Today we talk about Planet Nine, a massive ghost world that astronomers are convinced is lurking at the absolute edge of our solar system, even though nobody has ever actually seen it.
The case for Planet Nine is a stellar detective story. Scientists noticed that a cluster of icy, distant objects way out past Pluto are all being tugged into bizarre, elongated, and tilted orbits. The mathematical fingerprints point to one culprit: a hidden super-Earth, estimated to be roughly five to ten times the mass of our planet, lurking in the deep darkness. In this episode, we explore the hunt for this missing giant, which takes an agonizing 10,000 to 20,000 years just to complete a single trip around the sun.
We’re diving into how researchers use advanced mathematical modeling and gravitational anomalies to track an invisible world, the massive telescopes scanning the deepest skies to catch its faint reflection, and the wild alternative theories - like the possibility that Planet Nine isn't a planet at all, but a primordial, golf-ball-sized black hole left over from the Big Bang.
Grab your telescopes and peer into the abyss - we’re hunting for a world hiding in plain sight.
S2 · E25July 13 · 57 min