Our Sun ‘stole’ Planet 9 over 4.5 billion years ago

To quote Fiona Apple, it turns out our Sun may have been a “bad, bad girl.”

According to a new study in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, the Sun – in its younger days – may have stolen a planet from a nearby star.

That planet would be Planet 9, a hypothetical planet that astronomers believe exists based on the movements of objects outside of the Kuiper Belt. Theories say gravity from a planetary object affects these trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs).

The new study has concluded that Planet 9 is an exoplanet, which would make it the first exoplanet located within our solar system and essentially rendering the term exoplanet, short for extra-solar planet, null and void.

“It is almost ironic that while astronomers often find exoplanets hundreds of light years away in other solar systems, there’s probably one hiding in our own backyard,” study author Alexander Mustill, astronomer at Lund University in Sweden, said in a news release.

Stars are created in clusters and frequently move past each other. During these scenarios,a star can “steal” a planet or two in orbit around a different star. This might be what occurred when our Sun grabbed Planet 9.

Simulating a planetary theft

Using a digital simulation, the study authors revealed Planet 9 was most likely seized by the Sun while circling a different star.

“Planet 9 may very well have been ‘shoved’ by other planets, and when it ended up in an orbit that was too wide around its own star, our sun may have taken the opportunity to steal and capture Planet 9 from its original star,” Mustill said. “When the sun later departed from the stellar cluster in which it was born, Planet 9 was stuck in an orbit around the sun.

“There is still no image of Planet 9, not even a point of light. We don’t know if it is made up of rock, ice, or gas,” he added. “All we know is that its mass is probably around ten times the mass of earth.”

Despite how it may have gotten there, the presence of a Planet 9 would be a massive opportunity for science, Mustill said.

“This is the only exoplanet that we, realistically, would be able to reach using a space probe,” he said.

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Image credit: Lund University

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