A jealous Planet Nine may have shoved its siblings for attention. If a massive ninth planet exists in our solar system, it might explain why the planets are out of line with the sun. The eight major planets still circle the sun in the original plane of their birth. The sun rotates on its own axis, but surprisingly, that spin is tilted: the axis lies at an angle of 6 degrees relative to a line perpendicular to the plane of the planets. There are a few theories to explain this jaunty slant, including the temporary tug of a passing star aeons ago, or interactions between the magnetic fields of the sun and the primordial dusty disc that formed the solar system. But it is hard to account for why the sun’s spin is aligned the way it is relative to the planets. Two teams of astronomers have just announced a new explanation: a hypothetical massive planet in the outer solar system could be interfering with all the other planets’ orbits. Earlier this year, Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena argued that this Planet Nine could be responsible for some of the erratic movements of icy worlds in the outer solar system. With that planet plugged in to our models, the machinations of the heavens begin to make more sense.
Planet Nine may have tilted entire solar system except the sun
