By now you’ve probably heard the announcement that astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown think they’ve tracked down “Planet 9,” a long-rumored large world orbiting in the distant wilderness of the solar system. Even if you haven’t heard, the news may sound familiar, since a confusingly similar but completely separate report made the rounds just a month ago. (Students of history will recall that Planet X stories also circulated in 2014 and 2006, and have been a staple of the astronomy hype machine all the way back to the discovery of Ceres in 1801.)
The dreary truth is that the Batygin and Brown claim, while stronger than the ones that came before, is still soaked in uncertainty. But there’s another truth, far more exciting, that goes with it: The latest efforts to find Planet X are hugely revealing, even if these particular ones don’t hold up.
Reason #1: The competing claims starkly illustrate the difference between seeing and believing. The case for Planet 9 is much stronger than for the ones described in December, even though researchers have directly observed the earlier objects but have not seen Planet 9 at all. Better yet is reason #2: These stories keep popping up because overwhelming majority of the solar system is cloaked in darkness, and is just now coming into view. Even the latest maybe-planets turn out not to exist, it’s nearly certain that there are big, exotic things out beyond Pluto waiting to be found.
On the Trail of Planet 9
