We Are About to Discover a New Planet in the Solar System. And It's Huge!

[Music] in the far reaches of our solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune something unusual is happening a mysterious force is pushing around icy objects and clusters of these objects have unusual orbits that can't be explained by the known planets alone scientists think this could be caused by a massive hidden Planet often called Planet 9 first suggested in 2016 this potential new planet has fascinated a astronomers interestingly this isn't the first time a planet has been proposed using mathematics Neptune and Pluto were both discovered because their gravitational influences were predicted before they were seen through

a telescope astronomers noticed irregularities in the orbits of Uranus leading to the discovery of these Distant Worlds a century later we find ourselves in a similar situation with Planet 9 following this fascinating tradition of using mathematical predictions to uncover hidden planets some researchers believe it might have been a rogue Planet captured by our son's gravity While others think it could have formed from the same disc of gas and dust as the other planets if Planet 9 exists It is believed to be 10 times more massive than Earth and orbit the Sun at a distance of

400 to 800 astronomical units which is 400 to 800 times the distance between the Earth and the the sun astronomers have been eagerly hunting for Clues using powerful telescopes and Advanced Computer models to track its influence after years of watching the sky solving mathematical equations and running complex computer simulations they now have the strongest evidence yet that planet 9 really exists this discovery introduces an exciting plot twist in the story of the Hidden Planet so what evidence did the researchers uncover in their hunt for Planet 9 if we found exoplanets hundreds of trillions of miles

away why has it been so challenging to detect Planet 9 directly in our Cosmic backyard even with some of the most powerful telescopes at our disposal finally and most importantly if Planet 9 really exists how did it end up being so far in the outskirts of our solar system before we begin make sure to subscribe to our channel for regular space updates although Planet 9 was first proposed in 2016 its story began soon after the discovery of Uranus in 1781 over the years astronomers noticed something strange Uranus wasn't moving exactly as their calculations predicted it

seemed to speed up and slow down in its orbit hinting that there might be an unseen force acting on it in the 1840s two mathemat Ians Urban larier in France and John couch Adams in England independently suggested that the unusual movements of Uranus could be caused by the gravitational pull of an unseen Planet they use complex mathematics to predict where this invisible Planet might be located this was a bold hypothesis relying solely on mathematical calculations to propose the existence of an unknown World larier sent his predictions to Johan Gala an astronomer at the Berlin Observatory

on the night of September 23rd 1846 Gala and his assistant pointed their telescope to the part of the sky larier had indicated to their amazement they found Neptune on their first night of searching very close to where it had been predicted this was a remarkable achievement as it was the first time a planet had been discovered through mathematical prediction rather than by chance observation after the successful discovery of Neptune in 1846 astronomers thought they had a complete picture of the major planets in our solar system however when they tracked Neptune's orbit they found that Neptune

much like Uranus before exhibited slight deviations from its predicted path these irregularities were subtle but persistent given the success of using gravitational influences to predict Neptune's existence based on the orbit of Uranus a astronomers wondered if a similar method could reveal yet another planet even further out this led to the discovery of Pluto after more than 8 decades on February 18th 1930 Clyde tomall a young astronomer at the L Observatory identifying a faint distant object moving against the backdrop of stars confirming the presence of a new Celestial body initially hiled as the long sought Planet

X Pluto was later found to be much smaller than expected Pluto's mass was insufficient to account for the gravitational anomalies observed in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune this meant that something more was out beyond the orbit of Neptune that hadn't been discovered yet in 1951 Dutch American astronomer Gerard Kyper predicted that there could be not one but several icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune and Pluto was just a part of that bigger belt of objects known as the Kyper belt the first direct observational evidence of Kyper belt objects or kbos came in 1992

when astronomers David JWT and Jane Lou discovered 1992 qb1 a small icy body Beyond Neptune this discovery confirmed the existence of a population of objects in the region Kyper had predicted it was rapidly followed by the identification of hundreds of more kbos in the 1990s and 20 thousands confirming the Kyper belt as a significant part of our solar system as more objects were discovered Beyond Neptune the term trans neptunian objects or TNS was introduced to Encompass all objects orbiting the Sun Beyond Neptune TNS are a broader category that includes any small body in the solar

system that orbits the Sun at a greater average distance than Neptune or 30 astronomical units or Au and pu is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun it's about 150 million km or 93 million miles as the catalog of known kbos grew the idea of a single massive Planet X fell out of favor astronomers began to believe that the cumulative gravitational effects of these many smaller bodies could explain the irregularities in Neptune's orbit but then something interesting happened in 2003 that changed the FOC us entirely to Planet 9 astronomers discovered sedna a distant

tno with an extraordinarily elongated orbit sedna's orbit is one of the widest known in the solar system it's a felian or its farthest point from the Sun in its elliptical orbit is located 937 Au away that's 31 times the aelon of Pluto and 19 times that of Neptune S as parhelion or the close approach to the sun is just 76 Au away this means that sedna takes 11,400 years to orbit the Sun as compared to 248 years of Pluto this is something weird there are two problems first if sedna formed in its current location it

would simply imply that the sun's protoplanetary dis originally extended to at least 75 Au which is on the upper end of what is typically accepted second for sedn it to have formed from the accretion of smaller bodies its original orbit must have been almost circular highly elliptical orbits like the one sedna currently has would result in two violent collisions preventing the aggregation of material necessary to form a large body like sedna this suggests that sedna's highly elongated orbit resulted from a gravitational interaction with another massive object after its formation the discovery of ays in 2005

added to the Intrigue ays another large tno with a highly elliptical orbit has a parhelion of about 38 Au and an aelan of about 97 Au in the next few years more extreme trans neptunian objects or etnos were discovered and this is where we get the first and one of the most substantial evidence of Planet 9 there's something unusual about the orbits of etnos Let Me Explain with a simple example imagine you scatter dozens of marbles on a flat surface normally you would expect the marbles to be spread out randomly but if many of the

marbles are oddly clustered in one specific area it would imply that some force or factor is pulling them together this scenario mirrors what scientists have observed with etnos their orbits are not randomly dispersed but rather show a clustering usually if tnos were orbiting randomly their paths around the Sun would be spread out in all directions just like the marbles in our analogy their closest approach to the Sun or parah helan points would be at different points in the sky not bunched or clustered in one area however their parhelion points tend to be clustered in one

part of the sky this clustering is highly unusual and suggests that there is a common factor influencing their orbits the fact that they are grouped together in one region implies that something is affecting their pass Additionally the long axes of their orbits the lines connecting their closest and farthest points from the Sun are aligned in a way that is statistically unlikely to happen by chance this alignment further supports the idea that an external Force possibly the gravitational pull of a large unseen planet is at work the consistent orientation of these orbits provides strong evidence for

the hypothesis that planet 9 is exerting its influence from afar shaping the orbits of these distant objects building on the discoveries of sedna ays and 2012 vp113 along with other tnos the hypothesis of a distant undiscovered Planet 9 gained significant momentum in January 2016 astronomers Constantine bean and Mike Brown published a groundbreaking paper that further solidified this Theory they analyzed the orbits of six distant TN and suggested that these patterns could be explained by the gravitational influence of a previously unknown Planet they proposed that this hypothetical Planet 9 would be about 10 times the mass

of Earth and orbit the Sun in a highly elliptical path ranging from 400 to 800 astronomical units when Neptune was discovered it happened remarkably quickly astronomers located it on the first night of searching based on mathematical predictions however the hunt for Planet 9 has proven to be far more challenging there are four main problems the first is its distance Planet 9 is believed to be 10 to 20 times more distant from Earth than Pluto at such a great distance the planet would receive very little sunlight making it almost invisible against the backdrop of stars and

hard to detect with current telescopes the second problem is that planet 99's orbit is likely highly elliptic this means that it could spend most of its time in the most distant and darkest regions of its orbit far from the sun's illumination when it is at these farthest points the planet could be even fainter and harder to spot the third problem is the vast area of the sky where Planet 9 could be located this wide search area requires astronomers to meticulously scan large regions often rechecking and verifying observations to ensure nothing is missed finally the planet's

slow movement across the sky complicates detection efforts because of its immense distance from the Sun Planet n moves very slowly relative to the background Stars this slow movement means distinguishing it from the background Stars requires prolonged and repeated observations astronomers must carefully track potential candidates to confirm they moving objects not just stationary Stars given these challenges simulations become an indispensable tool in the search for Planet 9 simulations enable researchers to model complex systems and predict behaviors that are difficult or impossible to observe directly let's have a look at how researchers use simulation to find the

strongest statistical evidence of Planet 9 the orbits of TNS are not stable over long periods over millions of years Neptune's strong gravitational pull can alter their paths scattering them widely or even ejecting them completely from the solar system this Dynamic indicates that tnos are continuously pushed in orbits intersecting with Neptune to investigate this further a research team set up simulations based on the initial conditions presumed for the formation of the inner or Cloud the or cloud is thought to be a distant spherical shell of IC bodies encircling the solar system extending from about 2,000 to

100,000 as astronomical units from the Sun they chose TNS with parelia greater than 30 Au and semi- major axis ranging from 100 to 5,000 Au resulting in a simulation of 2,000 total particles the research team ran two sets of simulations one including the hypothesized planet 9 in its predicted location and another without Planet 9 the results indicated that planet 9 could affect the orbits of certain TNS through the direct coupling of the Ral lens Vector this Vector describes the shape and orientation of an orbit under the influence of a force like gravity its direction gives

the orientation of the ellipse and its magnitude is directly related to the orbital eccentricity a zeroa lens Vector corresponds to a circular orbit while non-zero values indicate elliptical orbits Planet 9 can make these orbits more stretched and change their inclination angle the simulation showed that without Planet 9 fewer TNS come close to Neptune notably without Planet 9 the number of TN that closely approach Neptune sharply decreases as distance from the Sun decreases peing only around 30 astronomical units conversely with Planet 9 the close approaches happen more consistently over a wider range of distances starting from

about 16 astronomical units to validate their findings the team conducted a statistic iCal analysis comparing the patterns observed in the simulations with actual space data they considered observational biases and matched the simulation results with 17 known TNS that have parelia less than 30 Au and semi- major axes greater than 100 Au the comparison strongly supported the model including Planet 9 showing a much higher likelihood of 0.41 compared to just 0.0 034 for the model without Planet 9 this substantial difference in probabilities indicates that the model with Planet 9 aligns more closely with the observed behaviors

of tnos suggesting a significant role for Planet 9 in shaping their orbits later this decade the ver Rubin observatory in Chile will start its operations equipped with a powerful 8.4 M telescope capable of conducting nightly all Sky surveys this observ atory will Leverage The findings from recent studies including those suggesting the existence of Planet 9 by closely observing the movements of distant TN if these TNS consistently exhibit patterns of proximity to the sun Beyond about 16 Au as the planet 9 model predicts it could serve as a crucial indicator of The elusive planet's presence this

blend of Cutting Edge technology and groundbreaking research can significantly deepen our understanding of the solar systems outer regions it could eventually lead to the long awaited confirmation of Planet 9 recently the James web Space Telescope measured how fast the universe is expanding the results have confirmed the biggest crisis in cosmology showing there's a fundamental flaw in our currently accepted model of the universe if you miss this episode be sure to catch up on the exciting Discovery and if you learn new things from this video please don't forget to like It And subscribe to our channel

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