Unveiled - Two Extra Monster Sized Planets Beyond Pluto

The count continues as new monsters of our solar system enters the stage. Just months after astronomers announced hints of a giant "Planet X" lurking beyond Pluto, a team in Spain says there may actually be two supersized planets hiding in the outer reaches of our solar system.

When potential dwarf planet 2012 VP113 was discovered in March, it joined a handful of unusual rocky objects known to reside beyond the orbit of Pluto. These small objects have curiously aligned orbits, which hints that an unseen planet even further out is influencing their behaviour. Scientists calculated that these worlds would be about 10 times the mass of Earth and would orbit at roughly 250 times Earth's distance from the sun.

Now Carlos and Raul de la Fuente Marcos at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain have taken another look at these distant bodies. As well as confirming their bizarre orbital alignment and found additional puzzling patterns. Small groups of the objects have very similar orbital paths. Because they are not massive enough to be tugging on each other, the researchers think the objects are being "shepherded" by a larger object in a pattern known as orbital resonance.

"As there are only a few of these extremely distant objects known, it's hard to say anything definitive about the number or location of any distant planets," says Scott Sheppard at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, one of the discoverers of 2012 VP113. "However, in the near future we should have more objects to work with to help us determine the structure of the outer solar system."

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