Neil deGrasse Tyson on astronomy: what the evidence says · JRE #919
SUBJECT: ASTRONOMY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
So, I'm not quick to call it Planet 9 because it's 20,000 times farther away from the sun than the Earth is.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Tyson stated that the hypothesized ninth planet ("Planet Nine") orbits about 20,000 times farther from the sun than Earth, which would place it at roughly 20,000 astronomical units (AU). The Planet Nine hypothesis, proposed in 2016 by Caltech astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, estimates the object's average orbital distance at roughly 600 AU, about 20 times farther than Neptune's average distance of about 30 AU from the sun. Tyson's figure of 20,000 AU is therefore roughly 30 times larger than the published estimate for Planet Nine's distance from the sun. The claim substantially overstates the hypothesized planet's distance, though the qualitative point that Planet Nine would orbit far beyond Neptune and the known planets is consistent with the scientific literature.