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For years, astronomers have suspected that something massive may be lurking in the dark reaches of our Solar System beyond Pluto. Now, new observations have revealed a mysterious distant world that is reigniting speculation about the long-debated Planet X theory. While scientists are still working to understand exactly what this object is, its discovery is already raising questions about how much we truly know about our cosmic neighborhood.
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00:05scientists may have just found evidence of a hidden planet in our own solar system not beyond
00:12distant stars not in another galaxy right here orbiting the sun for years astronomers have been
00:22noticing something strange happening far beyond Neptune objects in the outer solar system were
00:28moving in ways that didn't quite make sense their orbits were stretched tilted and oddly aligned
00:35as if something massive was pulling on them now new studies suggest there may be a large unseen
00:44planet hiding in the darkness a world so distant and faint the telescopes have struggled to detect
00:50it directly some scientists call it planet 9 others still refer to it as planet X and if it exists
01:00it
01:01could be one of the biggest discoveries in modern astronomy to understand where this idea comes from
01:07we need to look at the outer edge of the solar system beyond Neptune lies a vast region filled
01:14with icy objects known as the Kuiper belt this area contains dwarf planets like Pluto along with
01:22thousands of smaller bodies left over from the early formation of the solar system most of these objects
01:28follow predictable orbits around the Sun but over time astronomers began to notice that some of them
01:35behaved very differently several distant objects had highly elongated orbits that all pointed in roughly
01:42the same direction instead of being randomly distributed their paths appeared clustered almost as if
01:49something was guiding them that was the first clue in 2016 astronomers analyzing these unusual orbits
01:58proposed a possible explanation they suggested that a large unseen planet might be influencing these objects
02:07through gravity according to their models this hidden world could be about five to ten times more massive than Earth
02:14it might orbit the Sun at a distance of hundreds of astronomical units meaning hundreds of times farther from the
02:22Sun than Earth
02:23at that distance one full orbit could take anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 years that would make it
02:32incredibly difficult to detect
02:34even large telescopes struggle to see objects that faint and distant the planet would reflect very little sunlight
02:42and it would move extremely slowly across the sky but here's where things get more interesting as more distant objects
02:51have been discovered the pattern has continued
02:54additional trans neptunian objects show similar orbital clustering strengthening the idea that something massive could be shaping their motion
03:03computer simulations have shown that a planet with the predicted mass and orbit could produce exactly this kind of effect
03:12in other words even though astronomers haven't directly seen planet X they may already be seeing its influence
03:20there is another reason why this planet could have remained hidden for so long some models suggest that its orbit
03:27might be highly tilted compared to the rest of the solar system
03:31instead of orbiting neatly along the same flat plane as the planets it could move at a steep angle spending
03:38most of its time far above or below where astronomers typically search
03:43it may also currently be located in a region of the sky that is difficult to observe possibly hidden behind
03:50dense star fields or simply too faint to stand out
03:54because of this scientists have been conducting targeted searches using powerful telescopes scanning large sections of the sky over many
04:04years
04:04so far no direct image of planet x has been confirmed but the evidence continues to build there are also
04:13alternative explanations some researchers argue that the strange orbits of distant objects could be caused by observational bias
04:22because astronomers tend to search certain regions of the sky more than others the data might appear clustered even if
04:30it is not
04:30others suggest that the combined gravitational influence of many smaller objects could create similar patterns
04:37there is even a hypothesis that a past stellar encounter when another star passed near our solar system millions of
04:45years ago could have disturbed these orbits
04:48but none of these explanations fully account for all the observed data
04:52that is why the planet x hypothesis remains one of the leading ideas and the search is accelerating
05:01new telescopes including next generation survey instruments are expected to scan the sky with greater sensitivity than ever before
05:10these surveys may finally be able to detect faint objects moving slowly in the distant solar system
05:17if planet x is real astronomers believe it could be found within the next decade
05:23and if it is discovered it would reshape our understanding of how the solar system formed
05:29some theories suggest that this planet may have formed closer to the sun and was later pushed outward by gravitational
05:37interactions with jupiter and saturn early in the solar system's history other ideas propose that it could even be a
05:44captured object
05:45from another star system either way it would represent a completely new class of planet
05:52in our solar system right now the outer solar system remains one of the least explored regions around us
06:00we have mapped the surfaces of mars and sent probes beyond pluto but vast areas of space around the sun
06:08are still largely unknown and somewhere out there far beyond neptune a massive world could be moving slowly
06:16through the darkness hidden from view if scientists are right planet x has been there the entire time
06:24we just didn't know where to look
06:28look at this giant donut shaped region far away from earth beyond the orbit of neptune
06:33we're talking about a distance of more than 2.5 billion miles it's the kuiper belt and something eerie and
06:41bizarre is happening there
06:43dwarf planets and other small objects dwelling there refuse to cluster together instead
06:49they follow particular orbits which is weird the reason might be a large mysterious planet hiding beyond
06:57pluto its gravity might be messing up the orbits of those kuiper space bodies
07:05hear me out our solar system is made up of the sun and everything that goes around
07:11it because of the star's strong gravity this includes the eight main planets mercury venus earth
07:17mars jupiter saturn uranus and neptune there are also smaller things like moons asteroids and pluto
07:27for a long time people thought pluto was the ninth planet but when it was reclassified as a dwarf planet
07:33scientists started looking for a new planet x did they have a thing about odd numbers or what and guess
07:41what
07:42some really think there might be a big icy planet hiding far far away beyond neptune
07:48this mystery planet is often called planet nine now planet nine hasn't been seen yet but scientists
07:56think it might be out there because of some tiny far away space rocks called etnos that move following
08:03bizarre confusing paths these paths seem to be grouped together and tilted in a way that doesn't happen by
08:10chance this could mean there's a hidden planet pulling them into place with its gravity
08:16if planet nine is real it might be five to ten times heavier than earth it would also be super
08:22far away hundreds of times farther from the sun than earth is over the years scientists have guessed
08:29different distances for its orbit and the newest guess in 2025 says it could be about 290 times farther
08:37from the sun than earth there are some cool ideas about where planet nine came from it might have started
08:44as a big planet that jupiter once kicked out of the inner solar system or it might have come from
08:50another star or even wandered around space on its own before getting caught by the sun's gravity even
08:57though scientists have looked really hard using powerful telescopes no one has actually seen planet nine
09:03yet and so far its existence is still just a theory but recently a group of researchers tried something
09:12clever they used data from two special space surveys called iras and akari these two looked at the sky
09:20in invisible light far infrared about 23 years apart which is helpful because planet nine is supposed to
09:28move very slowly the team focused on a special list from akari which is better at finding faint
09:35moving things in space they guessed how bright planet nine might be and how fast it might move based on
09:43how
09:43big far away and cold it could be then they looked for matching blips in the sky that were seen
09:50by both
09:51eras and akari but not in the exact same spot that's because a real planet would have moved a little
09:58over 23 years and they indeed found 13 possible matches that could be planet nine their estimations
10:06were based on how far away the object seemed to be 500 to 700 times farther from the sun than
10:12earth
10:13and how heavy it might be which is 7 to 17 times earth's mass after looking very carefully at all
10:21the images they narrowed it down to one really good candidate the two detections weren't in the same spot
10:28in both surveys and the way they appeared in the akari map matched what you'd expect from a slow-moving
10:34object it showed up on one date and wasn't there six months earlier but of course there was a catch
10:41apparently the old data isn't good enough to figure out the exact path of the potential planet
10:48so the team wants to do new follow-up observations using a special camera called dcam which is really
10:55good at spotting faint moving objects that way they can find out if this candidate is really planet 9
11:03additionally it can help us learn more about how our solar system works and how it formed
11:09if planet 9 is ever discovered it would totally change the way we understand our solar system
11:15it could explain why some far out space rocks in the kuiper belt tilt weirdly the thing is most
11:22planets go around the sun in a flat ish circle but those far away objects are tilted about 20 degrees
11:29planet 9 might be the reason why next we'd probably find out why those tilted objects seem to point the
11:36same way their orbits are grouped together in one direction a big hidden planet's gravity could be
11:43hurting them like sheep there are also some strange tilted objects super far away they don't make
11:50sense unless something big like planet 9 is tugging on them a few space rocks orbit the sun backward between
11:57the big planets which is kind of the wrong way that's super weird unless something big is messing with them
12:05some far out kuiper belt objects keep crossing neptune's path and haven't been flung away
12:11that's because planet 9 might be helping keep their orbits stable over a long time
12:18another cool thing is that if planet 9 existed it would be a super earth a kind of planet we
12:25see a lot
12:25around other stars but we don't have in our solar system yet so finding one here would make our solar
12:32solar system more like the others out there throughout history people have been wondering if there
12:39could be hidden planets far beyond neptune even before pluto was found
12:46back in 1880 a guy named george forbes guessed there might be two unknown planets way out there one
12:54about 100 times farther from the sun than earth and the other about 300 times farther he thought these
13:02mystery planets might be pulling on some comets and changing their orbits kind of like how jupiter
13:07does with the comets near it in 2004 scientists found a weird little world called sedna it had a strange
13:16path around the sun that didn't seem to be affected by any of the known planets its closest point to
13:22the
13:22sun called perihelion is way too far for neptune to be the reason this made some scientists wonder if
13:30sedna got pushed into its path by a hidden planet maybe even something as big as earth or bigger others
13:38thought maybe it was a star that flew by a long time ago or another star that formed near ours
13:44then in
13:462014 another odd object was discovered it had a very similar orbit to sedna which made people even
13:53more suspicious that there could be something big out there messing with their paths this kicked off
14:00a new round of the planet x or planet 9 hunt at a meeting in 2012 a scientist named rodney
14:07gomez said that
14:08maybe there was a big hidden planet around 1500 times farther from the sun than earth
14:15he thought it could explain the orbits of other odd objects like some far out comets and centaurs
14:21small bodies that wander among the giant planets at that time those who supported the planet 9 theory
14:28believed that if it existed it would move around the sun in a huge stretched out circle called an
14:34elliptical orbit it would be about 400 to 800 times farther from the sun than earth is about 13 to
14:4226 times
14:42farther than neptune if it really had that kind of orbit it would take around 10 000 to 20 000
14:50years to go around the sun just once plus if it indeed orbited the sun it wouldn't follow the same
14:57flat path as the other planets its path would be tilted by about 15 degrees to 25 degrees the farthest
15:04point in its orbit called aphelion would be in the direction of the torus constellation as for the closest
15:11point it would point towards serpents ophiicus or libra as for the composition of planet 9 it would
15:18probably be a lot like uranus or neptune it would have a thick atmosphere made of hydrogen and helium
15:24and it would be super cold negative 375 degrees fahrenheit its core would be made of iron and its
15:32middle layer would be full of rock and water ice at the same time if the planet was smaller and
15:38denser
15:38then it might be more like earth with a rocky surface instead of a gassy one according to a
15:45scientist named mike brown if planet 9 was real a space probe would reach it in about 20 years if
15:52we
15:52used a powerful slingshot path around the sun
15:58now if earth were the size of a nickel neptune would be about as big as a baseball that's impressive
16:05but it's nothing compared to the giant ninth planet that might be hiding out there now our planet 9's
16:11discovery saga might have finally come to an end turns out the problem wasn't where we were looking
16:17but how and researchers might have just made the biggest solar system discovery in decades you see
16:24the idea of finding a planet beyond neptune has been around for years now i know back in school you
16:30probably learned that the ninth planet was pluto but forget about pluto it's been demoted to a less
16:36fancy category since 2006. what i'm talking about is the planet nine a hypothetical giant planet that
16:44could be our cosmic neighbor we've never actually seen it but scientists are pretty sure it's out there
16:51somewhere hiding in the outer solar system to explain why they think that we need a sheet of paper hey
16:58here's one we place a coin on it and suddenly it starts to move unless we're talking about some
17:04kind of superpower there's no way this coin is moving on its own right so you figure someone must
17:10be on the other side holding a magnet and moving it around you can't see the magnet but it explains
17:16why
17:17the coin is moving that's kind of what's happening with planet nine we can't see it we can't prove it
17:23yet but its existence could explain the strange movements we see out there in space for example
17:30the planets in our solar system orbit on a flat plane is tilted about six degrees relative to the sun
17:37but why six degrees well no one really knows for sure some scientists think those orbits might be
17:43slightly tilted because of the pull of a ninth planet its existence could also explain the unusual paths
17:50of smaller objects in the distant kuiper belt a region full of icy debris that stretches far beyond
17:56neptune's orbit back in 2016 researchers from caltech published a study about planet nine they suggested
18:05it could have a mass about 10 times that of earth and follow a highly elongated path that's a scientific
18:12way of saying it takes forever to make one trip around the sun because of that it would be located
18:17in the
18:18outer solar system i mean far far away it would orbit the sun about 20 to 30 times farther out
18:25than
18:25our most distant planet neptune according to scientists planet nine would take up to 20 000 earth
18:32years to complete just one full orbit around the sun since it's crazy far out there it's almost impossible
18:38to see it so as cool as this hypothesis sounds we've never found solid evidence that planet nine actually
18:46still exists but we might be pretty close in may 2025 a team at national singhua university
18:53might have made one of the most exciting solar system discoveries ever all right so there's a
19:00hypothesis that planet nine hasn't been discovered yet because we haven't been using the right method
19:05this new study raises an interesting question what if planet nine actually looks brighter in infrared
19:12light then it does invisible light let me explain scientists have been trying to spot planet nine
19:18by its reflected light but here's the problem to spotted invisible wavelengths sunlight would have to
19:24travel all the way out to planet nine bounce off its surface and then travel all the way back to
19:30earth
19:30if a neptune-sized planet were about 10 times farther away than neptune it would look about 10 000 times
19:37fainter but a planet's own thermal radiation i mean its heat only has to make a one-way trip so
19:44in
19:44infrared light planet nine would only be about a hundred times fainter that's why it makes more
19:50sense to look for it using space-based infrared telescopes and that's the idea behind this new study
19:56the team started digging through archives searching for old infrared sky survey data and they pulled it
20:03from two main sources first iris the satellite launched in the 80s that scanned the sky for
20:09almost a year then the japanese satellite akari another infrared observatory that operated between
20:162006 and 2011. so basically they compared objects that showed up in iris database and noticed which ones
20:24had moved by the time akari took its observations and by doing that the researchers found something
20:30incredible an object that might just be our long-lost ninth planet because if something
20:37moves it could be a planet orbiting the sun right and yeah they did find some celestial objects showing
20:43tiny movements but before jumping to conclusions they had to rule out the parallax effect and that's
20:49something really important when we're talking about solar system discoveries to explain it i need you to
20:55do something hold one finger in front of your face close one eye and now switch your finger seems to
21:02move a tiny bit right that's because you're looking at it from a slightly different angle from one eyeball
21:08to the other the same thing happens when we look out into space from earth since our planet orbits the
21:14sun our view of very distant objects shifts just a little that effect is called parallax my point is
21:22because of this effect planet nine would appear to move across the sky as earth goes around the sun
21:28on any given day it might seem to be in one spot but six months later when earth is on
21:33the opposite
21:34side of the sun it would look like it shifted six months after that it would seem to move back
21:40again
21:41scientists had to account for parallax actually they had to remove its effects so the team looked at
21:47images of the sky taken on the same date every year because on that same date earth is always in
21:53the
21:53same spot in its orbit that means if planet nine is real it would show up in the same place
22:00in those
22:00images every year no fake wiggle from parallax just its real position this careful search led them to a
22:08single object a tiny dot in the infrared data this strange little spot had moved slightly along its
22:15orbit around the sun over the 23 years between iris and a carry wait could that be it did astronomers
22:22just confirm a hidden planet well maybe but don't get too excited the data we have on its motion over
22:30that
22:30time is not enough to figure out its full orbit so for now we still can't say for sure if
22:37this mysterious
22:38object is really planet nine it's definitely a strong candidate though based on how bright the
22:44object appears the team estimates it could be pretty massive and that came as a big surprise you see
22:51previous nasa research ruled out any jupiter-sized or saturn-sized planets hiding out there but a
22:58smaller world would have gone undetected so the scientists were looking for something just a bit bigger
23:03than earth but it turns out this mysterious planet might be more massive than neptune now that they
23:10discovered planet nine supposedly at least the plan is to keep tracking it and collecting new data but
23:16don't think the road ahead will be easy because since the acary satellite spotted it for the first time
23:22that object didn't just sit still it's been moving slowly through space ever since so now scientists need
23:29to use regular telescopes on earth to look for it again and here's the tricky part they're not exactly
23:35sure where it moved to so they have to search a pretty big patch of the sky and so far
23:41no matching object
23:42has been found whether this really turns out to be the planet nine discovery or not only time will tell
23:49for now its existence is still up for debate but with powerful new technology on the way like nasa's nancy
23:56grace
23:56roman space telescope astronomers are more determined than ever to uncover the truth
24:02and if planet nine really is out there hiding the cold dark edges of our solar system it's running out
24:09of places to hide so we might be getting closer to finding a massive icy planet beyond neptune's orbit
24:17sorry pluto still not you recently some universe mapping using data from a telescope in hawaii
24:24eliminated about 78 percent of the possible locations for this mysterious waldo from space
24:30some people call it planet nine while others prefer planet x either way it's been causing controversy
24:37since its existence was first proposed and that is mainly because no study so far can answer the big
24:44question does it really exist if discovered planet nine would rank as the fifth largest planet in our solar
24:51system with a mass 10 times that of earth it's also theorized to be gaseous like uranus the initial
25:00study on planet nine dating back to 2016 suggests that this colossal new planet orbits the sun 29 times
25:08farther out than neptune which sits at about 2.8 billion miles as a result the planet nine would take
25:15between 10 000 and 20 000 years to complete a single orbit around the sun if confirmed this yet to
25:22be
25:22understood world would dominate a region larger than any other known planet in our cosmic neighborhood
25:29these are all intriguing hypotheses but without a single piece of evidence or observation to back them up
25:36before dismissing this as a wild guess it is important to note that these researchers relied on complex
25:43mathematical modeling and computer simulations to speculate about the planet's characteristics
25:49because that's what they do the hypothetical presence of this planet would explain various
25:54mysterious features located beyond neptune we are specifically talking about the kuiper belt
26:01a huge donut-shaped region filled with icy debris left over from the formation of the solar system
26:07including comets and dwarf planets like pluto what happens is that the six farthest objects in the
26:14kuiper belt exhibit elliptical orbits that are all oriented in a similar direction within physical space
26:21and tilted approximately 30 degrees downward relative to the orbital plane of our eight known planets
26:27what's strange here is that despite their distinct orbital velocities around the solar system
26:33they maintain this alignment the likelihood of such alignment occurring randomly is extremely low
26:39around 0.007 so here comes planet nine a hypothetical massive celestial body that offers a plausible
26:49explanation for this strange phenomenon potentially exerting gravitational influence to shape these orbits
26:57planets the initial theory didn't hold up for long facing accusations of observational bias and
27:03calculation errors then in 2017 another study popped up sparking back the idea that maybe planet nine is
27:12out there after all this time spanish astronomers tried a novel approach focusing on observing extreme
27:19trans-neptunian objects these celestial bodies orbit the sun in highly stretched elliptical
27:25paths with average distances exceeding 13 billion miles the research suggests that the distances
27:32between these objects nodes and the sun might provide clues to planet nine's location you see these
27:39nodes are the points where a celestial body's orbit intersects the solar system's plane when these objects reach
27:45these points they're more likely to interact with other solar system bodies potentially causing significant
27:52changes in their orbits or even collisions so if the trajectory of these extreme trans-neptunian
27:59objects remain stable everything's fine but if it's not well that's a sign that something else
28:05something big is messing with their path and that's exactly what the research found there is something unseen
28:13out there throwing these objects off course and that something could be a planet chilling at a distance
28:19between 300 to 400 times farther from the sun than earth to this day the study of the extreme
28:26trans-neptunian objects is the strongest evidence we've got for planet nine's existence
28:32and if you're still not convinced by this theory know that strange motions like these have led to planetary
28:38discoveries before neptune for instance was spotted because uranus's motion didn't quite agree with the
28:45predictions of newtonian gravity but the deflection of its orbit could be explained if it was caused by a
28:52pull of an undiscovered planet and just like that we discovered neptune
28:59now the year is 2021 and there's all this buzz about planet nine again after correcting some old guesses
29:06studies are now leaning towards the idea that this mystery world follows an epic loop around the sun
29:12every seven thousand years that is massive news because it means this planet might be closer than
29:19we ever thought making it easier for our telescopes to spot it the paper also suggests there is a whopping
29:2699 percent chance that the funky orbits of these distant objects are all because of this unseen planet not
29:33just some cosmic coincidence now the odds of this whole situation being a fluke are down to a 1 in
29:40250 chance which is much better than the 1 in 10 000 chance back in 2016. all these optimistic numbers
29:49have
29:50brought us to where we are today keeping our hopes and working on better equipment to continue the mission
29:55of spotting planet nine as mentioned earlier researchers in hawaii created some kind of treasure map utilizing
30:03the panoramic survey telescope and rapid response system to eliminate 78 of its locations this is great
30:11news considering how challenging it is to find a planet-sized needle in a cosmic haystack but
30:17unfortunately planet nine's presence remains a ghost in the dark outer reaches of our solar system
30:24enthusiasts are still convinced of its existence and believe it is only a matter of time before we
30:30celebrate the discovery of earth's new cosmic cousin they're putting their hopes on the verice rubin
30:36observatory which is currently under construction in chile and is scheduled to begin science operations
30:42in late 2025. over the course of 10 years this observatory will scan the entire southern hemisphere sky
30:49every few nights with a 27-foot fast-moving telescope equipped with the largest digital camera in the world
30:57the idea is to catalog everything in the solar system reaching out to and beyond neptune and tracking the
31:04movements of millions of celestial objects including space junk asteroids comets and stars if planet nine
31:12is indeed out there this next generation telescope could be the one to find it
31:18the existence of this mysterious planet is far from being universally accepted in the scientific community
31:25that is simply because planet nine isn't the only explanation for the strange phenomenon occurring
31:31beyond neptune one theory suggests that a group of distant objects such as dwarf planets comets and
31:38moons might be collectively influencing the orbits of the extreme trans neptunian objects others believe
31:45that a black hole is behind all this these compressed masses are some of the densest objects in the universe
31:51potentially capable of affecting the orbits of other masses like how this supposed ghost planet 9 is
31:57believed to be doing another bold perspective suggests that our current understanding of the laws of
32:04gravity is flawed actually incomplete this theory known as modified newtonian dynamics proposes that these
32:13distant icy objects exhibit strange behavior not due to influence from another planet but rather
32:20because the immense gravitational field of the milky way is influencing them however even supporters of
32:26this theory acknowledge that it is too early to draw firm conclusions and much more extensive research is still required
32:35while we continue our relentless hunt for planet nine some astronomers have taken it a step further
32:42suggesting the existence of a hypothetical planet 10
32:46this world has a mass and size like that of mars or earth and is located on the edges of
32:52the kuiper belt
32:53but the thing is if this alleged planet 10 is indeed as small as scientists believe it might not have
33:00enough
33:00gravity to clear its orbit of debris and that is pretty similar to what happens with pluto being one of
33:06the
33:06reasons why it got into trouble back in 2006 so yeah it's better not to get too excited this supposed
33:14planet
33:14planet 10 might end up classified as another dwarf planet
33:18thanks to do your planet
33:18have an amazing example of this fact
33:18and for the planet that antibody we can Hail to you
33:18because if you're doing a great type of antioxileanca
33:18got anastedrose and say
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