There's something weird going on at the edge of the solar system. A group of dwarf planets all have orbits that seem to drag them toward one point in the solar system on highly elliptical paths. Astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin have a hypothesis as to why: There's a ninth planet out there waiting to be found.

How far out there? Consider that it takes Neptune 165 years to orbit the sun. Based on the calculations of where Planet Nine would need to be to affect the solar system in this way, it is likely to have an orbit of 50,000 years and live far beyond the Kuiper Belt, the area where Pluto resides. Mark Rober put together a video to demonstrate how far it's going to be.

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Rober, a former JPL engineer, uses a football field as his baseline for comparison. If the Sun's the size of a soccer ball, then the Earth is a tiny pinhead. If the sun is at the goal line, then Mercury is a grain of pepper on the 10 yard line and Earth is at the 26 yard line. Jupiter is 135 yards away, somewhere past the opposing goalposts.

But Planet Nine? Rober needs a drone to fly there to get a sense on distance, because it's so far away it's a five-hour walk, or about 17 miles away from the 0 yard line. So ... don't expect any good homemade demonstrations of this anytime soon. It'll be quite the hike to get there.





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