As scientists discover more each day about the secrets and the origins of the universe, one bit related to its doom has been brought again into the spotlight. It seems the great catastrophes that took place on Earth and involved mass extinctions were caused by the mysterious Planet X.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, astronomers attempted to discover and track planets located outside our solar system by studying the orbits of well-known planets in order to identify any anomalies. John Couch Adams, British astronomer, and mathematician and Urbain Le Verrier, French mathematician, managed to discover Neptune in this way back in 1846.
By studying Uranus’ orbit and finding out the anomalies, they were able to find the blue planet and proceeded even further by doing the same research on Neptune. They were searching for the so-called Planet X, a celestial object of massive proportions thought to cause these anomalies.
However, after the discovery of Pluto, they still could not find strong evidence for the massive world they believed to float somewhere in space. The theory was mostly abandoned by scientists and raised by numerous conspiracy theorists, who created the idea that a massive undiscovered world might be destabilizing the comet’s orbits, thus sending them towards the inner solar system with catastrophic consequences.
The theory was lastly popularized in 2012 when the end of the world was supposed to come according to the Mayan calendar. This year, Planet X is making a comeback with a more scientific explanation.
After the discovery of little icy objects flying beyond Pluto’s orbit, astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin have determined that their movement must be caused by another unseen planet located in the outer solar system. The scientific hunt has been reprised, this time for Planet Nine.
According to a report released in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal, our planet was and will continue to be subject to mass extinctions taking place each 27 million years. These catastrophes are all caused by multiple comets flung towards Earth by certain gravitational instabilities.
The changes are, you guessed, caused by the bizarre orbit that only a major planetary body could trigger. Furthermore, other comets would be flung in the direction of the sun, thus creating debris that would dim the power of sunlight and create a global freezing on Earth.
While the theory does have logical points, a link has yet to be found between Planet X and Planet Nine. Further studies are also required to assess the probability of such an event caused by a massive floating world.
Image Source: Planet X News
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