Planet Nine: soon to be found, but with life? (science video)

John Michael Godier and Parallax Nick discuss the search for the solar system’s mysterious Planet Nine as we inch closer to finding it.

But what will Planet Nine be like, and where in the solar system could it lie? Also, what would alien life look like on such a distant world? Humanoid, or something we couldn’t even begin to imagine?

Planet Nine is a hypothetical super-Earth-sized planet with a predicted mass of five to ten times that of the Earth, and an elongated orbit 400 times as far from the Sun as the Earth.

Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown suggested Planet Nine could be the core of a giant planet ejected from its original orbit by Jupiter during the genesis of the Solar System. Others think the planet was captured from another star and is an ex-rogue planet.