HOW EARTHLIKE COULD IT BE, THAT FAR FROM THE SUN? There could be an Earth-like planet hiding in the Kuiper Belt.

Far past the reaches of Neptune, two scientists suggest there could be a planet hiding in our Solar System.

This planet is not the hypothesised giant ‘Planet Nine’ far further flung, but instead an Earth-sized planet on a tilted orbit.

“We predict the existence of an Earth-like planet and several trans-Neptunian objects on peculiar orbits in the outer Solar System which can serve as observationally testable signatures of the putative planet’s perturbations,” the team write in their new paper.

The scientists – Patryk Sofia Lykawka of Kindai University in Japan and Takashi Ito of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan – have investigated trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) and weird clustering behaviour.

The two authors have published their paper in The Astronomical Journal.

Past Neptune at around 30 astronomical units sits the Kuiper belt, a group of icy rocks and dwarf planets, including Pluto, Quaoar, Orcus and Makemake.

While Pluto was once a planet, it’s worth noting that dwarf planets are small. Pluto, which is the biggest, is just 18% the size of Earth, smaller than Earth’s Moon.

This new planet on the other hand (if it indeed exists) would be 1.5-3 times the size of Earth.

Fascinating, but still not very earthlike.