A new planet is tilting our sun

NEW YORK: Planet Nine — the undiscovered one at the edge of our solar system — appears to be responsible for the unusual tilt of the Sun, say researchers. Planet Nine was predicted by Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in January this year. The large and distant planet may be adding a wobble to the solar system, giving the appearance that the sun is tilted slightly. “Because Planet Nine is so massive and has an orbit tilted compared to the other planets, the solar system has no choice but to slowly twist out of alignment,” said Elizabeth Bailey, graduate student at Caltech and lead author of a study announcing the discovery. How did Planet Nine achieve its unusual orbit? Though that remains to be determined, Batygin suggests that the planet may have been ejected from the neighbourhood of the gas giants by Jupiter, or perhaps may have been influenced by the gravitational pull of other stellar bodies in the solar system’s extreme past. The findings have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.