planet_nine

Image: Calculated Orbit of Planet Nine

The six most distant known objects in the solar system with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Also, when viewed in three dimensions, they tilt nearly identically away from the plane of the solar system. Batygin and Brown show that a planet with 10 times the mass of the earth in a distant eccentric orbit anti-aligned with the other six objects (orange) is required to maintain this configuration.
Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC); [Diagram created using WorldWide Telescope.]

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