Mysterious ‘Planet 9’ orbiting our sun could be a ‘rogue planet’ from outside the Solar System
Last year, scientists spotted signs which offered a hint that there is a huge, unseen world lurking at the edge of our solar system – ‘Planet Nine’.
The giant, hidden planet is thought to be 10 times more massive than Earth – and on an orbit which takes 10,000 or 20,000 years to go round the sun.
But the story of Planet 9 might be even odder than first believed – as scientists say it may once have been a ‘rogue’, free-roaming planet which was captured by our solar system.
James Vesper of New Mexico State University (NMSU) said during an American Astronomical Society news conference in Grapevine, Texas, ‘It is very plausible’ that Planet Nine is a captured rogue, a world that cruises through space unattached to a star.
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Vesper and his colleagues simulated 156 different encounters between our solar system and free-roaming bodies.
Vesper wrote, ‘Rogue, or free-floating, planets may be abundant in the Galaxy. Several have been observed in the solar neighborhood.
‘They have been predicted to even outnumber stars by a large fraction, and may partially account for dark matter in the disk of the galaxy, as the result of circumbinary planet formation.
‘We speculate that if rogue planets are abundant as predicted, then, Planet 9 may be a captured rogue.’
