Passed all of the rocky inner worlds and the mighty gas giants the dwarf planet
Pluto can be found.
At its most distant point it is 4.6 billion miles away from
Earth but although Pluto is extremely far away it is not the last world in our
solar system.
Traveling further into the outer reaches reveals many more strange
and mysterious objects that have been discovered hiding in the darkness of space.
So let's travel beyond the icy world Pluto and find out what's lurking
at the edge of the solar system.
Discovered in October 2015 this mysterious object has been nicknamed the Goblin.
Officially designated as 2015 TG 387 the strange world orbits the Sun
roughly once every thirty two thousand years.
It is currently around 7.5 billion
miles away but at its most distant point the goblin travels as far out as 214
billion miles placing it beyond the Kuiper belt and making it one of the
farthest known objects within the solar system.
The Goblin is likely a dwarf
planet however it's status has not yet been confirmed as it is extremely
difficult to measure due to its incredible distance from the Earth.
It is apart of a group that can be located at the edge of a mysterious region known as
the Oort cloud which is a giant spherical shell of icy bodies that
surround our Sun and is believed to be the place from which comets originate.
The peculiar world received its nickname because it was discovered around
Halloween but also because of the letters T G can be found in its provisional designation.
It is estimated to be between 190 and 220 miles in diameter
making it considerably smaller than Pluto but a similar size to Saturn's moon, Mimas.
It's exceptionally long and elongated orbit also suggests but does
not prove the existence of a hypothetical planet 9.
Planet 9 was first proposed in 2014 to potentially explain oddities in the orbits of a few distant
trans-neptunian objects and the discovery of small worlds like 2015 TG
387 may help to find the elusive planet once and for all.
Very little is known about the goblins physical characteristics because of its great
distance and small size but it is likely similar to the other objects that can be
found closest to it such as the confirmed dwarf planet Sedna.
If this is correct then its surface is possibly a mixture of water
methane and nitrogen ices that are covered in dark patches of complex
molecules that are called Tholins.
Because of the goblins incredible
distance from the Sun its surface temperature would likely be below minus
240 degrees Celsius making it one of the coldest places in the solar system.
90% of the dwarf planet's orbit is so far away that even the Earth's most powerful
telescope would struggle to detect it but as of 2019 it is approaching its
closest point to the Sun around 61 billion miles away which means that the
Goblin may one day be visited by a future probe.
But until then it will just have to lurk mysteriously in the dark regions of our solar system.
Next time we will explore the possibilities of a hypothetical planet 9
such as where it could be hiding what type of planet it could be and what it
would mean if we did discover it.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.