Planet Nine, sometimes called “Planet X”, is a theoretical planet that has been hypothesized to live in the dark, outer reaches of the solar system.
No, it’s not the planet that’s theorized by some crazies to collide with Earth and we’ll all die. That’s about as true as saying birds are a government conspiracy. It has negative legs to stand on.
On a more serious note, recent research supported this theory of a planet orbiting the far reaches of the solar system when looking at the striking similarities of eccentric orbits of objects (shown below).
The probability of this happening “is about .007 percent”.
This could not possibly be random.
The clustering of these far out object’s orbits was something Scott Shepard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., knew could very well be the tell tale sign of a 9th planet in the solar system. Sifting through his research, he found what he was looking for; yet another object that keeps furthering the idea that of a 9th planet’s gravity affecting the orbits of these far out objects. Properly named “FarFarOut” (since they had already used “FarOut”), this object is the farthest solar system object to have ever been discovered.
Shepard will have to verify whether or not this object correctly helps the theory of a ninth planet existing, but until then, the hopes are getting higher for there to be another planet out there somewhere in our solar system.
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