Planet X is headed straight for us!

Do you remember the stories about Nibiru, the stray planet which would come crashing into our solar system and with its trail of comets and asteroids destroy all life on Earth as we know it? These stories are of course not true but we might soon be facing something even worse.

Our solar system is believed to be a calm place nowadays. Thanks to our gassy giants Jupiter and Saturn, we have a quite clean neighborhood as the gravity of these planets acts like vacuum cleaners of the solar system, sucking up a large amount of comets, asteroids and large meteors, preventing larger threatening objects from impacting on our world.

But the gravitational realms of Jupiter and Saturn ends within the solar system. 70 000 years ago Scholz' star, a read dwarf star with a brown dwarf companion, passed through the far outskirts of our solar system and until now there's been no sign of it, but the fact is that the Kuiper Belt and Oort's cloud are deeply disturbed by the gravitational forces unleashed by Scholz' star. The gravity of this star has simply stirred the pot and that means that it's moving out there; many , distant icy objects, the leftovers from the solar system's formation 4,56 billion years ago, are most likely to have been thrown out of their orbits but due to the vastness of the Kuiper belt, and for that matter Oorts cloud, we simply haven't started to notice it yet as most of the object meant to reach the inner solar system will do so in approximately 750 000 - 1 million years from now.

Unfortunately we do not have that same amount of time when it comes to other, closer, objects. In January this year, it became big news that a ninth planet might be lurking far beyond the orbits of Pluto and other known KBO (Kuiper Belt Objects). This planet is believed to be ten times the mass of Earth and orbiting the sun on an average distance of 500 AU (Astronomical Units.1 astronomical unit = 149 597 871 kilometers). The reason for us to at all believe that there is such a planet is the gravitational signatures of that something with relatively high gravity affects the orbits of dwarf planets like Sedna.

"We could have stayed quiet and quietly spent the next five years searching the skies ourselves and hoping to find it. But I would rather somebody find it sooner, than me finding it later", says astronomer Mike Brown, who is one of those who have been working to find the mysterious ninth planet and eventually his wish would be granted. Last week the Subaru telescope, which was assigned to search for Planet X, finally found what it was looking for but there was no popping of the champagne, no press releases and media was all quiet, because the blueshift of the planet immediately revealed that it's rapidly moving - straight toward us.

"It currently holds a speed of approximately 245 000 km/h" says a NASA researcher who does not allow us to publish his name "and with that speed Planet X will enter the solar system within 15 years. There are no indications of that Planet X will hit Earth, but in order to create the greatest disaster we have ever seen, it doesn't even have to." As Planet X enters the solar system, the effect will be exactly the same as when Scholz' star passed through 70 000 years ago - its gravity will start bouncing objects, even planets, out of the solar system and Earth might become one of those planets who are torn away from the sun and thrown into the black vast void of space.

"Not only that" says the anonymous NASA astronomer "Even if the Earth will remain in its orbit, the gravitational pull from Planet X might alter the tilt of the Earth-axis and render this planet uninhabitable. We only have 15 years to think up something to avoid these potential scenarios of disaster but the chances are thin that we'll manage. You can't fight the laws of gravity"