Mysterious Planet Nine may have Tilted Entire Solar System (+Video)

Mysterious Planet Nine may have Tilted Entire Solar System 

Two recent studies have shown that the existence of a mysterious, hypothetical Planet Nine could explain why the planets in our Solar System don’t fully line up with the Sun.

In fact, if Planet Nine does exist (or did), it would help to explain something that scientists have puzzled over for decades – why the Solar System is tilted.

What does that mean? 

Well, basically, all of the main eight planets that orbit our Sun do so on the same plane, making the Solar System look like a disc.

The problem is that the Sun spins at a different angle, with its axis roughly 6 degrees off from the rest of the planets.

In the past, researchers have attempted to explain this slant by blaming the temporary tug of a passing star, or interactions between the Sun’s magnetic field and the disc of dust that formed our planets. But none of these hypotheses have fully accounted for the misalignment.

But now the two new studies – complete independently from one another in the US and France – show that the existence of Planet Nine could explain the tilt.

Sciencealert.com
Read more here: http://tinyurl.com/zdzvfz2

New Scientist - http://tinyurl.com/hmdoy5y

Journal reference: Solar Obliquity Induced by Planet Nine
Bailey, Brown and Batygin –  http://arxiv.org/abs/1607.03963v1

Clips credit: ESO, ESA/HUBBLE & NASA