Planet Nine estimated mass of ten Earths, a diameter two to four times that of Earth, and an elongated orbit lasting 10,000 - 20,000 years. Batygin and Brown suggest that Planet Nine could be the core of a primordial giant planet that was ejected from its original orbit by Jupiter during the genesis of the Solar System. Others have proposed that the planet was captured from another star, is a captured rogue planet, or that it formed on a distant orbit and was pulled into an eccentric orbit by a passing star. As of 2018, efforts have failed to directly observe Planet
Dwarf planet "A reasonable person might think that this means that there are five known objects in the solar system which fit the IAU definition of dwarf planet, but this reasonable person would be nowhere close to correct." Another hundred or so known objects in the Solar System are suspected to be dwarf planets. Estimates are that up to 200 dwarf planets will be identified when the entire region known as the Kuiper belt is explored, and that the number may exceed 10,000 when objects scattered outside the Kuiper belt are considered. Individual astronomers recognize several of these, and Brown maintains a