Strange Planet Spotted Beyond Neptune At Outer Reaches Of Solar System Defies Explanation
A mysterious object has been noticed by astronomers in the outer solar system beyond Neptune. The icy object known as a TNO (trans-Neptunian object) has been given the nickname "Niku" (which means rebellious in Chinese) and part of its mystery lies in its very weird behavior.
Not only does it orbit at an irregular plane tilted 110 degrees to the plane of the solar system, but it also appears to be going around the sun backwards. Scientists have no idea what might cause such peculiarities.
A planetary system works on a flat plane which forms due to gas clouds creating a flat disk of dust and gas around a star. But something is causing Niku to move upwards and to spin in the opposite direction of what it should be. You can almost hear the murmur of conspiracy theorists getting excited about this.
“It suggests that there’s more going on in the outer solar system than we’re fully aware of,” Matthew Holman from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told New Scientist. Holman is a member of the team who found Niku using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System 1 Survey (Pan-STARRS 1) located on Haleakala, Maui.
The process has now begun to find out what exactly what Niku—named after the Chinese adjective for rebellious—might be. While it's no doubt going to be challenging finding out, for the astronomers working on such a discovery it's always thrilling to begin work on a new mystery.
“Whenever you have some feature that you can’t explain in the outer solar system, it’s immensely exciting because it’s in some sense foreshadowing a new development,” Konstantin Batygin at the California Institute of Technology told New Scientist. Batygin also helped discover Planet Nine. “As they say in the paper, what they have right now is a hint. If this hint develops into a complete story that would be fantastic.”
*Something* is keeping the orbits aligned, when precession should slide them. #planetnine doesn't fix it. Neither did adding a dwarf planet.
Of course, no space science report would be complete without some words of warning from the world of conspiracy. Could it be Planet 9, Planet Nibiru, or possibly something under intelligent control?