"there might not be a 'Planet Nine' after all"

When Mike Brown eventually concedes Planet 9 does not exist, he will probably blame his failure on the idea that the outer solar system is a lot more complicated and dynamic than anyone previously thought and thus he can be excused for his simulation not accounting for this. Frankly, he should have known this because the evidence was there. There have probably been many close passes of the solar system by large objects over geologic timescales that could have produced what we see, or even stripped Mike's Planet 9 from the solar system long ago.

The fact that Scholz's star with a companion brown dwarf passed 0.8 ly from the solar system only 70,000 years ago is a huge hint we do not have a complete picture of the history of the outer solar system, nor could we at this point.

https://www.unive...ars-ago/

The keyword in the headline is "might".

In my interpretation the title should have read: "Brown+Batygin's Proposed Planet X Orbit might need to be revised". Brown may have much underestimated Planet X's eccentricity. It would be good to redo these simulations with various other orbits. A good second guess may be B+B's orbit, but with lower periheion, and much much higher apehelion.