Niku and Nibiru

While it is doubtful that Niku, the ‘trans-Neptunian object’ that is getting all the attention by astronomers right now is the fabled Nibiru, it does show that our solar system is a whole lot weirder than standard astronomy likes to claim.

I hope everyone has buckled their seatbelts because the outer solar system just got a lot weirder. – Belfast astronomer Michele Bannister

Niku, named after the Chinese word for rebellious, orbits our sun in the opposite direction of all the other known objects and at an extreme angle, out of the plane of the other bodies. Estimates have Niku at less than 150 miles in diameter, making it considerably smaller that even Ceres at about 600 miles in diameter.

It does not appear that Niku is directly related to the Planet Nine discovery, which suggests that there is an object or objects out past the Kuiper belt that has 10 times the mass of Earth.