tokens: a year. The second scenario pointed out above implies the presence of an unseen massive perturber, i.e. a trans-Plutonian planet. Close encounters between minor bodies and planets can induce fragmentation directly via tidal forces (e.g. Sharma, Jenkins Burns 2006 ) or indirectly by exciting rapid rotation (e.g. Scheeres etal. 2000 ; Ortiz etal. 2012 ). Alternatively, wide binary asteroids can be easily disrupted during close encounters with planets. The existence of wide binaries among the populations of minor bodies orbiting beyond Neptune is well documented (e.g. Parker etal. 2011 ). Wide binary asteroids have very low binding energies and can be easily dissociated during close encounters with planets (e.g. Agnor Hamilton 2006 ; Parker Kavelaars 2010 ). Binary asteroid dissociation may be able to explain the properties of this pair of ETNOs, but only if there is a massive perturber well beyond Pluto. In order to test the viability of this hypothesis, we have performed thousands of numerical experiments following the prescriptions discussed by de la Fuente Marcos etal. ( 2016 ) and aimed at finding the most probable orbital properties of a putative perturber able to tilt the orbital plane of the pair 4746402013 RF 98 from an initial angular separation close to zero at dissociation to the current value of nearly 4. These simulations involve N -body integrations backwards in time under the influence of an unseen perturber with varying orbital and physical parameters (per numerical experiment). Our preliminary results indicate that a planet with mass, m , in the range 1020M moving in an eccentric (0.10.4) and inclined (2050) orbit with semimajor axis of 300600au, may be able to induce the observed tilt on a time-scale of 510Myr. Perturbers with m 10M or a 600au are unable to produce the desired effect. Fig. 4 illustrates the typical outcome of these calculations. A detailed account of these numerical experiments will be presented in an accompanying paper (de la Fuente Marcos, de la Fuente Marcos Aarseth, in preparation). The orbital parameters of this putative planet are somewhat consistent with those of the object discussed by Holman Payne ( 2016 ). Super-Earths may form at 125750au from the Sun (Kenyon Bromley 2015 , 2016 ). Our analysis favours a scenario in which 4746402013 RF 98 were once a binary asteroid that became unbound after a relatively recent gravitational encounter with a trans-Plutonian planet at hundreds of astronomical units from the Sun. An alternative explanation involving an asteroid break-up near aphelion, also after a close encounter with a planet, is possible but less probable because it requires an approach at closer range, i.e. 20 planetary radii versus 0.8au, for binary dissociation. Figure 4. Evolution of the angular separation between the orbital poles of the pair (474640) 2004 VN 112 2013 RF 98 for three representative test calculations with different perturbers. Red: a = 549au, e = 0.21, i = 47 and m = 16M . Blue: a
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