Astronomers have discovered a possible new dwarf planet orbiting far beyond Pluto. First detected in March 2023 by Japan's Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, this object has been dubbed 2023 KQ14 and nicknamed Ammonite. Ammonite's appearance also puts a kink in what's known as the Planet Nine hypothesis, which suggests there may be an undiscovered ninth planet in our solar system.
Led by researchers in Japan, the team announced Ammonite's discovery in a paper published July 14 in the journal Nature Astronomy. The body gets its moniker from the fossil of a long-extinct cephalopod because it was identified as part of the survey project Formation of the Outer Solar System: An Icy Legacy, or FOSSIL.
