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The mysterious Planet Nine has already been found. Will the Earth be destroyed by a collision with a giant from deep space? Maybe it is, but the mystery is still there. Lately, for some reason, I've often come across clickbait news that repeats the same old hypotheses for the thousandth time, both scientific and not so scientific But while Planet Nine has not actually been found yet, the search for it has led to several scientific breakthroughs in recent years that, for some reason, few people talk about. And everything there is much more interesting than any conspiracy plot, because the dark outskirts of the solar system
can hide not even one, but 200 planets. And some of those already discovered are so strange that scientists don't know how to explain them. So where has the search for Planet Nine taken us, and what is really lurking on the outskirts of the solar system? In fact, the idea of the existence of an additional celestial body in the solar system dates back to the ancient Babylonians. They were skilled astronomers, but they were less likely to include celestial bodies in their cosmology. which they never saw Nibiru itself, And only in the late 1970s did American writer Zecharia Sitchin make Nibiru a planet that only occasionally
comes close to the Sun and will one day supposedly cause various cataclysms on Earth Of course, this is pseudoscience, but not so long ago, real scientists started talking about the hidden planet of the solar system Astronomers Scott Shepard and Cetrujillo discovered many trans-Neptunian objects, that is, small celestial bodies located beyond the orbit of Neptune in the so- called Kuiper belt. Essentially, these are frozen remnants of building materials from the early solar system. In 2014, Shepard and Trujillo hypothesized that the specific trajectories of trans-Neptunian objects could be influenced by a previously unknown and relatively
massive planet. And already in 2016, astronomers from the California Institute of Technology Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown noticed that the six most distant known Kuiper Belt objects move in amazingly elongated elliptical orbits. And even stranger, they looked as if something had grouped them in one region of the solar system and prevented them from moving more chaotically. The probability that all those orbits randomly acquired this configuration is only 2%. Not only that, they were also tilted relative to the ecliptic plane at almost the same angles, about 30°.
Thus, Brown and Batygin concluded that all these objects and effects are caused by a powerful gravitational influence from an unknown massive body. Astronomers have even calculated the orbit and mass of this hypothetical object and found that its orbit is very elongated, and one revolution around the sun could take between 10 and 20,000 years. Such a method of mathematical prediction is not something extraordinary. It was first used back in 1846. Uranus' anomalous orbit puzzled astronomy, and French mathematician Urbain Leverrier suggested that Uranus might be influenced by an unknown planet.
He provided his calculations to the German astronomer Johann Halle, and he did indeed find a new planet. Neptune. And already in 1906, astronomer Percival suggested that beyond Neptune there was another planet that influenced other orbits. He named it Planeto, although Lovell himself was unable to find it, one of his successors, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, working at Lovell's Observatory, did indeed discover the object that was later named Pluto. For a long time, it was indeed considered the ninth planet, but was then demoted to dwarf planet status. And it is impossible to explain the anomalous orbits of trans-Neptunian objects by Pluto's influence According to the latest models by Brown and Batygin, Planet 9 could have a mass
5-10 times that of Earth and be located at a distance of four to 800 astronomical units from the Sun. One astronomical unit is the distance from the Sun to the Earth, which is almost 150 million kilometers. That is, we are talking about a very distant frozen world. The orbit of just such a planet could explain the clustering of some orbits of trans-Neptunian objects, the mystery of which scientists have been trying to solve for many years. Planet Nine hunters are using computer simulations to determine its possible location. They model objects in the outer solar system, inputting various parameters of a potential Planet Nine, and then look at the orbits over
billions of years in fast-forward mode. At the same time, in recent years, researchers have scanned 87% of the part of the sky where it makes sense to look for Planet Nine. And among the 35,000 candidates, there was not a single one that was massive enough. So why is finding Planet Nine so difficult? One of the main problems is its distance from the sun. At a distance of 800 astronomical units, even large objects become virtually invisible. If this planet exists, it is likely very dark, cold, and emits almost no heat or light. This makes it extremely difficult to observe, even with the most modern telescopes. Just look at Pluto, which is 20 times closer. In the lenses of our telescopes, it was just a blurry spot, and only a separate New Horizons mission
was able to photograph it in all its glory. Most scientists believe that if Planet Nine were anything like Neptune, we would have definitely found it. So, if it exists, it has a very high density and dimensions comparable to Earth. If it is similar in composition to Pluto, its surface is covered with a mixture of frozen methane, nitrogen, and ice and reflects very little light. Scientists also do not rule out that Planet Nine may have small satellites or even thin rings that would further blur it against the background of the starry sky. So in fact we are looking for one pixel among hundreds of billions.
But what if we have such a hard time finding Planet Nine because it's not a planet at all? In 2019, astrophysicist James Unwin of the University of Illinois, together with colleagues from Durham University, put forward an extravagant hypothesis that an elusive celestial body on the outskirts of the solar system could well be a primordial black hole. Some cosmological theories suggest that such objects could have formed shortly after the Big Bang as a result of local collapses of dense matter. Primordial black holes can have very low masses, even less than the mass of the Earth, and have been found almost everywhere in space. If Planet Nine is indeed a primordial black hole, it is extremely compact. For example, a black hole
with a mass five times that of the Earth would have a radius of about 5 centimeters. That's the size of a tennis ball. But even such a small black hole would create the same gravitational effects as a regular celestial body with the corresponding mass. At the same time, it would be completely invisible if it did not absorb some matter. And the chances that something on the outskirts of the solar system will regularly fall into a tiny black hole, illuminating it: are astronomically small. However, such objects do have their own glow. Back in the 1970s, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking theorized that black holes are not 100% black. He [the musician] suggested that, due to the complex interplay
between gravity and quantum forces at the event horizon, black holes could indeed emit very faint light, slowly evaporating in the process. However, this radiation is so meager that a black hole with the mass of the sun would emit one photon per year. This is almost impossible to capture. So even using a fleet of light and fast spacecraft to survey the Kuiper Belt, we are unlikely to be able to detect such a cosmic body due to its Hawking radiation. Without knowing the exact location, it's time to start searching. Another thing is that according to calculations, the smaller the black hole, the faster it evaporates. This
means that a primordial black hole with the mass of planet nine would definitely not have lived long enough after the big bang to become part of the solar system just 4.5 billion years ago. But in attempts to confirm or disprove the existence of Planet Nine, astronomers have made a number of startling discoveries that could completely change our understanding of the solar system. There could well be 200 or even more planets hiding in its vicinity. True, not like Earth or even Mercury, but dwarf planets like Pluto. These are objects that have enough mass to be spherical, but are unable to clear their orbits of other celestial bodies because their gravitational influence is simply not enough to do so. Actually, that's why
Pluto was no longer considered a full-fledged planet. It crosses the orbit of Neptune and is not the dominant non-gravitational body in its region of the solar system. But in their quest to find the real Planet Nine, scientists have discovered many dwarf planets. Jaume is one of the most interesting. It completes one complete rotation in just four hours, making it the record holder for the fastest rotation speed in the entire solar system. It was due to centrifugal force that Haomega took on the elongated shape of a rugby ball or egg. This dwarf planet is located 43 astronomical units from the Sun.
It's so far away that sunlight takes 600 hours to travel from the sun to Haumea. And one year on this dwarf planet is 285 Earth years. With an equatorial diameter of approximately 1,740 km, Haome is approximately 1/7 the width of Earth. And what scientists definitely didn't expect to see near a dwarf planet were rings. They are characteristic of gas giants. And it was previously believed that tiny celestial bodies simply could not have them. Even more surprising is the location and order of motion of objects in Haumea's orbit. The ring itself is closest to it, followed by the two satellites Namaka and Hi'aka. Scientists suggest that the ring around it could have formed due to a collision. That is, in the past, some
object may have crashed into the moon and the debris then remained in orbit around it. But why didn't the existing satellites tear the rings apart with their gravity? Haomega's elongated shape would also have destabilized the ulans in its orbit. So in the end, this ring is pure fiction that somehow exists. But it wasn't just Jaume that surprised scientists. The dwarf planets, Eris and Makemake, turned out to have even more unexpected properties. According to modeling based on the latest data from the James Webb Space Telescope, these distant worlds, which should be completely frozen and inert, may exhibit geothermal activity sufficient to support
subsurface oceans. Scientists suggest that the molten cores of Eris and Makemake have not cooled even after billions of years. So theoretically, life could even exist in this water. It is the internal heat of these dwarf planets that provokes regular releases of methane, which, according to observations, settles on their surfaces in large quantities. These processes may resemble geysers or even ice volcanoes, constantly renewing the surfaces of the rhyd and make-make. But some objects in the koi belt behave so unusually that they literally turn our understanding of celestial mechanics upside down.
One of these objects is Nick. It orbits the Sun in the opposite direction to all other planets, 35 times farther from the Sun than Earth is beyond the orbit of Neptune. Moreover, Nick's orbit is tilted at an angle of 110° relative to the plane of the solar system. According to all available models of its formation, this simply cannot happen. Such a strange movement could mean that Niku did not form near the Sun, but is a guest from another star system that accidentally ended up in ours and stayed. Or it could be the result of the impact of an as-yet-unknown massive cosmic body, such as the
hypothetical Planet Nine, which has yet to be found. But perhaps another anomalous object in the Kuiper belt could provide the answer. January 1, 2019 NASA spacecraft. New Horizons flew past the distant object 2014 MU69, taking images and collecting data about its shape, composition, and structure. This was the first detailed study of a Kuiper Belt object. This celestial body, only 34 km wide, is now officially known as Arrokoth.
It consists of two parts, which, judging by everything, once merged together. But if they just crashed into each other, why didn't they just blow up into pieces? Instead, two tiny trans-Neptunian objects would have to approach very slowly along a specific trajectory, so close that their weak gravity could bind them together in a similar way. In other words, the coincidence that would have led to the formation of Arrokoth seems highly unlikely. But less so, here it is. Poyaspera seems like one big crime scene where all possible anomalies are collected. But even if we don't expect any stranger objects than what's already there,
astronomers currently suggest that up to 200 dwarf planets like Haumea, Makemake, and Hyerids could be hiding here. Try to study this list at school when we find them all. and keep your pocket wider. Hypothetically, even further beyond the Kuiper belt, it is quite possible to expect up to 3,000 more dwarf planets. But it is their study that may finally solve the mystery of Planet Nine. Judging by recent research, it doesn't exist at all. In 2021, a group of astronomers missed that previously discovered anomalous clusters of trans-Neptunian objects might simply be an observational error.
Astronomer Kevin Napier's team has found that extreme trans-Neptunian objects, which were considered evidence of Planet 9 impact, may be evenly distributed. This became apparent after scientists analyzed data on where and when the telescopes were pointed during the research. It turned out that objects were most often found where telescopes were most sensitive, and not because of some external force, such as the gravitational influence of a large planet. Thus, their uneven distribution may simply be a consequence of observational limitations.
Napier concluded that this study could be explained simply by the selectivity of the data without the need to introduce an additional planet. However, Mike Brown and Konstantin Bategin disagree, arguing that the data analysis actually supports the idea of clustering associated with planet De. But even if trans-Neptunian objects are indeed moving anomalous, the answer may lie not in one massive planet, but in a vast number of small objects in remote regions of the solar system. If there really are a few hundred to a few thousand dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt, and you add in all the comets and asteroids like Rakota, maybe that's enough.
That is, despite the fact that all of these objects are quite small and far from the Sun, their collective gravity can be combined to correspond to a planet more massive than Earth. And if distributed unevenly for any reason, it was this horn that could significantly affect the orbits of trans-Neptunian objects known to us and create the illusion of Planet Nine. Especially since something similar has already happened in the history of astronomy. The same Urban Leverrier, who mathematically discovered Neptune, was convinced until the end of his life of the existence of the planet Vulcan, very close to the sun. It was indicated by the anomalous activity of Mercury, which at that time could not be
explained otherwise than by the influence of another planet. Astronomers searched for the volcano for several years until, at the beginning of the 20th century, Albert Einstein explained Mercury's motion using his new theory of relativity. And it seems that the planet has already experienced a similar breakthrough. A group of German astronomers led by Susanne Palzner have proposed a fascinating new hypothesis. The cause of the anomalous orbits may not be Planet Nine, but something much bigger. A whole star. After all, the sun is not lonely at all. Around it is an entire cosmic city with dozens of other stars, albeit at vast distances. And just as neighbors in a city occasionally cross paths or accidentally bump into each other,
stars in their movement through the galaxy are able to interact. This causes gravitational perturbations that are all the more significant. The closer the star passes and the smaller the mass of nearby objects. The celestial bodies in the Kuiper belt are just like that. A sufficiently massive star that flew past the outskirts of the Solar System could literally play billiards with them and push them along very strange trajectories. How plausible is this not in theory, but in reality? Falzner's team simulated dozens of such passages and unexpectedly got the same picture that we observe.
Approximately 2-3 billion years ago, at a distance of 100 astronomical units from the Sun, at an angle of 70° to the plane of the solar system, a star passed, which was only over 20% less massive than the Sun itself. It was its gravity that so perturbed the Kuiper Belt that some objects in it took on very specific orbits and created the appearance of the presence of a massive planet nearby. But another interesting effect follows from this model . Beyond the orbit of Neptune there must be hundreds of objects that rotate in the opposite direction to the rest of the planets. That is, Niku's orbit is not an anomaly, but only a consequence of that ancient passage of the star.
However, for the Falzner model to replace the planet hypothesis, we still need to find the remaining retrograde TNOs But in this search, we may well make an even stranger discovery that will literally open the way to the stars. In addition to stars, wandering planets may also pass through the vicinity of the Solar System regularly, every few tens of thousands of years. That is, those that were once thrown out of their star systems due to gravitational perturbations. And now they're just flying through the galaxy in complete darkness. It is thanks to the search for Planet Nine that our telescopes have already improved to the point where they could well spot a wandering planet against the background of stars. Gas giant.
But this is not just an astronomical curiosity. A couple of years ago, physicist Irina Romanovskaya from Houston Community College put forward the hypothesis that extraterrestrial civilizations are advanced. can use such planets as spaceships to travel the galaxy. The usual probability that aliens will suddenly visit us on a wandering planet is practically zero. But we could ourselves equip an expedition to one of them when it passes through the belt. A sufficiently large number of colonies on it could survive thousands of years of travel and reach other stars without having to accelerate at the expense of huge fuel costs. While it may sound like fantasy today, we likely have enough time to prepare and not
just find an extra planet in the solar system, but to make it a springboard for our galactic expansion. One could even call this planetary ship Nibiru. I think the ancient Babylonians would approve. Do you think we have a chance of finding something even more extraordinary on the outskirts of our solar system?
