The Solar System's Mysterious, Undiscovered Planet 9

60 Minutes Overtime

“If we knew where it was, we can point a telescope at it and we’d see it,” Sheppard says. “The problem is we don’t know where it is.” That’s because astronomers estimate Planet Nine has an enormous orbit – around 15,000 years to make one revolution around the sun. Extraordinarily distant galaxies, meanwhile, tend to stay put.

I am skeptical. Not about the existence of Planet 9 (X, Niburu, whatever you want to call it), but Sheppard's statement that they don't know where it is. They should be able to calculate where it is given its influence on the solar system, shouldn't they?

I think they know where it is and what is on it, but like with so many other things, they just aren't telling us. Why? What are they hiding? All of these alien life-distant planet-secret base stories have a common theme - secrecy, mystery, conspiracy, misinformation, and, ultimately, dismissal as a fabrication or fairy tale by those in authority.

This story is a little different. They admit Planet 9 exists. They just claim they can't find it! Is that because there is overwhelming evidence of its existence to the point they can't deny it? Or is it a distraction of some sort, a rabbit hole to go down and run around in circles for a while? Misdirection? Act surprised, show confusion, deny, deny, deny!

a reply to: Icarus Rising

Perhaps this is just how disclosure will go. Can't throw it all our way at once, some folks may not be able to handle it. I agree with you that if they are confident enough to admit its existence, they know where it is.

For heaven's sake... a Hillary defeat stopped nearly half of the fake Americans who live in our country in their tracks not knowing how to move forward.

originally posted by: Icarus Rising
60 Minutes Overtime

I think they know where it is and what is on it

Who are they, and how should they know what is on it?

Here's an excerpt on how NASA track asteroids:

Once a NEO is discovered, follow-up observations are required to improve orbital predictions so that the object is not lost to future observing attempts. Most NEO discovery surveys provide a substantial number of follow-up observations.

NASA: How do we track asteroids?

How can they track a celestial object in the darkness of space without ever having observed it?

Maybe they realized that when it does come in for its circle around the sun, it will mess the planet up.. Huge flood, maybe like on a biblical scale. Skys that looks like a Phoenix.. 3 days of darkness. YA know.. legendary disasters that are burned into our cultures.

a reply to: Icarus Rising

a reply to: Icarus Rising

We can't see through most of the debris field in the OORT cloud. And since a planet is relatively tiny compared to even the smallest star - it's very hard to pin point a thing where you have no math to tell you it's trajectory.

If they saw it once, they could probably figure all that out afterwards. And it makes sense, there's something with enough gravity to throw comets out of the cloud and int our solar system, along with other things.

I don't think it's Nibiru or any kind of 'the world is ending' sort of deal either though.

~Tenth

a reply to: Droogie

I believe astro-physics accounts for the influence such a massive object would have on the other planets in the solar system. I don't know the exact mathematics behind it, but I believe they should be able to work out a rough position for Planet 9. By "they" I mean those in authority with the resources to make calculations of this nature.

a reply to: Icarus Rising

That's the problem, it's gravity is only affecting things in the Kuiper belt as of now. But you're right, if it was tugging at any of the inner solar bodies, we'd have a much better idea.

~Tenth

a reply to: Dizak

I was wondering the same thing. With an elliptical orbit of that duration, its perigee would be quite close to the Sun, wouldn't it? It could literally make a lot of waves on its way in and out.

originally posted by: Icarus Rising
With an elliptical orbit of that duration, its perigee would be quite close to the Sun, wouldn't it? It could literally make a lot of waves on its way in and out.

No, it's perihelion is hypothesized to be 200AU at the closest which is 7 times the distance of Neptune to the Sun.

a reply to: tothetenthpower

Thank you for the informed opinion. How about modelling of the solar system? I have read that recent research shows planetary formation and orbits follow predictable models? Is that true?

a reply to: Icarus Rising

Evidence for it is based upon the orbits of other bodies. You can't pinpoint something based on that alone.

The orbits of the other bodies are telling them it's out at in an orbit that takes 15,000 years...even if it's in the plane of our solar system, try to imagine the amount of sky one would have to observe to hopefully catch where it is....coupled with the fact that it's moving very slowly.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Wow. I hadn't heard that. It must not be that dense then. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of a binary star's orbit or something like that.

a reply to: Icarus Rising



I think you mean mass, its density is not that relative. And at this point its mass is estimated to be 10-20 times Earth's.

Some scientists have suggested that a big undiscovered body lying on the far outer reaches of the solar system could be responsible for many of the mass extinction events throughout Earth's history, by shaking up the distant comet repository known as the Oort Cloud and sending some its denizens screaming toward our planet.

But Planet Nine — a newly proposed but not yet confirmed world perhaps 10 times more massive than Earth that's thought to orbit far beyond Pluto — probably could not have triggered such "death from the skies" events, researchers said. [Evidence Mounts for Existence of 'Planet X' (Video)]

"I suspect it has something like zero effect on us," said Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena.

Brown and lead author Konstantin Batygin, also of Caltech, suggested the existence of Planet Nine in a paper that was published last week. They infer the planet's presence based on indirect evidence: Computer models suggest that a distant, unseen world has shaped the strange orbits of a number of small objects in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune.

Researchers say an anomaly in the orbits of distant Kuiper Belt objects points to the existence of an unknown planet orbiting the sun. Here's what we know of this potential "Planet Nine."
Researchers say an anomaly in the orbits of distant Kuiper Belt objects points to the existence of an unknown planet orbiting the sun. Here's what we know of this potential "Planet Nine."
Credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics artist

Planet Nine likely has an elliptical orbit, coming within 200 to 300 astronomical units (AU) of the sun at its closest approach and getting as far away as 600 to 1,200 AU, Brown said. (One AU is the distance from Earth to the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers).

Neptune orbits about 30 AU from the sun, and Pluto never gets farther than 49 AU from our star. So Planet Nine, if it exists, is very distant indeed — but not distant enough, Brown said, to stir up any of the trillions of comets in the Oort Cloud, which begins perhaps 5,000 AU from the sun.

The existence of such a "perturber" has been hypothesized as a way to explain the mysterious periodicity of big extinction events on Earth, which have recurred roughly every 27 million years over the last quarter-billion years or so.

"Really big planets really far away could do that," Brown told Space.com. "Planet Nine is smaller than all these things that people have called 'Planet X' — that's always been sort of Jupiter-sized, or even brown dwarf-sized, or something. This is a good bit smaller, and a good bit closer; it's not in the realm of the comets."

The putative Planet Nine also completes one orbit every 10,000 years or so, he added.

"That sounds like a long time, but it's a pretty short orbit," Brown said. "If it were doing this thing every time it went around the sun, it would've been doing a lot of it, and I don't think there's anything going on like that

Theirs that ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

But i just don't trust the MSM. Has anyone ever timed each mass die off or event and seen if there is a certain amount of time between them? Just curious

a reply to: Icarus Rising

Well, it's as predicable as we know it to be. Which the know part is pretty important, as it's only based on what we've observed and then mathematical modelling based on those observations.

We could find a new thing tomorrow that completely changes our view on how things came to be, in what time frames etc.

It's not likely to happen, but it could. The only thing we've sent out that far I believe are the Voyager space craft, and we didn't even expect them to last that long, it was more of a fluke.

For all we know it's orbiting a brown dwarf star further into the belt at the edge of the system, which is why it wouldn't come in so close to us.

~Tenth.

This subject has certainly caused perturbations in my habitable zone ,

a reply to: Icarus Rising

I watched this on 60 Minutes last night... and I am still not convinced. I am not even sure if his 11 year old daughter was either (she was a hoot).

The researcher is totally convinced it is there. And that sets up red flags in my mind. Any researcher with conviction will produce facts to fit their convictions (confirmation bias). This guy is a dye-in-the-wool believer which most scientists would be the opposite. Real science would show data, postulate a reason, gather data, then present their argument for peer review. This guy runs to 60 Minutes.... yet, another red flag. Have faith in the math and the data. If you cannot do that... well, sorry, that is not science.

I personally think the following: the solar system was part of a dwarf galaxy that was consumed by the Milky Way. This explains why the plane of the MY is near vertical at the equator. This also gives us the precession of the equinoxes. Which in turn leads to all kinds of myths and beliefs like religions and the pantheon of the gods. No Planet 9 needed.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Yeah. I am probably in way over my head here. I was just thinking the greater the density of the object the more pronounced the elliptical orbit it would have.

I am curious why Planet 9 would be of such interest if its influence and potential relevance are so negligible. Maybe it is a rabbit hole.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Well they do have data. It's not a guess. They've seen that things in the OORT cloud and the Kuiper belt are being tugged in a direction where no known large body exists.

So there is science and math there, but until they can actually show you the planet, they aren't going to say, yes we 100% know exactly what's there and how it's operating.

I don't think ' most scientists' will invent facts to fit their theories.

~Tenth

originally posted by: Icarus Rising
I am curious why Planet 9 would be of such interest if its influence and potential relevance are so negligible. Maybe it is a rabbit hole.

Its relevance is to the unusual orbits of the Kuiper Belt/Trans-Neptunian objects.