Planet 9

Submission 33,467

About

Planet 9 is the nickname given to a massive hypothetical planet proposed as a possible explanation for a group of trans-Neptunian objects detected in the far outer Solar System within the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt. Some have speculated that the planet comes from another solar system and may have been responsible for triggering various extinction events on Earth.

Origin

In 2004, the trans-Neptunian object 90377 Sedna was discovered with a noticeably peculiar orbit, suggesting it interacted with some other large object to deviate away from the Kuiper belt. In 2008, other trans-Neptunian objects were discovered with odd orbiting patterns. In 2014, the science journal Nature published a paper by astronomers Chad Trujillo and Scott S. Sheppard, which proposed the existence of a large planet to explain the orbit patterns of the objects Sedna and 2012 VP113.^[1] On January 20th, 2016, Caltech professors Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown (the same professor responsible for demoting Pluto from planet to dwarf planet) made a statement announcing the possibility of a ninth planet in the solar system.^[8]

Spread

On January 20th, 2016, the Caltech YouTube channel interviews with Caltech University professors Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown discussing the evidence of Planet 9, estimating that it would be 10 times the mass and four times the diameter of Earth (shown below, left). That week, believers in the Nibiru cataclysm,^[7] a predicted doomsday event involving the collision of a large planetary object with Earth occurring in the early 21st century, cited Planet 9 as the evidence of their claims.^[6] On January 25th, Batygin and Brown participated in an "ask me anything" post on the /r/IAmA^[4] subreddit, Brown claimed the planet was "too far away to have any but the most minuscule effects on the Earth." Within three months, the video gained over 1.9 million views and 1,900 comments.

On February 17th, the PBS Space Time channel uploaded a video about the planet titled "Planet X Discovered?" (shown below).

On March 23rd, astronmer Alexander Mustill from the Lund Observatory in Sweden published a paper speculating that Planet 9 was an alien planet from a different solar system that entered into the oribit of our Sun.^[2] On March 24th, Caltech astronmer Mike Brown tweeted that a new Kuiper belt object had been discovered, along with a graph of objects possibly orbiting Planet 9 (shown below).

On April 6th, the New York Post^[3] published an article titled "Newly discovered planet could destroy Earth any day now," in which astrophysicist Daniel Whitmire claimed Planet 9 may have been responsible for various mass extinctions on Earth when generating comet showers while passing in orbit every 26 to 27 million years. Additionally, the article noted that some Nibiru cataclysm proponents were predicting the planet could collide with Earth as early as the end of April.