If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.

Proving? We don't do that here... However, a time may come so we would have a capability to do a thorough inspection of the proposed orbit and finally put the old question to rest.

The orignal article containing this hypothesis was authored in 1952, so to resolve the original question I have to insist that the teapot should indeed have been put into orbit before the assertion was published.