Brahma was a hypothetical planet that was thought to have existed beyond Neptune's orbit, along with another proposed planet, Vishnu.[1] However, the existence of both planet's have never been confirmed, and they most likely don't exist.
History[]
The two trans-neptunian planets were first hypothesized by Venkatesh P. Ketakar, in which he believed that both planets were responsible for the perturbations of the orbits of many periodic comet's. Ketakar had made a few predictions for the position and orbital parameter's of both Brahma and Vishnu, in which these were reported in the Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of France in May 1911.[2]
After tabulating the orbital parameter's of over 200 comet's, this revealed to him that the aphelion distances to some of the comet's could also be associated with the semi-major axis' of the planet's. Ketakar also noted that a few of the comet's had aphelion distances slightly larger than the orbital distance of Brahma. Because of this, his belief of Brahma's existence became stronger and even expressed it in a letter that he wrote to the Astronomical society of France in April 15th, 1912.[3]
However, it was noted that Brahma's orbital parameters appeared very identical to that of Pluto's orbital parameters. In addition, 3 other hypothetical planet's were also noted to have similar parameters and values to Pluto. Regardless, many extensive calculations towards Brahma's existence, many astronomers attempted to predict or propose the position of the planet, with very little results.[4]
Characteristics[]
Ketakar used a modified version of Laplace's laws, given by some relations. This allowed him to calculate and predict the orbital parameters of Brahma (along with Vishnu), putting it at around 38.95 AU's away from the Sun, and in turn predicting its orbital period to be 242.28 years.
Not much can be gathered on what planet type Brahma is supposed to be, but given that it was thought to be the cause of comet's being perturbed, it could be assumed that it is a gas or ice giant. However, this can also apply to terrestrial planet's, not simply gaseous planets.
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