What if I told you our solar system had another mysterious planet? It’s not a terribly new concept, but as our telescopic technology gets better we’re finding more evidence that another planet might just be out there.
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00:00What if I told you our solar system had another mysterious planet?
00:07It's not a terribly new concept, but as our telescopic technology gets better, we're
00:12finding more evidence that another planet might just be out there.
00:14A big part of that evidence is the orbit of objects out beyond dwarf planet Pluto, in
00:18the Kuiper Belt.
00:20Those objects move in a much more oval orbit, and when simulations of gravitational models
00:24are used to figure out why, they suggest that not only is another planet likely lurking
00:28out there, but also that it's a large one, ten times the mass of Earth, or more.
00:33So why haven't we been able to capture a glimpse of it yet?
00:35Well if it is out there, experts say it's likely 20 times the distance that Neptune
00:39is to the Sun, and Neptune is more than 2.5 billion miles from it, meaning this planet
00:44would be 55.4 billion miles from the Sun.
00:48That's made even more difficult since we can only look for it at certain times of the year
00:51during moonless nights, and it's even harder since the primary way we look for distant
00:55planets is to watch for a dip in light as it passes in front of its orbiting star, which
00:59is impossible when we're so much closer than it is to ours.