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Something Big Is Warping Our Outer Solar System (futurity.org)
schwit1 quotes Futurity:
The plane of our solar system is warped in the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt, suggesting the presence of an unknown Mars-to-Earth-mass planetary object far beyond Pluto -- but much closer than Planet Nine. An unknown, unseen "planetary mass object" may lurk in the outer reaches of our solar system, according to new research on the orbits of minor planets.
The object would be different from -- and much closer than -- the so-called Planet Nine, a planet whose existence has yet to be confirmed... "The most likely explanation for our results is that there is some unseen mass," says Kat Volk, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and lead author of the study in the Astronomical Journal. "According to our calculations, something as massive as Mars would be needed to cause the warp that we measured."
The object would be different from -- and much closer than -- the so-called Planet Nine, a planet whose existence has yet to be confirmed... "The most likely explanation for our results is that there is some unseen mass," says Kat Volk, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and lead author of the study in the Astronomical Journal. "According to our calculations, something as massive as Mars would be needed to cause the warp that we measured."
Because they're really, really dark. Think about this for scale. Pluto is so far out there that the sun's light warms it only enough to melt nitrogen. It is amazingly dark. And Pluto is relatively close compared to the KBOs. Now, the KBOs are, at least the ones we've seen, very dark. They don't reflect any light. And, IIRC, they're about 7 times the distance, so roughly 2% as much light is getti to them. Then, once only a tiny fraction of the light that hits them reflects, it's still an amazingly long way back to earth, with inverse square law dominating the light dissipation. That puts us on the order of maybe a photon hitting a ten million dollar, 8 meter telescope per hour. We get more light off dust in the atmosphere. Finding them, even with Hubble, is incredibly difficult.
I'd love to build an occultation network in orbit, but that's a several billion dollar project, and the data analysis piece is probably not achievable, as they're moving holy shit fast. So, they'd be blocking distant stars for hundredths of a second. It's not an impossible problem, but it's not achievable with current technology or funding.
Next not as bad bet is to toss a telescope out past Pluto to get some more light gathered, but that is a huge, expensive project that probably isn't worth the effort. But, I hope that I'm very wrong on that.