What Does Planet Nine Look Like? (4K UHD)

[Music] our solar system is a fascinating but strange place there are moons that appear to be frozen solid yet are concealing secret subsurface liquid water oceans we have a neighboring planet that is shrouded in a thick dense atmosphere that is so hot it can melt lead and there are distant gas giants with internal pressures and temperatures so extreme hydrogen is transformed into an exotic liquid metal of course our planet is by far the strangest of them all a warm and wet world where life has flourished across its entire surface a process that currently has never been observed anywhere else far beyond the eight main planets within a region known as the Kuiper belt new and unusual objects are being discovered such as the rapidly spinning egg-shaped dwarf planet how mayor scientists believe that the outer regions of the solar system may be teeming with hundreds of these elusive dwarf planets but there may also be something much larger lurking out there an object that has been nicknamed planet 9 [Music] in January 2015 astronomers from Caltech provided new evidence of a giant undiscovered planet that may be hiding in the darkness of space based on detailed mathematical modeling and computer simulations planet 9 may explain the unique orbits of some distant dwarf planets and other smaller bodies that tend to cluster together as if an unseen object is gravitationally influencing their movements the hypothetical planet is predicted to be a neptune-sized world that could have a mass of about ten times that of Earth it possibly travels around the Sun far beyond Pluto on a highly elongated orbit that takes between 10,000 and 20,000 earth years to complete at its farthest point from the Sun planet 9 maybe over 100 billion miles away which is over 160 billion kilometres away although this evidence may suggest an undiscovered ninth planet within our solar system until astronomers directly observe it the existence of this elusive world is only theoretical and any object that far away from the Sun will be very faint and hard to detect so at this point we can only imagine what a distant planet 9 might look like but according to science there are three main possibilities the first possibility is a rocky planet 9 but not like the terrestrial planets Mercury Venus Earth or Mars instead a bizarre possibly volcanic world that has been scarred with fire a common type of planet that can be discovered around other stars in our galaxy is a rocky super earth these are worlds that are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune however no such planet has been discovered in our solar system so good planets 9 be our missing super earth a rocky planet that has ten times the mass of Earth would likely still have a lot of internal heat making it geologically active even though it is so far away from the Sun its surface would be lit by little more than the lights of distant stars and the intense glow of its volcanic landscape if you could stand on its dark surface you might see huge volcanoes deep canyons and towering mountains even though it is made from the same materials as Earth it would be completely inhospitable for life as we know it it's incredible distance from the Sun would make its surface extremely cold possibly a frigid minus 226 degrees Celsius which is minus 375 degrees Fahrenheit these low temperatures may also cause hot lava to rapidly freeze as it comes into contact with the coldness of space possibly forming a type of black glass called obsidian looking across this world would be magnificent and terrifying but there is a problem with a rocky planet 9 because the early inner solar system according to scientific models probably didn't have enough rocky material to form Mercury Venus Earth and Mars plus a giant planet 9 that may have been ejected into the outer fringes so could it instead be a world made of ice the second possibility is that planet 9 is a giant version of the thousands of icy objects that populate the Kuiper belt if planet 9 is made of ice then it would be the largest object ever to form in this region possibly five thousand times the mass of Pluto it would also likely resemble Pluto in many ways and due to its colossal size possibly even be hiding a deep subsurface slushy water ocean perhaps the largest single body of water in the solar system if you could look across its surface you might see a Rupp ting cryovolcano spewing chunks of ice into space you might see a landscape of towering mountains sharp ridges and vast plains that look like they are made from rock but are actually made from water that's frozen harder than granite similar to a rocky planet 9 this world would also be completely inhospitable for life as we know it due to its incredible distance from the Sun dropping its surface temperature to below minus 226 degrees Celsius or below minus 375 degrees Fahrenheit because planet 9 orbits so far away distant galactic explosions and stellar winds would bombard the strange planet possibly causing complex molecules like organic tholins sustain its frozen surface transforming its landscape with rich colors similar to what can be found on Pluto but once again there is a problem with the idea of a giant icy planet night as all of the known objects including the dwarf planets that exist within this region are smaller than our moon indicating that there was probably not enough mass out in the far reaches of the early solar system to form a world this massive so if planets 9 is probably not a rocky world of fire or a frozen world of ice then could it instead be our solar system's fifth gas giant the third possibility which is also the most plausible is that Planet 9 is the core of a gas giant perhaps a smaller version of Neptune or Uranus scientists have long theorized that the middle of the early solar system was a gas rich zone that eventually coalesced into the four gas planets that can be observed today over time collisions and ejections shaped them and moved them out to their present locations but it could also be possible that a fifth gas planet began to form within this region a world that perhaps passed too close to Jupiter or Saturn resulting in its being ejected into a distant eccentric orbit if planet nine is a gas planet it would have no solid surface just a small dense possibly rocky core that is covered by thousands of layers of thick stormy atmosphere its atmosphere would likely be similar to Neptune's however because planet 9 is so far away it would receive almost none of the sun's energy possibly resulting in heavier elements slowly falling towards the core of the planet and leaving only the lighter elements such as hydrogen and helium within the upper atmosphere this means that planets 9 may well be the most unique looking gas planets in the solar system a strange translucent world that is glowing in the darkness of space light would be dancing around the planets poles as solar winds from distant stars streamed down its magnetic field and if you could peer inside you might see flashes of lightning extremely violent winds and thick dense cloud decks so could the elusive Planet nine be our solar system's fifth gas planet well without directly observing it scientists can only model possibilities and so the answer is nobody knows however if the hypothetical planet does exist and it is discovered then scientists will then be able to analyze its light and finally reveal if it's a rocky icy or gaseous planet or perhaps something even stranger you

Channel: V101 Science

Views: 478,456

Keywords: planet Nine, planet 9, whats is planet 9, does planet 9 really exist, has planet 9 been found yet, ninth planet, kuiper belt, planet x, pluto, evidence, is planet nine made from ice, gas, rock, neptune, uranus

Id: aXPGXOsVaKc

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 23 2020