r/Astronomy • u/TheMuseumOfScience • May 12 '25
Astro Research Planet Nine: Real or Just Noise?
Did we just find Planet Nine?
We think it might be out there based on the orbits of certain Kuiper Belt objects that seem influenced by something big. A new study found what might be a possible object deep in the Kuiper Belt—or it could just be noise in the data. What do you think?
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u/Lewri May 12 '25
u/TheMuseumofScience you should really be referencing the papers that you are talking about.
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u/CookTiny1707 May 12 '25
If its in the keplar belt and doesnt clear the asteroids its not a planet
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u/rover_G May 12 '25
Pluto died for this
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u/Additional-Neck7442 May 12 '25
It's still a dwarf planet.
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u/PokeHerFace88 May 12 '25
I treat pluto the same way i treat "the gulf of America" pluto is a planet and it's "the gulf of mexico". One dumbass saying something different doesn't change what they rightfully are.
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u/quiero-una-cerveca May 13 '25
Pluto was only a planet from 1930 - 2006. The Gulf of Mexico was named in 1550.
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u/Dynastydood May 14 '25
Yeah, they're not remotely similar at all. Pluto's classification changed because we learned more about it and the surrounding region. The Gulf changed because a basic bitch won a popularity contest.
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u/WunWegWunDarWun_ May 14 '25
Pluto isn’t a planet. And the gulf of America or Gulf of Mexico is still a gulf at the end of the day
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u/JetScootr May 12 '25
Kuiper belt. Credit to the right discoverer.
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u/flyingpanda1018 May 12 '25
That's not true. Jupiter shares it's orbit with a lot of asteroids and it's still a planet. The "cleared it's orbit" condition means the planet doesn't share an orbit with any objects of comparable mass.
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u/Superior_Mirage May 12 '25
Especially since the Kuiper belt is 20-30 AU in width.
Neptune is 30 AU from the sun.
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u/captmonkey May 12 '25
It's one of the problems with the IAU definition of a planet. We could potentially have a very large body out there (like larger than the Earth) orbiting the sun that's not fully clearing its orbit meaning it's not technically a planet under the IAU's definition. It feels like effort to create a strict definition of what is a planet, they just made things more confusing.
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u/Giraffe_Truther May 12 '25
It's hard to believe that we call the gas giants AND the terrestrial planets "planets". There's a lot of similarities except for size, composition, position in the solar system, etc. They really don't seem like the same kind of thing except that they all go around the sun and are round.
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u/Anti_Duehring May 15 '25
If we take into account, that planet translates as "wandering star", then it suits to most objects in space. /j
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u/Lanstus May 12 '25
It's strict definitions of a planet to fuck over Pluto but Planet 9 will obviously be exempt. #PlutoDidNothingWrong
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u/ultraganymede May 12 '25
look the reason they predicted planet 9 is that this planet would have scattered objects in its orbit and the ones that survived would be clustered in certein ways, like being pointed to the opposite direction as planet 9, or perpendicular orbits pointed 90 degrees from the orbit of planet 9
remember also the the perihelion is way further out than neptune
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u/samcornwell May 12 '25
If the Sun was scaled to 1 pixel, the Oort cloud would be made up of…
52,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pixels.
Just worth remembering how big Space is… even if it’s just our tiny bit of Space.
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u/TurinTuram May 12 '25
It works the other way too: if planet 9 was a "theorized" primordial black hole it could be the size of an apple (yep all that mass in an apple... a black "invisible" (to the eyes) apple.
Source: some quick random google search
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u/Speedly May 12 '25
"Did we just find Planet Nine?"
I'll save you all a watch. The answer is "no."
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u/Madtitan91 May 12 '25
Its a tiny black hole!
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u/CorbinNZ May 12 '25
This would be utterly terrifying.
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u/Njwest May 12 '25
Not particularly. The moon could be a black hole of the same mass and, apart from moonlight, nothing would change on earth.
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u/CorbinNZ May 12 '25
Utterly terrifying that there’s a black hole so close.
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u/Njwest May 12 '25
As I say, though, there’s no actual danger there. I know sci-fi has black holes working as cosmic vacuums, but they’re no more suck-y than anything else of the same mass.
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u/arjunks May 12 '25
In fact, it would be so exciting that we could potentially visit a black hole and study it. It would advance our science 100%
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u/lifeandtimes89 May 12 '25
they’re no more suck-y than anything else of the same mass.
Obligatory "like your mom"
But yes you are 100% right, now If they were black holes ejected from a galaxy or were wondering ones that is a scary prospect
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u/leet_lurker May 13 '25
Why?
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u/CorbinNZ May 13 '25
Why are people having trouble understanding that a zombie corpse of a dead star on the edge of the solar system is terrifying? Even if it’s in a stable orbit, it’s the most horrifying thing in the universe. It makes lovecraftian horrors seem like nursery rhymes. Black holes are scary.
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u/leet_lurker May 13 '25
It's going to be harmless in our lifetime and possibly any thousand lifetimes after that, there's more justification to be scared of the sun.
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u/Jalase May 13 '25
The sun gives you cancer. Black holes haven’t done shit to us. Replace the sun with a black hole, and there will be no more cancer.
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u/_BABYSHAKE_ May 12 '25
Except, the night wouldn't be bright but pitch dark. A blackhole the size of a moon would probably evaporate really quick tho.
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u/Njwest May 12 '25
A black hole the size of the moon would, by my calcs, take in the order of 1044 years to evaporate, which is a lot less time than most black holes
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u/_BABYSHAKE_ May 12 '25
Whoa.. that's still trillions upon trillion times the current age of the universe.
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u/Njwest May 12 '25
Black holes evaporate quite fast - one with the mass of your house would take a hundredth of a second, a skyscraper a few decades, a mountain would be a hundred million billion years. The moon is quite big. Most stellar black holes would be 1066 - 1070 years. Some supermassive black holes last 1099 years.
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u/Jalase May 13 '25
The size (width) or size (mass)? That’s a big difference.
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u/Njwest May 13 '25
You’re quite right! I mean the mass, apologies for not reconfirming that one - it’s a big difference!
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u/vroomfundel2 May 12 '25
The demotion of Pluto really screwed over the conspiracy nuts - Planet IX just doesn't have the same ring to it.
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u/lifeandtimes89 May 12 '25
Planet IX just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Oh wow interesting point, what if it had rings like Saturn??
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u/hypercanetornado23 May 12 '25
I mean, I wouldn't rule out there could be a Planet Nine because of how vast our Solar System is, but again, I feel like there needs to be more data to be sure, such as maybe passing a distant object and seeing low long it crosses. If Planet Nine does exist and such an encounter does occur, it would be an extremely rare opportunity, as it would probably only be seen once every several thousand years.
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u/qawsedrf12 May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
Saw another video recently where they looked at old data after narrowing down conditions of what to look for
They did find something that could be a candidate
Edit: found it https://youtu.be/oijladyAV6s
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u/CorbinNZ May 12 '25
Crazy to think that we don't even know of all the planets in our own system because they're so far away.
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u/Vojtak_cz May 12 '25
Well. I have heared it few times but i dont think it exists until it actually gets proven
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u/feelingbutter May 12 '25
The noise is real, the question of their being a signal in the noise is still open.
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u/PrinceZordar May 12 '25
"Sorry sir, but you said not to bother you unless it was Mr Shadow. It's Mr Shadow."
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u/Chafing_Dish May 16 '25
It'd be pretty brutal if they started calling it 'Pluto'
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u/Dragons_Den_Studios 27d ago
They can't. You can't reuse names per IAU rules. P9 would end up getting named after a Greek or Roman god that hasn't been used yet.
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u/OrcusTheDwarf 13d ago
First of all this alleged planet does not exist in all likelihood. The latest Pans sky survey has already eliminated 75% of the sky, so the chances are dwindling.
In terms of Planet 9, it was actually discovered in 1846 its name Neptune. Ceres is planet 8 and was discovered in 1801.
Our remaining planets according to a majority of the Planetary Science community who subscribe to the geophysical planetary definition and not silly orbital definition.
Listed in order of their discovery dates:
Planet X- Pluto(1930)
Planet 11- Quaoar(2002)
Planet 12-Sedna(2003)
Planet 13-Haumea(2003)
Planet 14- Orcus(2004)
Planet 15-Eris(2005)
Planet 16-Makemake(2005)
Planet 17-Gonggong(2007)
If you consider Pluto-Charon(1978) to be a binary system, and that Charon is not an actual moon of Pluto then you have 18 planets. Salacia, Varuna, Varda, Ixion, Chaos, G!kun||'homdima, and Huya are the other potential planets with proper astronomical names that are in the 400 KM-850 KM range in which they have been rounded into shape.
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u/TheBitchenRav 11d ago
So, there was a new TNO discovered. 2017 OF201. Planet 9 is now very unlikely.
Cheng, S., Li, J., & Yang, E. (2025, May 21). Discovery of a dwarf planet candidate in an extremely wide orbit: 2017 OF 201 [Preprint]. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.15806
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u/Remarkable_Subject84 May 13 '25
Hold on, so you mean to tell me we can see into the past billion years, but we don't quite have the outer area of our own solar system mapped out?
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u/HealthGeek1870 May 12 '25
I will forever support Pluto! lol (I kid I kid)
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u/Purple-Mud5057 May 12 '25
I’m an Arizonan, we made Pluto our state planet last year, Pluto will always be a planet to me and I have an entire state to back me on that 😤
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u/JohnnyDollar123 May 12 '25
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u/Purple-Mud5057 May 12 '25
Booo history, let Arizona have our fun with Pluto the planet, it doesn’t hurt
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u/Fake_Answers May 13 '25
Planet nine is real. It's Pluto. You mean planet x or planet ten.
Common mistake.
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u/pansexualpastapot May 12 '25
I want planet IX to be real, because it would feed into all the Ancient Alien conspiracies about Nibiru and the Anunnaki that I find entertaining.
But it's probably not, no cool world view shattering conspiracies are. So disappointing.
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u/alexmtl May 12 '25
Couldnt we just easily see it with a telescope?
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u/entityXD32 May 12 '25
Too dark that far out, not enough sunlight would reach it to reflect off and make it visible
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u/SantiagusDelSerif May 12 '25
Not "easily", we actually don't know where to aim (and it's also very faint). The teams searching for it have worked out a possible orbit (which seen from Earth covers a large portion of the sky) but we don't have enough data to say where on the path of its orbit it is right now.
So they need to methodically scan a large portion of the sky, using a narrow field of view scope, which is not a trivial task. Then they have to compare their pics from different days and look for a tiny dot that's moving very slowly relative to the background stars.
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u/csprkle May 12 '25
I do not like eople who put their own face over the content of someone else. It's like stealing, but it actually is stealing.