This is a scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Steve Mursky. Got a minute?

All those people who are mad that Pluto is no longer a planet can be thrilled to know that there's a real planet out there still to be found.

Caltech planetary astronomer Mike Brown.

He knows about those mad people.

He's the guy most responsible for demoting Pluto and messing up everyone's

memonic devices to remember the names of the planets. My very educated mother

just served us nine. It used to be pickles, but without Pluto, we don't know. But now Brown, who wrote the book

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, and whose Twitter handle is at Pluto Killer, wants to return the solar system to being

nine planets strong because he and his colleague Constantine Batigin think they have

evidence that an object that will surely qualify as being a full-fledged planet

lies way out at what's usually considered the edge of the solar system.

When we looked at the outer solar system, we realize that while most of the very distant objects

these objects beyond Neptune beyond Pluto, most these objects they all go around

the Sun and they're all sort of pointing off in all different directions

but the most distant objects all swing out in one direction in a very strange way that shouldn't happen.

And we realize that the only way we could get them to all swing in a... way that shouldn't happen.

And we realized that the only way we could get them to all swing in one direction is if

there is a massive planet also very distant in the solar system keeping them in place

while they all go around the sun.

And we started looking at this and thinking this must be either a coincidence or it's caused by something

else.

It can't be caused by a planet because that's crazy.

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