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Northern lights forecasts, alerts, and geomagnetic storm warnings - live updates
October 13, 2025
Our aurora forecast live blog tells you everything you need to know about the likelihood of seeing the northern lights tonight and for the days ahead.
We'll also report on relevant solar activity and significant space weather events such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and coronal holes which could bring strong aurora-sparking solar winds our way.
REMEMBER: The Kp index is important, with a higher Kp indicating stronger auroral activity. A key ingredient of aurora activity is the Bz value of the Interplanetary Magnetic Field, which can be easily viewed on SpaceWeatherLive.com.
You're ideally looking for a strong "south" Bz which means it will connect with Earth's magnetosphere which points northward. A strong southward Bz can wreak havoc with Earth's magnetic field and send particles raining down through the atmosphere along magnetic field lines.
When these energized particles collide with atoms in Earth's atmosphere they release the light we see as auroras. If there is a strong southward Bz, your chances of seeing auroras increase significantly.
October 13, 2025 at 5:12 AM
Monday, Oct. 13: Weekend storms ease, but some aurora still possible tonight
Geomagnetic activity is forecast to calm after a relatively stormy weekend, but the northern lights may still be visible at high latitudes tonight.
Earth remains under the lingering effects of a high-speed solar wind stream from a coronal hole, with speeds still between 650 and 750 km/s!
A coronal mass ejection (CME) released on Oct. 12 could have an Earth-directed component, though confidence in its potential impact remains low. If it does arrive, models suggest any effects would likely occur around Oct. 16.
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center projects that the Kp index will peak at 3.67 over the next 24 hours. For an up-to-date breakdown of timings, check out NOAA's 3-day forecast.
https://www.space.com/live/aurora-forecast-will-the-northern-lights-be-visible-tonight
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/3-day-forecast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLuicwpH2lE (Double Solar Storm Coming, More Expected | S0 News Oct.13.2025)
https://spaceweathernews.com/
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/extraterrestrial-life-forms-were-not-created-equal-eeb4f2b781e0
https://usaherald.com/harvards-avi-loeb-continues-to-call-for-united-nations-to-establish-extraterrestrial-contact-protocols-as-3i-atlas-nears-its-closet-approach-to-the-sun/
https://countryherald.com/news/alien-comet-3i-atlas-is-changing-chemistry-in-real-time-while-nasa-is-mia/
https://x.com/UAPWatchers/status/1977717925327814835
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOeH3Qgxjz4 (3I Atlas is listening to us, reacting and communicating! Shocking new theory! Oct 13, 2025)
Extraterrestrial Life Forms Were Not Created Equal (and other 3I Atlas stuff)
October 13, 2025
Given the billions of Earth-Sun analogs in the Milky-Way galaxy, humanity is probably not at the top of the Galactic food chain.
We desperately need a dose of cosmic modesty. The answer to Enrico Fermi’s question: “where is everybody?” is: “to find them, you need to be proactive and search for interstellar objects of technological origin”.
The reply to Elon Musk’s assertion “we are probably alone,” is: “do not be so presumptuous, as space entrepreneurs that are better than you probably lived in the Milky-Way for billions of years before you were born.”
It is our scientific obligation to find the relics of these space entrepreneurs rather than brag about our cosmic importance without investing resources in the search for alien technological products.
Whether they exist does not depend on what we tell each other, for the same reason that the Earth revolved around the Sun 4.54 billion times before the Vatican dismissed Nicolaus Copernicus for suggesting a heliocentric Solar system.
The next Copernican revolution would involve the realization that humanity has siblings in the family of technological civilizations. These siblings might have existed for billions of years before humans emerged on Earth.
Most of them did not only live but also died billions of years ago.
We are not at the center of the cosmic stage and we arrived late to the cosmic scene. Common sense suggests that we are not central actors in the cosmic play.
If humanity were to die by self-inflicted wounds, geological activity would wipe out all of humanity’s industrial scars on Earth’s surface within millions of years.
By the time the Earth will lose its water reservoirs to become a desert like Mars in a billion years — as a result of the brightening of the Sun (as calculated here), no visitor to the solar system would even notice that humans lived on Earth.
A billion years amounts to just 7% of cosmic history. In the cosmic scheme of things, nobody would be aware of the loss of humanity … unless we send technological relics carrying our AI-descendants to interstellar space.
These technological relics will be the only clues that humanity could leave behind for future space archaeologists.
By reciprocity, the search for similar relics is the best way for us to realize that other civilizations preceded ours by billions of years. How would we be perceived by others if they happened to monitor us?
To aliens, humanity might look like a toddler on the cosmic stage. Foolish and focused on itself, unaware of the experienced adults with bigger brains in the adjacent room.
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In preparation for a 4-hour interview yesterday, I was asked to watch the film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” crafted by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, in which humanity is viewed as a toddler with alien monoliths serving as monitors in its baby room.
The creator of these monoliths appears in the image of God, resembling an adult in the adjacent room. This remarkable film envisioned the creation of AI systems which might have kinship to alien technologies more than to humans because they are made of silicon chips and not flesh and blood.
We must imagine possible realities in order to search for them. If we follow comet experts with the default assumption that all interstellar objects are comets, we might fall into the trap of insisting that spacecraft are “dark comets” because.
They do not show visible gas or dust around them. This is not a hypothetical concern. Currently, comet experts firmly argue that the first interstellar object 1I/`Oumuamua was a dark comet (as discussed here) and alternative interpretations of its unresolved anomalies (as discussed here) are ridiculed through personal attacks on those who dare to imagine something else.
In order not to miss clues offered by anomalies of technological objects relative to space rocks, we must imagine extraterrestrial technologies as a possibility.
Our physical reality within the Milky-Way might be more imaginative than we are, because our training data set is limited to Earth and there is much more real estate in outer space.
Most astrobiologists are obsessed with the search for microbes and life-as-we-know-it. If instead, we were to hedge our bets and invest similar funds and research effort in the search for intelligent life, the reward could be greater.
Finding new unimaginable technologies would inspire humanity to change priorities. Instead of investing 2.4 trillion dollars per year in military budgets worldwide, we might choose to invest a similar amount in space exploration.
It is our call. If we wish to be remembered within billions of years, we must venture into interstellar space. Any space relic that we leave behind will serve as testimony that the human spirit cannot be wiped out as easily as life can from the surface of planets like Earth or Mars.
Extraterrestrial life forms were not created equal. Those who were intelligent enough to leave relics in interstellar space elevated themselves to the status of major actors in the cosmic play.
They might be remembered by space archaeologists. Our siblings might look differently, including forms of life as we-do-NOT-know-it.
It might be easier to identify interstellar objects of technological origin than to identify the subtle chemical fingerprints of familiar microbes in exoplanet atmospheres.
These technological relics might show up as interstellar objects in the inner solar system — like the latest visitor 3I/ATLAS with its 7 anomalies (as discussed here).
It is the obligation of scientists to be intrigued by interstellar objects that appear unusually big and follow trajectories that are fine-tuned to encounter Solar system planets, as 3I/ATLAS appears to be.
Will 3I/ATLAS take advantage of a gravitational assist from the Sun at perihelion on October 29, 2025 to make an Oberth maneuver (as discussed here)? If not, 3I/ATLAS will arrive within 54 million kilometers from Jupiter on March 16, 2026.
Yesterday, I also met at an MIT conference Scott Bolton who serves as the principal investigator of the Juno spacecraft near Jupiter — which will have an opportunity to probe 3I/ATLAS from up close in 5 months.
Scott informed me that Juno will use its Waves dipole antenna and magnetic coil to search for radio emission from 3I/ATLAS in the frequency range of 50 hertz to 40 megahertz.
Given the coincidence between the arrival direction of 3I/ATLAS into the Solar system and the direction of the enigmatic “Wow! Signal” detected in 1977 (as discussed here), it would be worthwhile to search for any anomalous radio emission from 3I/ATLAS.
As a toddler technological civilization, we must study in all possible ways the nature of objects that are entering into our baby room from the outside world.
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'Breathtaking View Beyond Earth': NASA Astronaut Shares Stunning picture Of Mount Everest Taken From International Space Station
Last Updated: Oct 13, 2025, 06:18 PM IST
Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, stands tall in Nepal’s Himalayas, but this time, it was seen from a completely different perspective.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit shared a breathtaking photo of the mountain captured from the International Space Station (ISS), leaving viewers in awe.
The image shows Everest’s snow-clad summit surrounded by Nepal’s rugged landscape, offering a stunning view of Earth’s natural beauty from orbit.
Sharing the picture on X (formerly Twitter), Pettit wrote, “Orbiting the Himalayas mountain range. Mount Everest is in this photo, with much of Nepal visible as well.”
The photograph has clearly struck a chord online, drawing more than three lakh views in just two days. Social media quickly filled with reactions ranging from awe to witty commentary.
Many users were blown away by the surreal perspective of the Himalayas. “This photo makes you realise going to space is way cooler than climbing Mount Everest,” one person remarked. Another commenter took a sarcastic dig at the growing trekking crowd, writing, “Can you see all the trash up there that the human train has left? What a joke that hike has become!”
For some, it was a moment of pure admiration. “Earth is soo beautiful,” a user wrote simply.
Another shared their travel excitement, commenting, “Planning a visit to Tibet, Mt. Everest, and Nepal next Spring. It’s really cool to see it all from space! Thanks for sharing.”
Amid the reactions, a light-hearted comment also made its way into the thread: “Must you always add a curve at the corner?” And summing up the general sentiment, one user called the view nothing short of “breathtaking.
Stay informed on all the latest news, real-time breaking news updates, and follow all the important headlines in india news andworld News on Zee News.
https://zeenews.india.com/world/breathtaking-view-beyond-earth-nasa-astronaut-shares-stunning-picture-of-mount-everest-taken-from-international-space-station-2971596.html
https://twitter.com/astro_Pettit/status/1977020383590334968
Award of Merit, Highway/Bridge: NASA Causeway Bridge Replacement
October 13, 2025
Twin 60-year-old drawbridges spanning the Indian River were replaced with high-span fixed bridges to support growing transportation demands, eliminate drawbridge-related delays and enhance safety and resilience along this vital corridor serving the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and commercial space operations.
The project required careful coordination with multiple agencies due to its proximity to launch facilities and sensitive environmental areas.
A variance to FAA height restrictions allowed the team to use a larger crane for span placements, eliminating the need for pile splicing and reducing lift counts, which significantly improved both efficiency and jobsite safety.
The team also used jetting methods instead of predrilling for piles and designed seal slabs to facilitate dewatering without the need for traditional coffer cells. These innovations minimized underwater activity, reduced environmental impact and accelerated critical path tasks.
Orion’s marine and engineering teams collaborated closely with the Florida Dept. of Transportation, NASA and other project partners.
Although not a design-build project, Orion’s engineering team played a key role by designing alternative maintenance of traffic plans and construction phasing strategies.
This included adding temporary pavement and implementing strategic lane shifts to safely maintain traffic flow while accelerating access for construction activities.
https://www.enr.com/articles/61527-award-of-merit-highway-bridge-nasa-causeway-bridge-replacement
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Swarm/Swarm_reveals_growing_weak_spot_in_Earth_s_magnetic_field
Swarm reveals growing weak spot in Earth’s magnetic field
13/10/2025
Using 11 years of magnetic field measurements from the European Space Agency’s Swarm satellite constellation, scientists have discovered that the weak region in Earth’s magnetic field over the South Atlantic – known as the South Atlantic Anomaly – has expanded by an area nearly half the size of continental Europe since 2014.
Earth’s magnetic field is vital to life on our planet. It is a complex and dynamic force that protects us from cosmic radiation and charged particles from the Sun.
It is largely generated by a global ocean of molten, swirling liquid iron that makes up the outer core around 3000 km beneath our feet.
Acting like a spinning conductor in a bicycle dynamo, it creates electrical currents, which in turn, generate our continuously changing electromagnetic field – but in reality the processes that generate the field are far more complex.
Swarm, an Earth Explorer mission developed under ESA’s Earth Observation FutureEO programme, comprises a constellation of three identical satellites that precisely measure the magnetic signals that stem from Earth’s core, mantle, crust and oceans, as well as from the ionosphere and magnetosphere.
Thanks to this exceptional mission, scientists are gaining more insight into the different sources of magnetism to help understand how and why the magnetic field is weakening in some places and strengthening in others.
The weak field South Atlantic Anomaly was first identified southeast of South America back in the 19th century.
Today, the South Atlantic Anomaly is of particular interest for space safety, as satellites passing over the region are faced with higher doses of incoming radiation. This can lead to malfunctions or damage to critical hardware, and even blackouts.
Published this month in Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, the latest results from the Swarm mission reveal that while the South Atlantic Anomaly expanded steadily between 2014 and 2025, a region of the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Africa has experienced an even faster weakening of Earth’s magnetic field since 2020.
“The South Atlantic Anomaly is not just a single block,” says lead author Chris Finlay, Professor of Geomagnetism at the Technical University of Denmark.
“It’s changing differently towards Africa than it is near South America. There’s something special happening in this region that is causing the field to weaken in a more intense way.”
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This behaviour is linked to strange patterns in the magnetic field at the boundary between Earth’s liquid outer core and its rocky mantle, known as reverse flux patches.
Prof. Finlay explains, “Normally we’d expect to see magnetic field lines coming out of the core in the southern hemisphere. But beneath the South Atlantic Anomaly we see unexpected areas where the magnetic field, instead of coming out of the core, goes back into the core.
Thanks to the Swarm data we can see one of these areas moving westward over Africa, which contributes to the weakening of the South Atlantic Anomaly in this region.”
Swarm’s record-breaking 11 years
The latest model of Earth’s core-generated magnetic field marks a new milestone for ESA’s Swarm satellites, which have now provided the longest continuous record of magnetic field measurements from space.
The satellites were launched on 22 November 2013 as the fourth Earth Explorer mission, pioneering satellites that form a key component of ESA’s forward-looking FutureEO programme.
Conceived as demonstrators of innovative Earth observation technologies, these missions have long outlived their original design lifetime, become integral to long-term records, provided data for critical operational services, and have paved the way for future generations of satellites.
Swarm data underpin the global magnetic models used for navigation, monitor space weather hazards, and allow unprecedented insights into our Earth system from its core through to the outer reaches of Earth’s atmosphere.
Earth’s magnetic field strengthens over Siberia
The latest Swarm results highlight the dynamic nature of Earth’s magnetism. For example, in the southern hemisphere there is one point where the magnetic field is particularly strong, and in the northern hemisphere there are two – one around Canada and the other around Siberia.
“When you're trying to understand Earth's magnetic field, it's important to remember that it’s not just a simple dipole, like a bar magnet. It’s only by having satellites like Swarm that we can fully map this structure and see it changing,” said Prof. Finlay.
However, since Swarm has been in orbit the magnetic field over Siberia has strengthened while it has weakened over Canada.
The Canadian strong field region has shrunk by 0.65% of Earth’s surface area, which is almost the size of India, while the Siberian region has grown by 0.42% of Earth’s surface area, which is comparable to the size of Greenland.
This shift, which is caused by complex processes going on in Earth’s turbulent core, is associated with the northern magnetic pole moving towards Siberia in recent years.
This shift is important for navigation, which is affected by the dance between these two areas of strong magnetic field. ESA’s Swarm Mission Manager, Anja Stromme, said, “It’s really wonderful to see the big picture of our dynamic Earth thanks to Swarm’s extended timeseries.
The satellites are all healthy and providing excellent data, so we can hopefully extend that record beyond 2030, when the solar minimum will allow more unprecedented insights into our planet.”
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Live video feeds from space
12 October 2025
British space media company Sen is making views of the Earth from space available online.
Space Live will deliver continuous live views of Earth from orbit, in ultra-high definition, including a live feed. It will be available on ITVX and other online platforms.
Sen is developing a freemium business model, offering subscription options with downloads available. It is aiming to build out a network of video cameras in space.
The space coverage comes from an ultra-high-definition camera mounted on the Columbus module of European Space Agency on the International Space Station, orbiting 240km above the Earth.
The payload has three camera views. A wide-angle view provides a panoramic view of the horizon. Another looks straight down, while a third looks at the forward-facing docking port of the Harmony Module on the space station.
The mission launched in March 2024 and went live in September of that year. The public livestream launched in December on the sen.com web site and went live on YouTube the following January.
Charles Black, the founder and chief executive of Sen, said “Sen was founded to democratise space through video. Partnering with ITV Studios brings our vision to life — giving millions of people the chance to see Earth exactly as astronauts see it.”
He came up with the idea that would become Sen in 1991 at the age of 19.
He launched his first internet business from his bedroom, originally called Space Internet, which turned into a company Nasstar, which floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2005 and was later acquired by private equity for £80 million.
He acquired the sen.com domain in 2008 and started building the service in 2016, after leaving Nasstar.
Sen is panning more camera systems for low earth orbit and plans to scale to geostationary orbit and even the Moon.
Its cameras will be deployed both on its own satellites and as hosted payloads on other spacecraft.
The vision is to democratize space using video to inform, educate, inspire and benefit all humanity.
https://informitv.com/2025/10/12/live-video-feeds-from-space/
https://www.youtube.com/@Sen
https://www.sen.com/
What's under the Sphinx, FLOTUS?
Massive Radar Anomaly from Antarctica Expands Out Over Australia and New Zealand
Oct 13, 2025
This anomaly started at 00 UT on October 12 2025 with a big flash. Affecting New Zealand and Australia as far as the map allow me to see. This event has been Ongoing now for many hours.
It looks like the frequency is coming from a Military Base In Antarctica.
We have tracked these anomalies back to this area in the past. There are several different bases that could be emitting the signal!
Is anyone seeing anything different in terms of weather in New Zealand and Australia?
https://x.com/dahboo7/status/1977754096951025831
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz8EXPMEeZc
https://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message6084134/pg1
https://www.bom.gov.au/australia/satellite/?ref=ftr
$100,000 quadrillion asteroid Psyche may be the product of metal volcanoes, study hints
October 13, 2025
The asteroid Psyche may have once had vents that spewed molten metal — but only if it is chemically similar to rare, metal-rich meteorites, a new study suggests.
The study, which was published online July 31 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, could explain why the space rock has an unusual metallic cloak.
Potato-shaped asteroid Psyche, a member of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is unique in being super-shiny.
Radar measurements indicate that, on average, its surface reflects nearly a third of the sunlight shining on it, making it at least twice as reflective as most asteroids.
Because of its reflectivity, scientists have posited that Psyche isn’t just mostly metal but may actually be the exposed iron-rich heart of a planetary building block.
Samuel Courville, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University, described Psyche to Live Science in an email as "a relic from the dawn of the solar system." Some have estimated the value of its metals to be a staggering $100,000 quadrillion.
However, this shininess may be mostly skin-deep. In 2020, calculations involving updated estimates of Psyche’s mass and volume suggested that the asteroid’s density wasbetween 231 lbs per cubic foot (3,700 kilograms per cubic meter) and 256 lbs/cubic foot (4,100 kg/cubic meter). While denser than most asteroids, it’s only about half the density expected if Psyche were made entirely of iron and nickel.
This, along with surface heat emission data, indicated that while Psyche's bulk is largely non-metallic, the asteroid probably possesses a metal-rich cloak.
Scientists still aren’t sure how Psyche acquired this coat. Although many phenomena could be responsible, the most favored at present is ferrovolcanism.
"Ferrovolcanism is like normal volcanism except instead of molten rock, the 'lava' is molten metal," Courville, who wasn’t involved in the new study, said.
First suggested in 2019, the idea is that during Psyche’s infancy, its metallic core solidified from outside in, with the molten inner core becoming progressively richer in lighter elements.
The difference in density between the core's solid exterior and molten interior would have created enough pressure for the latter to pierce into the overlying mantle and the asteroid’s surface, creating vents that spewed molten metal.
But ferrovolcanism can only work with specific chemical compositions, since it greatly depends on how much pressure builds up in the inner core. Data from meteorites — space rocks that fall on Earth’s surface — help constrain the range of these chemical combinations.
The researchers found that Psyche’s bulk must be rich in metals like iron, as low iron content would lead to tiny cores in which the internal pressure generated is insufficient to push out magma.
This meant that Psyche was most likely to have had ferrovolcanism if it contained large amounts of mesosiderite. H-chondrites could lead to the spewing of molten metal too, but only if they had a relatively high density.
In contrast, EH-chondrites only produced tiny cores that lacked iron-rich exteriors, making them unlikely to constitute part of Psyche.
The researchers expect NASA’s ongoing Psyche mission will provide evidence supporting their findings. Scheduled to arrive at Psyche by July 2029, the spacecraft will spend two years photographing the asteroid and collecting spectroscopic data.
Courville said that these snapshots will reveal if surface metal is in large outcrops or flows, which would indicate that ferrovolcanism had occurred in the space rock's past.
https://www.livescience.com/space/asteroids/usd100-000-quadrillion-asteroid-psyche-may-be-the-product-of-metal-volcanoes-study-hints
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JE008811
https://www.livescience.com/space/planets/planet-y-theory-hints-at-hidden-earth-size-world-lurking-in-the-solar-system-and-it-could-be-much-closer-to-us-than-planet-nine
https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/543/1/L27/8239273
'Planet Y' theory hints at hidden Earth-size world lurking in the solar system — and it could be much closer to us than 'Planet Nine'
October 13, 2025
Astronomers believe they have uncovered evidence of a previously unknown ninth planet lurking in the not-too-distant reaches of the solar system.
This hypothetical world, dubbed "Planet Y," could be around the same size as Earth and may exist alongside another popular Planet Nine candidate — potentially bringing our cosmic neighborhood's planetary tally to 10, if both can be confirmed.
However, despite researchers' claims that this newly theorized world could be found within three years, there is no proof of its existence, and some experts are skeptical of the new findings.
The search for a ninth solar system world started after the discovery of Neptune in 1846 and was temporarily concluded in the 1930s with the discovery of Pluto, which was subsequently downgraded to dwarf planet status in 2006.
But the hunt restarted in 2016, when Caltech astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin proposed their Planet Nine hypothesis, which suggested that the unusual orbits of about a dozen large objects beyond Neptune were caused by the gravitational pull of a massive hidden object.
This hypothetical world, also known as Planet X, likely lurks somewhere within the Kuiper Belt — a giant disk of asteroids, comets and dwarf planets (including Pluto) that orbit the sun beyond the eight known planets — but has so far evaded detection.
Now, in a study published Aug. 21 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, another group of researchers claims to have uncovered evidence of a completely new Planet Nine (P9) candidate, which they've dubbed Planet Y.
This hypothetical world, which would also lurk within the Kuiper Belt, could be around twice as near to Earth as Planet X — and it may be much closer in size to our own planet, too. Its potential existence does not discount the Planet X theory, the researchers noted.
The team came to this conclusion after analyzing the trajectories of 50 Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) and discovering that they were tilted by around 15 degrees compared with the rest of the solar system's planets. The only thing that could explain this tilt was a hidden world, they argued.
"We started trying to come up with explanations other than a planet that could explain the tilt, but what we found is that you actually need a planet there," study lead author Amir Siraj, an astrophysicist at Princeton University, recently told CNN.
"This paper is not a discovery of a planet," he added. "But it's certainly the discovery of a puzzle for which a planet is a likely solution."
Based on their calculations, the study team believes that Planet Y is likely a rocky world with a mass somewhere between that of Mercury and that of Earth. This is significantly smaller than the hypothesized mass of Planet X, which is proposed as a gas giant up to 10 times more massive than Earth.
The researchers also propose that Planet Y is located somewhere between 100 and 200 times farther from the sun than Earth is.
That's not too far beyond the orbit of Neptune, which orbits the sun at 30 times the Earth-sun distance, and it's much closer to us than Planet X, which is likely at least 400 times farther from the sun than Earth is. (At these distances, both planets would reflect very little light back to Earth, making them hard to spot directly.)
If it exists, Planet Y would also be tilted by up to 10 degrees compared with the orbital plane shared by the eight known planets — another factor that would make it harder to detect, the researchers wrote.
However, not everyone agrees with the new proposal.
Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan and a critic of the Planet X hypothesis, told CNN that the findings were "not definitive," largely because of the small sample size of KBOs included in the study.
Patryk Sofia Lykawka, an astronomer at Kindai University in Japan who specializes in KBOs, added that Planet Y was "plausible" but required more observations to be considered a likely possibility.
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To fully prove the existence of Planet Y or Planet X, researchers will either have to get very lucky and directly observe the elusive worlds, or find many more KBOs that fit with the patterns they have uncovered.
This may not take very long, thanks to the newly operational Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, which has begun scanning the night sky with the world's largest digital camera.
Many experts think this survey will uncover thousands more KBOs in the coming years, which could provide the data needed to firm up these theories.
"I think within the first two to three years [of the observatory's mission], it'll become definitive," Siraj said. "If Planet Y is in the field of view of the telescope, it will be able to find it directly."
But equally, if the researchers do not find what they are looking for within this time frame, both theories could end up being chucked out for good.
Other Planet Nine candidates
Planet Y is not the only alternative P9 candidate that has emerged in recent years. Several other hypothetical worlds have been proposed, but all have been largely disproved.
In May, researchers spotted a faint infrared dot that they thought might be a ninth planet. However, this finding was largely discounted because whatever object was responsible for this reading would have to be orbiting the sun in a plane perpendicular to the rest of the planets, which is extremely unlikely.
There is also a possibility that multiple rogue planets — worlds that have been expelled from alien star systems and then captured by the sun's gravity — could lurk even farther from our home star.
In 2023, calculations from Siraj revealed that there could be room for up to five Earth-like, rocky planets to hide in the very outer reaches of the solar system.
Some astronomers have also proposed alternative explanations for Planet X, including that the gravitational anomalies are caused by a baby black hole or are the result of some alternative form of gravity we do not yet understand.
Others have suggested that this missing world could be smaller than we think and may instead be surrounded by dozens of moons.
On the other hand, some experts think the recent discovery of several dwarf planet candidates in the Kuiper Belt — including 2017 OF201 and 2023 KQ14, which were announced in May and July, respectively — make it less likely that Planet X exists because these objects do not behave as this theory predicts.
At this moment, all we can be certain of is that we still have much to learn about the vast backyard of our cosmic neighborhood.
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