If you have recently heard the latest end of the world theory, don't sell your house and start your bucket list just yet. The world is not going to end within a month. Well, at least not because of a not even fully discovered planet.
Planet Nine is currently the center of a big conspiracy theory. A video has been circulating the internet, stirring up panic over the new "planet" that will cause the end of the world. It is thought that Planet Nine is going to send asteroids hurling into Earth, picking us off like the dinosaurs.
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This is, of course, wrong!
Planet Nine technically doesn't even exist yet; therefore, it can not send anything into the Earth. Astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin at the California Institute of Technology have been researching orbits of small objects in the Kupier Belt. This research has led them to believe there is a planet in this area with its perihelion 200 AU from the sun. Considering Neptune is 30 AU from the sun, Planet Nine would be very, very far away from us. Though it has not yet been confirmed or seen, research has indicated the likelihood that Planet Nine is out there.
So why couldn't it be causing mass extinction events?
Though Planet Nine is thought to have a mass about 10 times the size of the Earth, it is still too small to be having big effects on the Oort Cloud.
Planet Nine is thought to complete an orbit approximately every 10,000 years. At that rate, there would have been a lot more extinctions to date.
Much to poor Pluto's demise, it looks like we may have a new ninth planet soon.
