Where Is The Massive Planet Nine? NASA Wants Space Enthusiasts To Hunt It

The search for Planet Nine is on the go now. NASA, UC Berkeley and other institutions have organized a project called Backyard Worlds: Planet Nine. This project is open for the public especially the space enthusiasts to search for brown dwarfs and other objects including Planet Nine.

No one knows what Planet Nine looks like or what it may have experienced. Planet Nine is the massive hypothetical planet in the far outer part of the Solar System. It is a predicted planet that could be a super-Earth. It has an elliptical orbit with an orbital period of approximately 15,000 years. It has a mass of about 10 Earths, which is approximately 5,000 times the mass of Pluto. Planet Nine might have a diameter two to four times than that of the planet Earth.

So, how will you find this hypothetical Planet Nine? First, users need to log in at Backyard World's website. Then, look through many "flipbook" movies made from images captured and detected by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). This mission has ended in 2011. On the other hand, it provided the most comprehensive images of the sky. Probably, Planet Nine is somewhere out there in those flipbooks. One hint is that it is a little blueish, according to Gizmodo.

Caltech professor Mike Brown, who helped in pursuing the global search for Planet Nine by publishing evidence for its gravitational signature out beyond the Kuiper Belt last year, described the hunt as great. He said that having citizen scientists find Planet Nine would make one of the coolest stories of times. "I think they have a shot and I have my fingers crossed for them."

NASA said that the project is like the technique Clyde Tombaugh used to find Pluto in 1930. So, what are you waiting for? With this, it is possible to find Planet Nine in the comfort of your home.