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AMSTERDAM The Dutch government on Friday announced new rules restricting exports of certain advanced semiconductor equipment, a move

There are eight planets in our solar system – plus poor old Pluto, which was demoted in 2006 – but what if there were more? Turns out that might be the case. Astronomers have calculated there is a 7 per cent chance that Earth has another neighbour hiding in the Oort cloud, a spherical region of ice chunks and rocks that is tens of thousands of times farther from the sun than we are. “It’s completely plausible for our solar system to have captured such an Oort cloud planet,” said Nathan Kaib, a co-author on the work and an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Hidden worlds like this are “a class of planets that should definitely exist but have received relatively little attention” until now, he said.. If a planet is hiding in the Oort cloud, it’s almost certainly an ice giant. Large planets like Jupiter and Saturn are generally born as twins. They have huge gravitational pulls of their own, however, and sometimes destabilise one another. That could have led to a planet to be nudged out of the solar system entirely – or exiled to its outer reaches, where the Oort cloud resides. “The survivor planets have eccentric orbits, which are like the scars from their violent pasts,” said lead author Sean Raymond, researcher at the University of Bordeaux’s Astrophysics Laboratory. That means that the Oort cloud planet could have a significantly elongated orbit, unlike the near-perfect circle Earth tracks around the sun. Trouble is, when things are that far away, they’re pretty difficult to spot. “It would be extremely hard to detect,” added Raymond. “If a Neptune-sized planet existed in our own Oort cloud, there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t have found it yet,” said Malena Rice, an astronomer at MIT not involved in this work. “Amazingly, it can sometimes be easier to spot planets hundreds of light-years away than those right in our own backyard.” Time to crack out the telescope. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The oversight board for Facebook's parent company Meta Platforms on Thursday said Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen should be suspended from the social media site for six months for posting a video violating rules against violent threats.

South Korea approved its first standalone digital-asset bill to boost investor protection just over a year after the

(Reuters) -U.S.-China tensions over semiconductors began with the Trump administration's trade war and have ratcheted up under President Joe Biden's

Facebook parent Meta's oversight body has recommended his suspension over an inflammatory video.

The Supreme Court's landmark decision on Thursday to gut affirmative action has made it unlawful for colleges to take race into consideration as a specific factor in admissions.

Is your preferred choice for your next printer an inkjet? You can find the technology

There are an overwhelming number of ways to watch online content on your TV. Your

The country is the latest front in a fight that analysts say has big stakes for news - and democracy.

The US Supreme Court’s two Black justices sparred over the meaning and impact of race in dueling opinions

As he began reading excerpts of his decision eviscerating college affirmative action, in a hushed courtroom Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts delivered on a singular long-held goal.