No, Planet Nine Won't Kill Us All

[Garrison Hilliard]

No, Planet Nine Won't Kill Us All

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | April 8, 2016 02:57pm ET



No, Planet Nine Won't Kill Us All

Artist's illustration of Planet Nine, a hypothesized world about 10
times more massive than Earth that may orbit in the far outer solar
system. Doomsayers' fears about the putative planet are unfounded,
experts stress.
Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Don't believe the doomsday hype about the putative Planet Nine.

Yesterday (April 7), the New York Post published a video claiming
that
[29]Planet Nine -- a hypothesized world in the solar system's far
outer
reaches -- could send asteroids and comets hurtling into Earth
soon,
with potentially devastating consequences.

"A newly discovered planet could destroy Earth as soon as this
month,"
the New York Post said yesterday via its Twitter account, @nypost,
by
way of advertising the new video. [[30]The Evidence for Planet Nine
in
Pictures]

There is so much wrong here. First of all, the Post's tweet, and
the
[31]new 30-second video, describe Planet Nine as an officially
discovered and confirmed world. This is not the case; astronomers
Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, both of whom are based at the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, inferred the
planet's
existence based on the strange orbits of a half dozen small objects
in
the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune.

Astronomers are now actively hunting for Planet Nine -- which
Batygin and Brown think is about 10 times more massive than Earth,
and
orbits about 600 times farther from the sun than our planet does --
but
to date, it has not been detected.

Second, we have nothing to fear from Planet Nine, even if it does
exist, according to Brown.

Hey, so, fun fact? Planet Nine is not going to cause the earth's
destruction. If you read that it will, you have discovered
idiotic
writing!
-- Mike Brown (@plutokiller) April 8, 2016

"Hey, so ... fun fact? Planet Nine is not going to cause the
Earth's
destruction. If you read that it will, you have discovered idiotic
writing!" Brown said yesterday via his Twitter account,
@plutokiller. (Brown's Twitter handle references the fact that his
discoveries of objects in the outer solar system helped demote
Pluto to
"dwarf planet" status back in 2006.)

The New York Post's misleading video may result from a conflation
of
Planet Nine with other hypothesized, undiscovered objects in
Earth's
neck of the cosmic woods -- namely, Nibiru and Nemesis.

[35]Nibiru is a proposed large planet that conspiracy theorists
have
predicted will crash into and destroy Earth. Many prognostications
had
the cataclysm occurring in 2012, to coincide with the supposed
"Mayan
apocalypse." There is no evidence that Nibiru exists, or that such
an
impact is imminent. (Some variations of the Nibiru myth call it
Planet
X, but this latter moniker can also refer to a large world whose
existence was first postulated by astronomer Percival Lowell in the
early 20th century, to explain perceived oddities in the orbits of
Uranus and Neptune. So it can get a bit confusing.)

[36]Nemesis is a small star or brown dwarf (a "failed star" that's
considerably larger than a planet) hypothesized to zoom through
space
not far from the sun. Nemesis' gravitational pull regularly jostles
the
faraway comet repository known as the Oort Cloud, the idea goes,
sending comets barreling toward Earth -- and thus explaining the
perceived cycle of mass extinctions on our planet, which seem to
occur
every 26 million years or so.

PSA: Planet Nine is not Planet X or Niburu or Nemesis. All
theories
of "a planet out there" are not the same theory!
pic.twitter.com/9yUClWTojF
-- Mike Brown (@plutokiller) April 7, 2016

The Nemesis hypothesis is more scientifically respectable than the
Nibiru fairy tale. Again, however, astronomers have found no solid
evidence that the supposed star/brown dwarf actually exists.

The New York Post wouldn't be the first outlet to lump Planet Nine
in
with Planet X, Nibiru and Nemesis. On Wednesday (April 6), Brown,
motivated by what he read in a different Planet Nine news story,
offered the following helpful hint via Twitter: "PSA: Planet Nine
is
not Planet X or Nibiru or Nemesis. All theories of 'a planet out
there'
are not the same theory!"

In other Planet Nine news: A new modeling study suggests that, if
the putative world actually exists, it's likely about 3.7 times
wider
than Earth and is downright frosty, with a temperature of about
minus
375 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 226 degrees Celsius).

.

http://www.space.com/32515-planet-nine-will-not-destroy-earth-nibiru.html

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