Mysterious Planet 9 ‘May Have Tilted The Whole Solar System’

Not to alarm you or anything, but our entire solar system is tilted, with the sun spinning at a slightly different angle from the plane the planets orbit on.

Now scientists think they might understand why.

Earlier this year, telltale ‘wobbles’ in the orbits of rocks at the edge of our solar system offered a hint there was a huge, unseen world lurking at the edge of our solar system - ‘Planet Nine’.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology believe that the planet might have come from an alien solar system, captured by our Sun’s gravity - and ‘jostled’ the other planets when it arrived.

Elizabeth Bailey of Caltech said, ‘Because we think Planet Nine has a significant inclination, if it exists, then that means it would tilt things.

‘It’s one puzzle piece that seems to fit together, and it really seems to be in support of the Planet Nine hypothesis.

The researchers write, ‘Using an analytic model for secular interactions between Planet Nine and the remaining giant planets, here we show that a planet with similar parameters can naturally generate the observed obliquity as well as the specific pole position of the sun’s spin axis, from a nearly aligned initial state.

‘Thus, Planet Nine offers a testable explanation for the otherwise mysterious spin-orbit misalignment of the solar system.’