known to science to better understand their size and composition.

More of the topic in Hayadan:

Neither Nibiru nor Planet X is waiting (a response to rumors that spread towards the year 2012)

Mathematical calculations for discovering planets. Is history repeating itself?

For information on the NASA website