New 'Super Earth' Planet X discovered at edge of Solar System

They believe a dot picked up by ALMA radio telescopes in Chile is a new planet several times the size of Earth or a larger brown dwarf star further away.

One group – from Sweden – has named the new world "Gna" after a Nordic messenger goddess.

Astronomers have been hunting for another planet – dubbed Planet X – to explain wobbles in the other planets' orbits for 100 years.

Conspiracy theorists have warned Planet X is the alien world Nibiru – which is prophesied to crash into Earth THIS MONTH.

The independent research groups spotted "new blackbody point sources" at different areas of the night sky – once near the star W Aquilae and the other next to our nearest neighbouring star system, Alpha Centauri.

Astronomers first thought the bodies were faint glows from far-distant background galaxies.

But in separate pairs of snapshots – taken over a period of months – both objects seemed to move swiftly against the "fixed” background stars – suggesting they were much closer to Earth.

The authors of the Swedish study write: "Simple arguments convince us that this object cannot be an ordinary star.

"We argue that the object is most likely part of the solar system… albeit at a distance too far to be detectable at other wavelengths."

Different kinds of space object could explain the light source.

Theories range from a 125-mile wide asteroid floating between Saturn and Uranus, to a planet somewhere between the size of Earth and Neptune six times further from the Sun than Pluto, to a small cooled-down star called a brown dwarf even further out.

Astronomers have claimed to have discovered Planet X before.

NASA's Infrared Astronomical Satellite found signs of an "unknown object… possibly as large as the giant planet Jupiter and possibly so close to Earth that it would be part of this Solar System" in 1983.

NASA later explained away all the evidence as being from bodies outside our Solar System – leading to accusations of a cover-up.

In the 90s, astrophysicists from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette claimed another giant planet – like Jupiter or Saturn – lies in the outer reaches of the Solar System.

They used the hypothetical planet – dubbed Tyche – to explain the orbits of comets in the Oort Cloud – an icy cloud of debris surrounding the Sun at great distance.

Two teams of respected astronomers even suggested the Sun has a smaller "companion star" in the far reaches of the Solar System and its slow orbit has caused a series of mass extinctions every 26 million years on Earth.

Alien hunters and UFO hunters have jumped on these as evidence that Nibiru exists.

They warn a collision – or catastrophic near miss – between Earth and Nibiru will happen by March 2016.

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer space telescope has found no signs of any additional planets in our Solar System – ruling out anything Jupiter-size within about three trillion kilometers of the sun and anything Saturn-size within half that distance.

But something smaller and dimmer – like a "super Earth" – could still lurk out there, unseen.

(dailystar.co.uk)