Planet 9 Could Be Something Much Worse

Indexed: 2026-05-22

[00:00:02]We all know that the solar system has eight planets. Well, nine before we kicked Pluto out. But over the last decade, scientists have noticed something strange on the outskirts of the solar system, out beyond Neptune, Pluto, and even the Kyper belt. Beyond all these icy entities, something odd is lurking. It's disrupting the orbits of rocky frozen objects nearby.

[00:00:36]And that something is a massive hidden planet.

[00:00:42]Or at least it could be. It could be something else entirely.

[00:00:46]What happens if we actually find a tiny black hole instead of a secret planet?

[00:00:53]the size of Neptune? Well, we're going to find out.

[00:00:59]First, you need to know where you're going. The solar system is immense, and most of us spend our time thinking about the inner planets. That would be Earth, Mars, Mercury, and Venus. But we're going to have to think way bigger than that. And I want to give you some context on these crazy distances we're going to be talking about today. Our planet is well actually quite close to the sun. Astronomically speaking, we use that distance to represent one astronomical unit AU. In kilometers, it's 150 million. That's 93 million miles.

[00:01:41]Now, if you travel out to the edge of the solar system to Neptune, well, you'll see that it's about 30 times further out, so 30 astronomical units from the sun. Now, travel out even further and you're in the Kyper belt, a region of space between 30 to 50 astronomical units from the sun. It's a broad expanse of the solar system loaded with big flying icy bodies. There are hundreds of thousands of them over 100 km across and there are about 1 trillion plus comets. It's like the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, only everything's bigger and it's extra cold.

[00:02:31]You might know it best as the home of Pluto along with a number of other dwarf planets like Sedna. Some of these dwarf planets travel in long elliptical orbits that take tens of thousands of years to orbit the sun. But there's something strange happening in the Kyper belt. A number of those icy objects have similar orbits, which statistically just shouldn't happen. In 2016, a pair of Caltech scientists noticed that there was something odd about the orbits of six rocky, icy objects called trans neptunian objects. We call them TNOs's for short. These objects weren't randomly drifting around the sun.

[00:03:22]Instead, their orbits seemed to clump together as they approached the sun, which was weird because they're all moving at different speeds with different orbital lengths. It made no sense until scientists ran models simulating a massive planet in an anti-aligned orbit. And suddenly everything synced up. Yeah. The orbits of those six objects told us that there's got to be another planet out there affecting their journeys. And that planet is 1 and a half times the size of Earth and up to 10 times more massive.

[00:04:08]This mysterious planet is on a path that could take as long as 10 to 20,000 years to circle the sun, but no one has ever seen it. The math says it's there. We even have a rough idea of its orbital path, but no one's ever actually found it, which makes it one of the hottest discoveries in our solar system. When we finally find it, it'll be historical.

[00:04:38]But we aren't going to wait for Caltech to send a probe there to confirm. We'll send our very own space explorer, Chase.

[00:04:50]Look, while all you ice nerds are punching the calculator, I'm out here in the Kyper belt doing the eye test. You know, the real work. Boots on the ground, spaceship floor, whatever.

[00:05:01]Exploring. Okay, now let's find this ghost planet, baby. Woo!

[00:05:09]Uh, where is it? And what's it look like?

[00:05:12]And And why can't you guys find it? I mean, it's planet sized, right?

[00:05:18]>> Well, we know generally where it might be. Between 400 and 1,500 AU from Earth, >> right?

[00:05:29]That's a big range. And yeah, it's planet sized. There's a theory that there were originally five big planetary cores in the early solar system instead of the four we know now. But about 4 billion years ago during a cosmic waltz between Jupiter and Saturn, their massive gravity grabbed the fifth giant core and slingshoted it out of the solar system. But it didn't go rogue planet and fly off into deep space. It got caught in the dark outer reaches beyond the Kyper Belt. The problem is when something's that far away from the sun, well, space gets really dark and planets get really dim because the light hitting them falls off so rapidly. At 600 AU, planet 9 would be 160,000 times dimmer than Neptune. At 1,000 AU, it's 1 million times dimmer. It's almost impossible to see anything at that distance. Still, we have a sense of what it would look like at that size. It's either a massive rocky icy super Earth or a mini Neptune, an icy gas giant.

[00:06:51]Well, I've died on super Earth's and on Neptune, but I think I'll go with Super Earth this time. There's a little bit less Diamond Rain there. You know, not that there's anything wrong with diamond rain, but it just gets in your pores and it's real itchy and it also tends to kill you. Anyways, that's besides the point. But to be clear, I'm solid gas agnostic. As long as I get to name this bad boy, I get to name this bad boy if I find it, right?

[00:07:16]>> Technically, yes. If you find it, you name it.

[00:07:20]>> Jeff?

[00:07:20]>> Uh, no.

[00:07:22]>> Dale?

[00:07:24]No.

[00:07:25]>> Dyson sphere?

[00:07:27]>> No. It has to be approved by the International Astronomical Union. Are those just names of your friends?

[00:07:34]>> Maybe. I mean, I have friends and one of them is definitely named Dyson Sphere.

[00:07:40]Whatever. You just never see them on the show because they're like, you know, busy and stuff and don't live in the Kyper belt. They live in Canada.

[00:07:49]Okay, enough theory talk. Let's go out and find this Jeff Rico hit.

[00:07:55]>> Affirmative. Calculating orbital dynamics for planet 9 in accordance with anti-aligned orbit 180° across the TNO's perihelians.

[00:08:12]Uh, okay. Uh, Rico, we're going a bit too fast here. Could we uh could we slow down, please? Sudden gravitational influx is causing us to accelerate to extreme velocities.

[00:08:26]>> Say what?

[00:08:27]>> A high gravity body of incredible density seems to be pulling us off course.

[00:08:32]>> Peter's out here in space. No way.

[00:08:55]Yo, Rico, what the flux was that, man?

[00:09:00]>> A gravitational anomaly.

[00:09:02]>> My calculations suggest we nearly hit a miniature primordial black hole. God, my voice got all slow and and oh my god, are you seeing what I'm seeing?

[00:09:21]What?

[00:09:24]Whoa. Uh, I think it must have hit my head or something.

[00:09:30]I was seeing two of myself. Rico very event horizon or like mirror.

[00:09:39]It was kind of cool. It was like there's another version of myself. Like I could have friends, you know? Do multi-dimensional clones of yourself count as friends? Not that I don't have friends.

[00:09:51]>> You have me?

[00:09:53]>> Yes, Rico. Thank you. But like IRL friends, right? Where we could get together and play like games like Monopoly.

[00:10:06]Like we could play tabletop RPGs, you know, like Mothership or Dark Matter. We could get together and pretend like we're 21st century Earthlings. Like we can explore space together.

[00:10:37]Now, there's really two possibilities of what a planet 9 would look like. As I mentioned, it's either going to be a massive super Earth or a mini Neptune.

[00:10:51]>> Huh?

[00:10:56]Whoa.

[00:10:58]Now that is a monster planet. It It looks like some kind of like ice bally mega Antarctica.

[00:11:06]Cool. Yeah. If planet 9 is a super Earth, it'll be a massive rocky world 10 times more massive than Earth and way, way colder than Earth. That's because there'd hardly be any sunlight reaching it. It would be a world of frozen nitrogen oceans and mountains of solid water ice. If it had an atmosphere, it would be thin and frosty. But if there's volcanic activity driven by activity in its core, well, you might see cryo volcanoes erupting plumes of liquid nitrogen into space.

[00:11:47]Okay, Rico, I got to check this place out.

[00:11:51]Let's go down to the surface.

[00:12:08]Okay, got the extra suit warmers fired up.

[00:12:14]Looks chilly out there.

[00:12:18]Hey, Rico, where's the uh ship's artificial gravity uh field at?

[00:12:23]Oh god. Okay, I guess it was at the end of the ramp.

[00:12:30]Oh, it's it's heavy out here.

[00:12:37]Like a walk in the park.

[00:12:42]Walking on the surface of a super Earth like planet 9 would feel like you're wearing a heavy lead suit and a backpack full of gold bricks. The gravity would be so strong that it would flatten your stride to a crawl. I mean, I'd like a a backpack full of bricks.

[00:13:03]Gold bricks, THAT IS.

[00:13:06]YOU KNOW, maybe not right now because it's a little tough out here.

[00:13:16]Do anything.

[00:13:21]Quads are failing.

[00:13:23]Glutes are burning.

[00:13:25]Calfs are straining.

[00:13:28]What is this feeling?

[00:13:31]Ding sucks so much.

[00:13:36]That's because your body suddenly feels like it weighs 800 lb. But I've been cutting carbs.

[00:13:46]I got this. Three, two, one.

[00:13:55]Planet 9. One chase.

[00:14:09]Gravitational sensors are picking up a significant presence.

[00:14:13]>> Sweet.

[00:14:15]Rico, let's check out this mini Neptune.

[00:14:18]Headlights on.

[00:14:20]Okay. I really thought that would have illuminated the planet better.

[00:14:26]That's planet 9, the mini Neptune version. It's an ice giant loaded with hydrogen and helium. Neptune has a deep atmosphere of hydrogen and helium.

[00:14:37]Planet 9, if it was a mini Neptune, wouldn't have the same immense pressure or depth as Neptune. Underneath that sparkly atmosphere, is a slushy, high pressure mantle of water, ammonia, and methane ice. It doesn't get any heat from the sun, but it might have a burning hot core. Neptune is sitting at 30 AU and it's cold. It has a surface temperature of -214° C. That's - 350° F. But planet 9 is a lot further out. Without that solar energy or enough internal mass to keep things churning, its atmosphere might be relatively still and frozen solid in places.

[00:15:28]>> Gravitational sensors are picking up a significant presence.

[00:15:32]>> Yeah, well, I'm not going to land. I'm going to jump.

[00:15:38]>> I would suggest taking a parachute.

[00:15:40]>> Yeah, well, obviously. Give me a parachute and open the door. I look like an idiot standing here in front of a closed door.

[00:15:54]Rico, deploy the shoot.

[00:15:58]>> What?

[00:16:00]Oh, man. And it's raining.

[00:16:04]>> Not just rain.

[00:16:06]>> It's diamond rain.

[00:16:10]>> Ow. It's not as fun as shot in the rain, but at least I'm going out covered in bling.

[00:16:25]Planet 9 one chase.

[00:16:45]Yo, Rico, what the flux was that, man?

[00:16:50]>> A gravitational anomaly.

[00:16:52]>> My calculations suggest we nearly hit a miniature primordial black hole.

[00:16:57]God, my voice got all slow and what?

[00:17:21]Okay. Okay. I got to lay off those grapefruit LCroys. Okay. Those bubbles, they go straight to your head. Hey, did you say primordial black hole?

[00:17:29]>> Affirmative.

[00:17:32]>> You guys saw those other two chases, right? I'm not going crazy, right?

[00:17:36]>> It appears we did have a close contact with a primordial black hole.

[00:17:40]>> A what?

[00:17:42]A primordial black hole. Look, this was always a possibility. There's a chance that the ultimate answer to these matching orbits is that there's no planet 9 at all. And the reason we can't find it is that the object messing with those halfozen dwarf planets is actually a tiny black hole with a mass of about 10 Earths.

[00:18:08]But it's the size of a grapefruit. And yeah, looking for a pitch black grapefruit out past Neptune, it's a challenge.

[00:18:19]What are you talking about?

[00:18:20]Grapefruitsized black holes? No. No. I know black holes. I've fallen into at least two of them. Uh, and they are humongo. Like bananas big. Okay. And they kill you real dead like yuckies.

[00:18:35]True. But we're not talking about a stellar mass black hole or a super massive black hole like the one at the center of our galaxy. We're talking about a tiny ancient black hole formed in the chaotic second right after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. They're called primordial black holes. Now, it's true we haven't found any real primordial black holes. Again, they'd be really small and theoretically most of them would have evaporated by now. But they're actually a leading candidate for the explanation of dark matter. And even though they're really, really small, scientists have come up with an ingenious way to look for them.

[00:19:20]How do you find a black grapefruit in space? Also, can we stop saying grapefruit? I hate grapefruit. Let's say like softball, large softball. I don't really know how big a softball is. I've never played baseball or softball.

[00:19:36]Um, okay. Yeah, we do it by searching for the flares of passing comets that the primordial black hole gobbles up.

[00:19:47]When the Vera C. Rubin Observatory starts its massive legacy survey of space and time, it'll be able to search for both comet flares and any extra planets that might be hustling around the dark regions of the Kyper belt.

[00:20:02]Wait, wait, wait. So, you mean to say the ice nerds and their telescopes will be able to spot this thing in like the next couple of years?

[00:20:10]>> Quite possibly.

[00:20:13]So, why am I going to get killed by Diamond Rain or Super Earth when we could just wait? WHAT MAN? It's happening. It's finally happening. Dyson sphere. JEFF, IS THAT YOU GUYS?

[00:20:36]>> Gravitational anomaly detected. Prepare for impact.

[00:20:40]Oh man.

[00:20:53]Hey, you guys want to come over and play Monopoly? Let's watch.

[00:21:01]Well, space exploration is both a privilege and a joy or something like that. Hey, speaking of dying in giant black holes, well, they may not be the worst places you can cease to exist.

[00:21:16]Ever thought of what it would be like to spend a nancond on the surface of the sun? Well, that's a story for another.

[00:21:26]What if you