when I was a kid I loved the idea of
finding a new planet way away from the
Sun you know we might have just like
found one right hey guys Amy and tres
with you on dnews today the biggest news
in the world no bigger okay the biggest
news in the solar system is that
researchers from the California
Institute of Technology might have found
a new planet currently known as Planet 9
this new discovery could be hugely
significant planet 9 has about 10 times
the mass of Earth and is probably close
in size to Neptune on top of that it is
so far away this giant planet orbits
roughly 2.8 billion miles from the Sun
making its year lasts between 10 and
20,000 earth years Amy there's planet is
bonkers and before you ask it is
definitely a planet according to the
International Astronomical Union
definition a planet needs to orbit the
Sun check be massive enough to be round
double check and have enough
gravitational pull to clear its orbit
triple check in fact between its size
and distance from the Sun planet 9
dominates an area larger than any other
giant planet we know of this is so cool
except you know full disclosure we
haven't actually seen planet 9 yeah true
for the moment this new planet is
theoretical which raises a very
interesting question if this planet has
been in our own solar system this whole
time why are we only finding it now well
because we weren't looking for it this
was kind of an accident in 1992
astronomers at the University of Hawaii
discovered this small object orbiting
out past the dwarf planet Pluto at least
40 times the distance from Earth to the
Sun since then astronomers have been
scanning this region called the Kuiper
belt and reporting on their findings
during these scans a research team at
Caltech noticed that six of the 13 most
distant known Kuiper belt objects
clumped together in a strange way the
objects all travel at different rates
but they all have similarly elliptical
orbits tilted from our own another pair
of researchers tried to figure out what
was causing these small bodies to behave
so strangely but also so similarly by
mapping the gravity and orbit of all the
known objects they determined there's
just not enough mass in that part of the
Kuiper belt to affect them like this the
Kuiper belt would need to be more than
100 times more
massive to be the culprit so what else
could be causing this weird behavior a
massive planet by trying different
arrangements using computer simulations
the researchers determined the only
thing that could cause that gravitation
effect would be a massive planet way out
in the Kuiper belt this is how they
found planet 9 this might sound like a
lot of sketchy guesswork but it's
actually a viable method of finding
planets that has worked before in the
early 1800s
astronomers tracking the newly
discovered planet Uranus notice that it
didn't follow the orbit mathematical
model said it should the only
explanation was that some other planet
was out there tugging on Uranus
so they used Newtonian laws to
mathematically predict where and what
that object should be and lo and behold
they found Neptune orbiting roughly
where the mystery object was predicted
once astronomers had mathematical models
showing where to look for Neptune it was
pretty easy to spot it I mean
considering the scale of the solar
system Neptune is not that far away for
a powerful telescope planet 9 on the
other hand is not only really far away
astronomers don't totally know where to
look for it just yet as researchers
continue to refine their simulations
they'll learn more about Planet nines
orbit and influence on the distant solar
system and in the meantime astronomers
are gonna start sky hunting if the
planet is at its closest point to the
Sun right now it should be visible in
images gathered during previous surveys
but if it's at its furthest from the Sun
it might still be visible though we need
the world's largest telescopes to spot
it if it's there and according to the
math it probably is planet 9 could
change the understanding of our solar
system if you want to explore more
spacey things with me check out my own
channel vintage space where I to get to
all kinds of things related to early
space exploration in the early 1960s
NASA did look into building a
doughnut-shaped inflatable Space Station
but it never got off the ground in large
part because the agency was laser
focused on getting a man to the moon by
the end of the 1960s
Aimee what do you think we're gonna name
this planet like we do Roman stuff so
Planet vacas gonna go somewhere else
like plenty doesn't wave a planet trace
I like that that sounds good
we do that what would you guys name it
let us know down in the comments make
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thanks for watching
you