Have you heard about "Planet 9"? In short, astronomers are not suspicious of more planets in the solar system today - because of bizarre anomalies that have already been detected in the Kuiper Belt, a region of space that (more or less) marks the boundary of our neighborhood.

Well, as we told you here at Mega Curious earlier this year, scientists at Caltech - the California Institute of Technology - said they have found strong evidence that there is a super earth "living" in the Kuiper Belt. This planetary would be 10 times more massive than Earth and, being so far away, would take 10, 000 to 20, 000 years to complete an orbit around the sun.

Illustration showing the Kuiper Belt

Scientists began to bet on the existence of this world after observing the orbits of six objects that are also in this area of ​​space and realized that they move very oddly - as if they were under the influence of a massive celestial body: the Planet. 9. The existence of this distant world has not yet been confirmed, but this has not prevented the emergence of various theories about our (possible) neighbor.

Mess in the Solar System

According to Peter Dockrill of the Science Alert portal, a recent study found that if Planet 9's existence were confirmed, this would be bad news for the "harmony" of the Solar System. According to Peter, Dimitri Veras, a researcher at the University of Warwick in England, calculated that within a few billion years, when the sun is turning into a white dwarf - that is, dying! - things can get pretty ugly.

"Toasting" everything around you

Well, it's a known fact that when this process begins, our star-king will start ejecting half of his own mass and expanding, consuming Mercury, Venus and our beautiful little planet as a result - until he becomes a dwarf. dense white opaque. Well, this is where Dimitri's predictions come in, and thankfully we won't be around to see what could happen next!

As he calculated, with the sun having ejected some of its mass, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are unlikely to be anchored to the gravitational force of the white dwarf, and will be thrown away from the star. However, since (hypothetical) Planet 9 is already so far away - and not so heavily influenced by the Sun - its orbit would possibly remain the same.

Planet 9?

For with the repositioning of the planets into new orbits, especially of Uranus and Neptune, depending on the mass of Planet 9, he could enter a kind of death dance with the pair of giants - and eventually expel the two from the Solar System.

In fact, this whole mess matters little to us Earthlings, since when - and if - that happens, life on Earth will be long gone. However, with increasing evidence supporting the existence of Planet 9 in the Kuiper Belt, it is still interesting to imagine possible scenarios if this super Earth is our neighbor, is it not?