Planet X does not exist

Planet X does not exist

Evidence collected by NASA’s space telescope has refuted the existence of the mysterious Planet X.

The hypothetical world, which could rotate around the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto, inspired many to the doomsday theory. On the eve of the “long-awaited” end of the world on December 21, 2012, Planet X was to intervene to disrupt the internal balance in the solar system and cause gravitational chaos. According to other prophecies, the mysterious Planet X could actually be the fictional “Nibiru” planet inhabited by the Annunaki, an alien race eager to seize the Earth.

15 months later, we all know perfectly well that the alien invasion did not happen - apparently we won.

All this nonsense about the end of the world is complete nonsense, but the search for “Planet X” actually has scientific roots. In the middle and late 19th century, astronomers tracked the gravitational perturbations of the gas giants in an attempt to track down the mysterious world in the extreme limits of the solar system. This hypothetically massive planet was called “Planet X”. However, this fascinating search for the mysterious planet ended after the discovery of tiny Pluto in 1930. Having no gravitational potential to explain gravitational perturbations, astronomers realized that Pluto was not the Planet X they had been looking for. After realizing that the gravitational perturbations observed earlier were caused by errors in observation, Planet X became a legend. The idea that the Sun could have a stellar partner in the solar system was also explored.

Some oddities in the outer solar system gave astronomers a reason to speculate, but what if something massive could be hiding there? One of the proofs of this hypothesis is the periodic fall of objects from the Kuiper belt in the region behind Pluto. The geological chronicle suggests that there is a pattern in the mass extinction on Earth associated with the fall of comets. Maybe the orbit of a distant body causes a failure in the uniform motion of comets on a cyclical basis?

“The outer solar system probably does not contain a large gas giant or a dwarf star,” says Kevin Ljugman of the Exoplanet Center and the Residential Worlds of the University of Pennsylvania.

Lyugman and his team analyzed the data obtained using the WISE camera installed onboard the Hubble Space Telescope, which conducted a detailed infrared survey of the entire sky from 2010 to 2011. If something big was hidden there, then WISE would easily notice it. But, alas, this did not happen.

According to a NASA press release: “There is no object, the size of a Saturn or larger, located at a distance of 10,000 astronomical units and an object, the size of a Jupiter or more, located at a distance of more than 26,000 astronomical units.” Recall that one astronomical unit is 93 million miles, and Pluto is at a distance of about 40 a. e. from the sun. However, the search for Planet X has never been a priority for WISE. The main study revealed 3525 stars and brown dwarfs within 500 light-years from the Sun. On a cosmic scale, these objects are right in front of our galactic threshold.

During his main mission, WISE was able to do two full infrared sky scans with an interval of 6 months. Comparing the position of objects in two scans, astronomers are able to determine the shifts of certain objects. Known as the parallax effect, this moment is a valuable tool for astronomers.

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