Now We Know Where To Find Mysterious Planet Nine

Dark, mysterious, cold space.

Comments, asteroids, planets, stars, and something that's lurking over there, far beyond

Pluto.

Yup, this could be the ninth planet of our solar system, the one people have been wondering

about for centuries.

IRAs, which stands for the infrared astronomical satellite, collected interesting data back

in 1983.

It could be proof that planet 9 is hiding there.

No one knows if it really exists, but this discovery helped to build a model to understand

this potential planet better.

And in 2016, scientists found out that some small space objects in the Kuiper Belt were

orbiting a bit oddly.

The Kuiper Belt is the outer area of our solar system.

It's a ring in the shape of a donut, filled with leftovers from the times when our solar

system was forming.

You can find this donut beyond Neptune.

The objects in that region of space have weird orbits, almost as if a big body with strong

gravity is pushing them away.

Knock-knock, planet 9 again.

The theory says it might be 5 to 10 times the mass of our own planet, and up to 20 times

further away than Neptune.

The astronomical unit equals the distance between our planet and the Sun.

Pluto is approximately 40 astronomical units from the Sun, but planet 9, if it exists, is

400 to 800 astronomical units away.

It would take 10,000 to 20,000 Earth years for this mysterious planet to make a single

circle around the Sun.

This makes it harder for us to catch this space body.

There's a theory planet 9 may have formed between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune, similar

to the rest of the gas giants in our solar system.

The gravitational force of one of the two huge planets probably kicked it out of its orbit.

Oh no.

One planet 9 could get ejected further away from the eight planets we know about.

It ended up as some sort of icy waves, quite small at the beginning.

But as time went by, planet 9 has cleared its orbit of frozen pieces of rock and dust,

and finally formed into a real planet.

Another theory says that this could be a planet another star lost on its way while it was

passing near our solar system.

In any case, planet 9 probably doesn't reflect that much sunlight since it's so far away,

but astronomers aren't sure where exactly they should look for it.

Space is dark, mysterious, endless, obviously.

But if we do find planet 9, it will be the first solid proof that there are more planets

in our solar system than we thought.

Moving on to an interesting exoplanet, located only 90 light years away from us.

An exoplanet is generally a planet located outside our solar system.

This one has an atmosphere with water clouds.

When you're there, last 24 Earth days, and the planet travels around a red dwarf star,

which is way dimmer and smaller than our sun.

That's why, even though the planet is 8 times closer to its star than we are to our

sun, the temperature there is similar to that on our planet.

This exoplanet has a size similar to Neptune.

It's also less dense, which means it's mostly made of gas, unlike Earth, which is made

of rock.

The average temperature there is 140 degrees, which makes it one of the coolest small exoplanets

we've ever discovered.

And the cooler the exoplanet is, the bigger the chance we'll find clouds in its atmosphere.

Researchers have discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets, but all of them have been found within

the Milky Way, at least until now.

For the first time, astronomers may have spotted a planet outside our galaxy.

They called it M-51 ULS-1.

The planet is located in the Whirlpool galaxy, a distant spiral galaxy 28 million light

years away from us.

There was once a huge, but pretty young star that got stuck in a gravitational dance was

something that could be a dense neutron star, the collapse core of a giant star, or a black

hole.

The star's dance partner had incredibly strong gravity.

It was feeding on the star, greedily ripping away its plasma.

Then something unusual happened.

And unknown, maybe even Saturn-sized object passed by and blocked this confrontation from

our solar system.

Now no one can see what is going on, but this could potentially be the farthest planet

we've ever discovered.

There's a newly discovered planet outside our solar system.

As large as Jupiter, it orbits two stars, and, as we can observe it from our planet,

it crosses in front of them both.

The full circle around these two stars, which means one year, takes approximately 200

Earth days.

On the day of the discovery of the previous planet, scientists also found it had an unusual

companion.

It's an extra hot Jupiter with an ultra-tight orbit around its star.

The year there lasts only 1.9 Earth days.

This planet has a weirdly shaped orbit.

Also it travels in the opposite direction from the rotation of its star.

If you could travel 57 light years away from our planet, you'd see something pink lurking

in the darkness.

As you get closer, it becomes bigger and more fascinating.

Yup, it's a magenta-colored planet.

A few billion miles away from its sun, this guy is one of the youngest planets scientists

have discovered.

It's only 100 to 200 million years old.

It's made of pink gas, similar to our Jupiter.

So if you could fly closer to its surface, this gas would envelop you like a thick fog.

You're coming closer and going deeper, and the gas is becoming darker, getting a reddish

shade, and look at the planet's core, it's super hot.

Because of its high temperature of 460 degrees Fahrenheit, this planet is like an oven.

The heat is the reason the planet glows so brightly.

You'll also notice the sky is hazy pink, with clouds made of droplets of frozen water,

similar to ours.

There's another exoplanet half as massive as Earth, which is one of the smallest planets

we've ever found outside our solar system.

It has a diameter of 5,600 miles.

For comparison, Earth's diameter is 7,900 miles.

The planet in question is mostly made of iron, similar to mercury.

Mercury has a massive iron core and a very thin crust, which makes it an oddball in our

solar system.

At its early stages, it collided with some space body at least once.

The collision pulled its outer layers away, which is why only the firm iron core remained.

Maybe this exoplanet participated in a huge space crash too?

That's what probably took away the planet's mantle, and left mostly its iron core.

Or maybe this is just a remnant of a gaseous planet that used to be the size of Neptune.

The atmosphere of the planet could be blown away by, let's say, a huge amount of radiation

coming from the star.

This planet is only 31 light years away from us, and the day there is less than 8 Earth

hours long.

The planet is only a little bit bigger than Mars.

People aren't likely to ever settle in that place because of its extreme temperatures

that go up to 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit.

There might even be molten lava on the side of the planet that faces its star.

Such temperatures are high enough to evaporate any atmosphere, so this planet might have had

one in the past.

Generally, gas giants like Jupiter can't support life because they have extreme weather

conditions, temperature, and pressure.

And there are no building blocks that might create life.

But smaller terrestrial planets, such as, I don't know, Earth, have more key ingredients

like oxygen and liquid water.

Plus, they have more temperate weather and other conditions.

And still, not all of such planets support life, of course.

It's not easy to find a planet with similar conditions as the ones we have on Earth,

or at least the conditions that would allow life to develop there.

But meet Kepler-22B, one of our most promising findings.

It's 600 light years away from us, twice bigger than our planet, and with temperatures

of about 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

This is a so-called super-Earth.

It's a category of planets unlike any we have in the solar system.

They're more massive than Earth, but still lighter than ice giants, such as Uranus or

Neptune.

Our Earths can consist of rock, gas, or a mixture of these two.

Kepler-22B is within the habitable zone of its parent star, which is less bright than

our sun.

The planet probably has a rocky core.

It may have an ocean, but it doesn't host any life.

At least, we don't know about it yet.

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