Planet X — Fact or Fiction?

Taking a look at what some may think is not real: Planet X

(INTELLIHUB) — There has been a lot of talk the past several years about a mysterious Planet X. But there are so many conspiracy theories floating around out there, that it is often difficult to ascertain fact from fiction. So does Planet X really exist, or will it fall by the wayside, alongside idle chatter of the “flat earthers?”

Now according to the solarsystem.nasa.gov website, while there is not 100% certainty that the mysterious Planet X does indeed exist. Based on observations and computer modeling, there is an indication that an object, possibly with a mass ten times greater than that of the earth, is orbiting the sun in the darkest reaches of our solar system.

According to an article which quotes Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, [While] “it’s too early to say with certainty there’s a so-called Planet X. What we’re seeing is an early prediction based on modeling from limited observations. It’s the start of a process that could lead to an exciting result.”

Now remember, while I have often stated that when the government releases data, it is frequently decades after a discovery has been made or technology has been developed, in this case there are other people who back up what Green appears to be discreetly alluding to.

The NASA article goes on to say that “In January 2015, Caltech astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown announced new research that provides evidence of a giant planet tracing an unusual, elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The prediction is based on detailed mathematical modeling and computer simulations, not direct observation.”

Batygin and Brown published their groundbreaking research entitled Evidence for a Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System in the January 2016 edition of the Astronomical Journal.

The NASA publication reports the two ground-breaking researchers believe that “…. Planet X may … be similar in size to Uranus or Neptune … [and] the predicted orbit is about 20 times farther from our sun on average than Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). It would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun (where Neptune completes an orbit roughly every 165 years).”

Due to its large size, there would be no pluto-styled debate over whether Planet X would be classified as a planet, it would automatically qualify. The image below depicts Caltech’s illustration of the celestial body’s ellipsis.

One of the questions which people ask is, if this unknown planet has not been seen or truly “detected,” why do scientists assume that there is something out there?

Well the answer is that in space, smaller objects tend to follow the paths of larger objects in small clusters. In layman’s terms this could be compared to dried leaves lying on the shoulder of the road which get sucked into the draft of a passing semi truck.

So at this point, the Caltech researchers have staked their claims on observing factors which occur around other large bodies hurtling through space, and have noted similarities which have led them to conclude that there is indeed an undetected mass circling our sun, with smaller bodies “in tow” along the same ellipsis.