 Boy, 2016 sure has started off with quite a ruckus. Two major discoveries in as many months. One of them is going to change how we think the solar system was formed. The other has the potential to change how we view our universe. And this is your space pod for February 25th, 2016. Oh my gosh, science, slow it down just a little bit or I'm going to have to spend all of these space pods trying to catch up with all of the awesome things that we're discovering. But on second thought, I don't think anybody watching this would really have a problem with that. Our first story comes to us from the outer solar system. And I mean, way, way out there, about a potential ninth planet. And no, I'm not talking about a reinstatement of Pluto. Very sorry, Ben. As the discovery of Kuiper Belt objects accelerated in the mid-2000s, astronomers noticed that when the orbits were plotted out, they would all appear to be within the same general vicinity of each other. There's really only one explanation as to how that can occur with our current knowledge base. Something with a good amount of mass has to be out there, and it's put all of these objects into similar orbits. Astronomers Konstantin Batian and Michael Brown, who you may remember as the astronomer who discovered dwarf planet Eris, which started the reclassification of Pluto, released a study showing, with confidence, as to the size, mass, orbit, and expected current position of this hypothetical ninth planet. Its diameter would be expected to be 2 to 4 times that of the Earth, potentially up to 10 times the mass of the Earth, and with an orbit that takes 15,000 years to complete. Its expected current location is near the constellation of Orion, an easy target for astronomers in the Northern Hemisphere. Planet 9, however, would be around magnitude 22, 600 times fainter than Pluto. So the equipment that you have at home, well, it may not be quite powerful enough. But a search has begun in earnest, up at the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. So, stay tuned, we should be getting results pretty soon. Speaking of things you can't see, the discovery of a lifetime was just recently announced. Although, if you really think about it, it was the discovery of several lifetimes, because we've been chasing these for over a hundred years, and of course, those are gravitational waves. Gravitational waves were predicted by Albert Einstein, thanks to his theory of general relativity. Although Einstein conceded that with their size expected to be several orders of magnitude smaller than subatomic particles known at that time, that they would most likely never be able to be observed. Gravitational waves theoretically transport energy in the form of gravitational radiation. And there's a very straightforward result from the expected passing of one. An oscillation of particles as they follow the ripple of space-time from the gravitational wave. The effects on the observable space in which this occurs would be negligible, if any at all. Experiments began in earnest as early as the 1970s to attempt to detect these minuscule displacements of space-time. It wasn't until the creation of the laser interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, also known as LIGO, that we began to seriously consider possibly capturing the signal, telling us that yes, indeed, we found one. It works by firing a laser in a vacuum chamber that extends down four kilometers in two different directions. That laser beam travels that distance 75 times before it returns to a recombination spot. A gravitational wave would stretch one of those arms before the other, meaning one beam would take longer than expected to return to the recombination spot, thusly detecting a passing wave. LIGO had recently undergone a significant upgrade, which made its sensitivity enough to potentially be in the range of detecting the largest gravitational wave. And on September 14, 2015, at 9.50.45 UTC, LIGO detected its first direct observation of a gravitational wave. LIGO was towards the end of its engineering run to assure that the new instruments were working correctly. Scientists scrutinized the data and received assistance from Europe's Virgo Gravitational Wave Interferometer Project to confirm that they had indeed detected a real gravitational wave. And this is what a gravitational wave sounds like. That's the sound of two black holes with masses nearly 30 times that of the sun colliding with each other, 1.3 billion light-years away from the Earth. The displacement in space-time was roughly one-one-thousandth the diameter of a proton. We think that that's just about as big as gravitational waves get. During the final 20 milliseconds of those two black holes merging together, the total energy output was roughly 50 times that of every single star in the universe combined. This further confirms that Einstein's theory of general relativity is correct. And this also opens up a new frontier for study, gravitational astronomy, which sounds unbelievably cool. LIGO is confident that with their current instrumentation, they should be able to detect anywhere from 3 to possibly 90 gravitational waves per year. Thanks for watching this space pod. I'm Jared Head. What do you think about Planet Nine and gravitational waves? Well, let me know in the comments below. And of course, don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to us all across our social media accounts. And a big, big shout out to all of our Patreon patrons. Here's to all of you who help make space pods possible. And if you'd like to, please consider donating to our Patreon campaign at patreon.com. So until the next space pod, keep exploring.