A new planet is discovered beyond Pluto at a mean distance to the sun of 4004 million miles. Using Kepler's third law, determine an estimate for the time T to travel around the sun in an orbit.

103239.89 days

Explanation:

Kepler's third law states that the square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.

                               a³ / T² = 7.496 × 10⁻⁶  (a.u.³/days²)

where,

a is the distance of the semi-major axis in a.u

T is the orbit time in days

Converting the mean distance of the new planet to astronomical unit (a.u.)

                       1 a.u = 9.296 × 10⁷ miles        

Substituting the values into Kepler's third law equation;

                                    (days)²

                                    T = 103239.89 days

An estimate time T for the new planet to travel around the sun in an orbit is 103239.89 days

1 a

2 b

3 b

4 d

5 d

6 d

explanation: