Planet XXX

If you don't know planet X and google it, it would probably get you little confused because there are different interpretations. you will get Pluto, Nibiru, Senda, Tyche and others.That's because  Planet X is a name for any hypothetical planet beyond the orbit of Neptune.

The conceptions of undiscovered planet X goes back up as early as 1840. Back then, observations in the orbit of Uranus reveiled disturbances in its expected behavior of orbit. This led to a conclusion and later on the discovery of planet Neptune. But even after then, some still speculated that Neptune alone was not enough to explain the discrepancies in the observation. Thus it led to further searching.

And in 1906, the discovery of Pluto temporarily satisfied the search.  Until later observations led to determine that the real size of Pluto and another conclusion that it was not the same mass as the predicted by the expected Planet X. And so the search was revived until Voyager 2  flew by Neptune in 1989. Voyager 2 gave better data that revised it earlier known mass and this new mass led to elimination of the puzzle in the  discrepancy thus disproving the need of existence of  a Planet X. But although that particular concept of Planet X was disproved, the idea was again revived with discoveries of the Kuiper belt objects and the Kuiper cliff.

The observation was that there was a sudden decline in the number of objects(KBOs) in a region, thus suggesting a clearing that may only due to gravitational affect from massive object.

In May this year 2012, National Observatory of Brazil modeled the orbits of  Kuiper belt objects and found that some of those orbits were far more elongated than  predicted. The simplest explanation was the gravitational pull of a distant planetary companion, about as big Neptune to as small as Mars and to far to be spotted by our best telescopes.

Aside from Pluto, there were two more popular candidates taking the name Planet X. One is the hypothetical planet Tyche and another is (and more mythical doomsday) Planet Nibiru. Some people will says these two are same. But not really.

We may have all those breath-taking pictures from Hubble Telescope and others. But the truth is we can not even find a planet our own solar system if there is one due to the vastness of if. While we may all think that we can contain in our heads the idea of its vastness, we most likely, have not really thought of it that much.