Scientists Find New Evidence for a Ninth Planet – IOTW Report

Scientists Find New Evidence for a Ninth Planet

Friday, 2 May 2025, 18:00 Dr. Tar Uncategorized 20

space.com

The best candidate yet for the elusive Planet Nine has been spotted in two deep infrared surveys taken 23 years apart. If this mystery object really is Planet Nine, it would have a mass greater than Neptune, and currently be about 700 times farther from the sun than Earth is.

The possibility of additional planets in our solar system has been proposed many times, going under names such as “Planet X,” because experts thought the concept of an extra planet in our vicinity of the cosmos could explain a perceived regularity in mass extinctions on Earth. Perhaps, they said, the periodic influx of comets that impact Earth are pushed our way by an unseen planet. However, the supposed periodicity in mass extinctions has not held up to scrutiny, and so the need for that particular Planet X has gone away. This brings us to Planet Nine. More

20 Comments on Scientists Find New Evidence for a Ninth Planet

  6. For the “why haven’t we seen it” part… 700 times further from the sun than Earth… Earth is at “1 Astronomical Unit” or “1 AU”. So this proposed planet would orbit at 700 AU. Just to put that in perspective, Voyager 1, the furthest know man made object from Earth is at 167.3 AU. I say known, because there’s always a chance that manhole cover made it out of the Nevada test site in the late 50’s…

    It takes 23 hours to send a message to Voyager 1. 700 AU is like 4 light days away, or 0.011 light years.

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  8. @Harry, there are three features a heavenly body must have to be considered a planet.

    1. It has to orbit a star (has anyone asked astronomers how “rogue planets” are still considered planets?)
    2. It has to have enough gravity to be spherical in shape.
    3. It has to have cleared its orbit of all other objects.

    I believe Pluto failed on the last count. Its moon Charon is large enough that the two orbit each other. To be a planet Pluto would have to have enough gravity that Charon would orbit it.

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  15. So this Planet Nine may be responsible for mass extinctions on Earth?

    Not IMO. Dinosaurs are incompatible with human life. They had to go. They made the world inhabitable for humans by eating and pooping tons, which propably combined with other stuff to make topsoil, withoout which farming of crops would not be possible. I suspect the first dinos were small, eating bugs and whatever seaweed and dead fish rolled up to beaches from the oceans.

    When it was time for them to exit, God maybe was thinking: Thanks for your service, now be gone.

    Poof! They went their way in a big cloud of smoke.

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