Astronomers believe there is evidence for a large distant planet in our solar system that hasn't been spotted yet.

Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown of the California Institute of Technology published their findings in The Astronomical Journal. The so-called Planet X, or Planet Nine, is thought to have 10 times the mass of Earth.

They have been observing the Kuiper Belt, a distant band of objects beyond Neptune. A grouping of objects within the belt have very distinct alignments, which they say point to a large planet. The team says that there's only a 0.007 percent chance that this grouping is a coincidence.

It is theorized that Planet X was knocked out of its orbit nearer the sun in the early days of the Solar System, and now has a massive elliptical orbit in which it takes between 10,000 and 20,000 years to orbit the Sun. If proven, its closest point of orbit to the Sun would be seven times farther than Neptune, with its average orbit around 20 times farther.

Incidentally, Dr. Brown is the man who made the discovery of Eris in the Kuiper Belt which led to Pluto being declassified as a planet. He can be found at @PlutoKiller on Twitter.

I thought picking on pluto in the first place was lame. After seeing the enhanced photos recently, i think it should still be #9 !

I like Neil Degrass Tysons comment

Although he's clearly excited about the new planet, Tyson is skeptical about adopting it just yet. "We want to call it planet nine and make it part of the family, but the thing is so far away it has yet to complete an orbit around the sun since the Ice Age," he said. "So I don't want to get all cozy with it." So the bad news is it's kind of a haul, but the good news is we'll have somewhere new to colonize when we turn our planet into a burning trash heap.

citation: http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2...h-planet-thing