The Solar System: it’s no longer just about the eight main planets anymore. Sorry, Pluto. A new planet has entered the fray and it’s hurtling toward Earth. At first, it looks small, but then it starts to get closer and closer. That’s when you realize it’s bigger than Earth—it’s a massive gas giant, just like Jupiter. As this mysterious planet approaches, its magnetosphere will interact with Earth. This will create a lot of thunderstorms and some beautiful auroras in the sky. But the beauty wouldn’t last long. Before you know it, waves would rise high in the ocean, pulled by the new planet’s gravitational force. Earthquakes would spread all across Earth. You’d find it harder to breathe as our atmosphere gets pulled away because of this new gravitational pull. Earth is breaking apart into chunks. All living things on our planet are enveloped in cold and dark. Life on Earth is over.

But wait a second, how did we get here? Could a new planet form in our Solar System, or could it wander in and affect Earth’s orbit? Maybe there’s an undiscovered planet already out there. This is Trendy Byte Hub, and here’s what would happen if we discovered a new planet in our Solar System.

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Okay, before we get to any new planets, let’s first figure out where our current ones come from. Well, the answer lies in the stars. When a new star is born, it’s enveloped in gas and dust. This spins into a donut-shaped disc. Planets start off as minuscule grains of dust, even smaller than the width of a single strand of hair. Hard to believe, I know, but it’s true. Due to gravity and other forces, the tiny particles in the spinning disc collide. These collisions can make the dust clump together, first into pebble-sized chunks and then into bigger rocks. These are planetesimals. Now, if we wait a couple more billion years, this is how the planets in our Solar System formed. Well, no, not anymore, because after about 3 to 10 million years, solar winds from our Sun blew away all the dust and gas used to make new planets. With the gas and dust dispersed into space, there’s no chance of forming new planets in our Solar System. If we did discover a new planet, it would be one that’s already out there; we just need to find it. Luckily for us, there’s speculation that a new planet might already exist in our Solar System. This is Planet 9. Based on scientists’ calculations, it may be sitting in the outer regions of our Solar System, orbiting our Sun.

So why didn’t we know that this planet exists? Did we just not see it because it’s small? No, estimates put Planet 9 at the size of Neptune, with a mass of maybe 10 times that of Earth. We’ve missed it all this time because of its highly elongated orbit. This has put it at a distance in our Solar System even further than Pluto. It doesn’t really affect Earth; its orbital path is 400 to 800 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. And the time it takes for Planet 9 to make a full revolution around the Sun? 10,000 to 20,000 Earth years. Given this massive orbit, how did scientists even figure out it exists? Well, they looked closely at the Kuiper Belt, situated beyond Neptune. This circumstellar disc contains asteroids, comets, and other icy objects. But scientists noticed something weird was going on here. Some of the dwarf planets and icy objects had orbits that clustered together in an unusual way. This could be explained if there was a mystery planet exerting its gravitational force, causing these objects to cluster. Could it be Planet 9? Well, we’re not totally sure if it exists. Theoretically, it does, but we haven’t directly seen it yet. This could change with the construction of the powerful Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. It will be searching the skies.

But if a planet can’t form and we’re not totally sure about Planet 9, what are our options for finding a new planet in our Solar System? Well, there could be a rogue planet. A rogue planet? Isn’t that a planet that wears a rakish hat and an eye patch and a leather jacket? Not quite. Rogue planets are similar to regular planets, only they’re not tied to a star. They first form around a young star, but then they might get kicked out of their Solar System. This ejection could happen while different-sized objects are whizzing past each other around the star. The heavier planet whizzing by may stay in orbit, throwing a planet with a lower mass out. That’s one way a rogue is formed. Another way is when a star formation goes wrong. Maybe the star doesn’t ignite and instead becomes a solitary gas giant. How many rogue planets could there be in our Milky Way galaxy? Well, one estimate puts it in the billions, but we don’t know for sure. That’s because rogue planets are very hard to detect. They give off very little light and at wavelengths incredibly hard to distinguish from background emissions.

So what would happen if one of these rogue planets suddenly entered our Solar System? Well, that would depend on a couple of different factors: the velocity of the planet, its size, and its trajectory. Now, we’ve already looked at what would happen if a Jupiter-sized planet was headed for Earth. That was pretty ugly. But what if instead of this planet smashing into us, it just wandered close to Earth? Well, that all depends on what we mean by close. If a rogue gas giant the size of Jupiter was wandering even three million kilometers away from Earth, terrible things would happen. Since Jupiter is 300 times the mass of Earth, it exerts an incredible gravitational force. As the planet got closer, we’d feel the effects of its magnetosphere; it would be filled with charged