Planet Nine From Outer Space
SDSU Department of Astronomy's John D. Schopp Lecture presents Planet Nine from Outer Space. The speaker will be Konstantin Batygin, Assistant Professor of Planetary Sciences at California Institute of Technology. At the outskirts of the solar system, beyond the orbit of Neptune, lies an expansive field of icy debris known as the Kuiper belt. The orbits of the individual asteroid-like bodies there trace out highly elongated elliptical paths, and require hundreds to thousands of years to complete a single revolution around the Sun. Bodies that take more than 4000 years to orbit show a peculiar alignment. In 2016 Batygin made the prediction that this alignment is maintained by a previously unknown and distant Neptune-like planet – PLANET NINE. SDSU Hardy Tower, room 140 Free Parking in Parking Structure 1, levels 1&2