A Candidate Location for Planet Nine from an Interstellar Meteoroid: The Messenger Hypothesis

Abstract

Abstract The existence of a hypothetical Planet Nine lurking in the outer solar system has been invoked as a plausible explanation for the anomalous clustering in the orbits of trans-Neptunian objects. Here we propose that some meteoroids arriving at Earth could serve as messengers with the potential of revealing the presence of a hitherto undiscovered massive object. The peculiar meteor CNEOS 2014-01-08 recently put forward as the first interstellar meteor, might be one such messenger. The meteor radiant is in the maximum probability region calculated for the Planet Nine location in previous works. The odds of this coincidence being due to chance are ∼1%. Furthermore, some statistical anomalies about CNEOS 2014-01-08 are resolved under the hypothesis that it was flung at Earth by a gravitational encounter. Integrating its trajectory backwards in time would then lead to the region of the sky where Planet Nine is more likely to reside. Based on the available data, we propose the region at coordinates R.A. 53.°0 ± 4.°3, decl. 9.°2 ± 1.°3 as a plausible candidate location for Planet Nine.