The search for a ninth planet in our solar system could reach a turning point as soon as this year, according to a planetary scientist involved in the hunt for a mysterious object believed to be lurking in the outer reaches of the Solar System.

For the past decade, astronomers around the world have been searching for evidence of another resident in our planetary neighborhood. As far back as 2016, there were already hints that something might be out there, given the odd orbits of distant objects like Sedna, discovered in 2003. 

Now, two astronomers—California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers Konstantin Batygin, a professor of planetary science, and his colleague, Dr. Michael E. Brown—believe there is a high probability that the confirmation of a ninth planet in our solar system could be on the horizon. 

Batygin and Brown’s findings suggest Planet Nine may have a mass roughly 5 to 10 times that of Earth and orbit, on average, about 20 times farther from the Sun than Neptune, which circles the Sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles. If it exists, the distant world would take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete a single orbit around the Sun.

“This would be a real ninth planet,” says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy, in a 2016 statement. “There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It’s a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that’s still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting.”

Evidence for Planet Nine comes from a small group of distant Kuiper Belt objects whose highly elongated orbits appear clustered in the same direction and share similar orbital tilts relative to the plane of the known planets.

Researchers argue that this type of alignment is unlikely to occur by chance. Alternative explanations involving the Kuiper Belt itself have also been explored, but models suggest the belt would require far more mass than has been observed to produce the effect.

Brown’s excitement shines through: “It’s almost like having six hands on a clock all moving at different rates, and when you happen to look up, they’re all in exactly the same place,” he says, adding that the odds of having that happen are something close to one in 100.

Computer simulations suggest that a large, unseen planet in the outer Solar System could maintain these orbital alignments through its gravitational influence. The models also demonstrate how mean-motion resonances could keep the distant objects in stable orbits while preventing collisions with the proposed planet.

The hypothesis may also explain the unusual trajectories of objects such as Sedna and 2012 VP113, whose highly elongated orbits do not bring them close to Neptune.

Japanese Scientists Find More Evidence 

In July, additional data relevant to the Planet Nine debate emerged with the discovery of a newly identified object nicknamed “Ammonite,” found by Japanese astronomers using the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii. The object is only the fourth known sednoid, joining a rare class of distant celestial bodies with unusual orbits beyond Pluto.

“The fact that Ammonite’s current orbit does not align with those of the other three sednoids lowers the likelihood of the Planet Nine hypothesis,” said Dr. Yukun Huang of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, who conducted simulations of Ammonite’s orbit in a July interview with The Debrief.

“It is possible that a planet once existed in the Solar System but was later ejected, causing the unusual orbits we see today,” says Huang.

How Planet Nine Could be Found This Year

Astronomy is often a science of probabilities and competing hypotheses, but Planet Nine presents a relatively rare case where new observations may soon provide a clear answer. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile recently began scientific operations and could provide the data needed to confirm—or rule out—the existence of Planet Nine.

Perched atop a mountain in Chile, the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory observes the night sky in extraordinary detail. Equipped with the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy, it will repeatedly survey the sky over ten years, producing an unprecedented time-lapse record of the Universe.

In a recent podcast interview, Batygin told The Debrief how his and Brown’s theory could soon be tested.

“The Planet Nine hypothesis is kind of readily refutable, right? I find that to be quite important,” says Batygin. “There’s a new telescope that came online called the Vera Rubin Observatory, and as it collects data this year, we will, I think, know one way or another whether Planet Nine is really out there or not.”

Batygin says Rubin’s greatest strengths are its survey efficiency and extensive sky coverage. By repeatedly imaging vast portions of the sky, Rubin is uniquely suited to detecting a faint, distant, and slowly moving object like Planet Nine.

 

“If Rubin detects an object at hundreds of astronomical units from the Sun, and its orbit is consistent with the predicted Planet Nine parameter space, that would essentially be it,” Batygin explained, in terms of what kind of observation would provide a definitive answer regarding Planet Nine’s existence.

“At that distance, anything visible to Rubin would have to be very large, so a direct detection would be the decisive confirmation,” he added, although suggesting that “whenever you find some interesting pattern in the data, the first thing you have to ask is, ‘will it hold up to additional scrutiny from [some] fresh kind of unbiased data?”

He points to this summer being a turning point in his research: “We will get that new batch of discoveries basically starting this summer, starting summer twenty twenty-six.  It will be a direct test of all lines of evidence that we have for the existence of Planet Nine.”

“ You can imagine Vera Rubin comes online, looks at the sky for a few months, finds an object that it can see that is far away, that is hundreds of astronomical units away, meaning hundreds of times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, as far away from the Sun as the Earth,” adds Batygin. “That’s Planet Nine. Like, that’s direct confirmation, right? Then you close the book and move on to the more interesting question of like characterization.”

Batygin suggests it would solidify many of the lines of evidence for Planet Nine, even if his team does not discover the object itself. “Nevertheless, that would lend support to its existence because, if the solar system is structured in this way, then something must be sculpting that structure.”

Although he has devoted years to the Planet Nine hypothesis, Batygin says he remains open to the possibility that the planet does not exist and believes the data must ultimately determine the outcome.

“It would definitely suck,” Batygin told The Debrief of this possibility, though noting that scientists have to “go where the data takes you, right?”

Planet Nine and Nibiru, “The Destroyer” Sumerian Folklore 

Over the decades, the Planet Nine hypothesis has inevitably drawn comparisons to “Nibiru,” a supposed hidden world popularized in modern pseudoscientific interpretations of ancient Mesopotamian texts.

The idea gained widespread attention through the writings of Zecharia Sitchin, who argued that ancient Sumerian records described a rogue planet that periodically enters the inner Solar System and causes catastrophic events on Earth. However, mainstream historians and archaeologists reject these interpretations, noting that ancient Mesopotamian flood traditions, including the story of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh, do not identify Nibiru as the cause of a global catastrophe.

When asked on the podcast whether Planet Nine could pose any threat to Earth, Batygin dismissed the idea.

“The important thing to understand about Planet Nine is that if you’re worried about Planet Nine’s gravity destroying things, I would encourage you to revisit the inverse square law of gravity, right?

He explains that gravity increases with mass and falls off as the distance between objects squared, and that Planet Nine is estimated to be five Earth masses, and at a distance of 500-600 astronomical units away. By comparison, Jupiter is 300 Earth masses and only around four astronomical units away.

“So if you’re worried about Planet Nine, you should really, really worry about Jupiter,” Batygin says. “I mean, this is one of the intriguing, frankly humbling things about learning celestial mechanics and understanding how the solar system works at a large scale,” Batygin added.

How Planet Nine Could Change Astronomy and CULTURE 

The confirmation of Planet Nine would be one of the most significant astronomical discoveries of the century, reshaping our understanding of the Solar System and its formation. Textbooks, educational materials, and scientific models would need updating to account for a previously unknown major planet residing far beyond Pluto. More importantly, its discovery could reveal new insights into how planetary systems form and evolve.

Batygin also thinks the influence of such a discovery also might impact science in ways we haven’t yet considered.

“Until we really take a look, we don’t know what kind of awesome and exciting information we’ll discover. This has been true along the way in all planetary exploration. We have been surprised time and time again,” says Batygin.

Batygin also surmises that astronomers “will discover interesting constraints about the birth environment of the Sun itself by studying Planet Nine.”

An exciting future may indeed lie ahead if Planet Nine is soon discovered. Astronomers could eventually determine whether it is a gas giant, an icy world, or something entirely unexpected. Future observations may even reveal details about its atmosphere and composition.

When Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 returned the first close-up images of the outer planets, it marked one of humanity’s greatest scientific achievements. For the first time, people saw distant worlds in remarkable detail rather than as tiny points of light in the night sky.

Now, in 2026, humanity may once again stand on the brink of a major planetary discovery, thanks to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Fundamentally, confirmation of a ninth planet would not only be a cosmic discovery: it would also offer a reflection of humanity, and a reminder of how much remains unknown, even within our own cosmic backyard.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

Days after successfully flying its Quarterhorse unmanned aircraft at supersonic speeds, an industry-first defense aviation company, Hermeus, has received the largest-ever contract awarded by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to demonstrate high-Mach flight combined with high-Mach payload release.

The new $ 159 million award, which increases the original contract to a total of $219 million, will allow Hermeus’ engineers to expand on previous high-Mach test flight milestones in direct partnership with the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy, with the goal of providing the American warfighter with the most advanced arsenal capable of delivering munitions and payloads around the world at record-setting speeds.

“By delivering flight-ready aircraft and demonstrating payload release at speed, we will prove this technology can create a decisive military advantage on a timeline that matters,” explained Hermeus CEO and co-founder, AJ Piplica. “Our focus is on providing the Air Force and Navy with the validated data they need to transition these platforms into the future force.”

High Mach Payload Release: “A Game Changing Warfighting Capability”

When announcing the new DIU award, Hermeus executives noted that the program will include a series of “intensive flight tests.” The first is expected later this year, while the final flights are expected sometime in 2027.

Although few specifics were provided, the company said the flights will “prove the aircraft can maintain high speeds and expand its performance limits” while also demonstrating the successful carry and release of payloads at high velocity. The company also noted that all flight data gathered during the development and testing phases “will directly inform service experimentation and future acquisition decisions.”

Although the U.S. Military has several aircraft capable of exceeding the speed of sound, and several more hypersonic (exceeding five times the speed of sound) aircraft and missile prototypes, delivering payloads from high-Mach aircraft has remained a challenge. However, some military experts argue that the U.S. would benefit greatly from the capability.

When discussing the need for high-speed payload release, DIU Military Deputy Major General Joe “Solo” Kunkel said that the largest problems the military is facing in the future are “generally around time and distance,” and the associated challenges with getting to distant locations “in a timeframe that matters.”

“I care about the warfighting capability, providing advantage to our partners and us in the fight, and making sure that we can walk into every fight with swagger,” General Kunkel said, adding that mass producing the technology developed by Hermeus could move it from a test platform to a “game-changing warfighting capability.”

“I think we found a significant number of use cases where it can be used as a weapon,” the General added. 

Moving High-Mach Capability Out of the Lab

When discussing the company’s approach that convinced the DIU to offer its largest award in the organization’s history, including what they describe as “reclaiming the lost art of rapid iterative prototyping to build the fastest aircraft in the world today,” Hermeus noted that directly partnering with the USAF and USN allows their engineers to align tests with future mission needs and shorten the path from testing to deployment.

“By prioritizing relentless hardware iteration, we deliver high-speed systems at the pace of the modern battlefield,” the company’s statement explained. “We work with the Department of War to provide the high-speed capabilities our nation and its allies need to maintain a durable, asymmetric advantage.”

When discussing the significance of the upcoming tests and the overall need for high-Mach flight payload deployment, including the benefit of the performance data, the company CEO heralded the DIU’s award, noting that the financing will help them move their successful demonstrations into real-world high-Mach platforms.

“This program is about moving high-Mach capability out of the lab and into an operationally relevant environment,” Piplica said. 

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

A novel phase of matter has been achieved by a team of American researchers, finally realizing a theoretical quantum prediction using nanoscale building blocks, a breakthrough that could pave the way for room-temperature quantum computing.

Researchers at Brown University and the University of Michigan College of Engineering revealed how they briefly stabilized the novel state of matter in a nanoparticle superlattice in a recent paper published in the journal Science. They say their work provides a new method for engineering classes of materials with custom-shaped nanoparticles, which could be applied to quantum computers and other quantum applications.

Quantum Blocks

“Our work is a little bit like kids playing with LEGO blocks,” said co-author Ou Chen, an associate professor of chemistry at Brown. “We synthesize unique nanoscale building blocks and stack them into interesting structures. In this case, we were able to stabilize these theorized transitional structures and demonstrate important quantum optical properties.”

Most metals form in one of two primary groups of crystal structures. The first is face-centered cubic (FCC), the tightest packing arrangement for spherical particles, typically forming a cube with a single particle at each corner and at the center of each face. The other type is body-centered cubic (BCC), a more loosely packed structure in which single particles are still present at the corners, but instead of each face being centered on a particle, one sits at the center of the entire arrangement.

For the most part, atoms form one of these structures as they arrange into a metal, yet at high temperatures, some metals can switch from one structure to another. When it reaches 912° Celsius, Iron will transition from BCC to FCC. One explanation proposed for the transition is the Nishiyama-Wassermann pathway, which suggests that, due to the lower symmetry of the transition phases between FCC and BCC, these phases are fleeting.

Testing the In-Between States

The American team behind the recent research decided to test this idea, fabricating one of those low symmetries in between phases with silver nanoparticles 

“Materials scientists have cared about how to control the amount of FCC and BCC in their metals for a long time, but the transitions between these phases have been hard to study because they are so unstable,” said co-author Tim Moore, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan. “Being able to observe these structures is a fundamental breakthrough in materials science, and it gives us greater control over nanomaterial engineering.”

At the heart of the team’s work was the truncated octahedron, or “mecon,” a 14-sided polyhedron formed by cutting off the vertices of a diamond, producing an intermediate shape between a cube and sphere.

As the team synthesized silver nanoparticles, they varied the heat level during production, resulting in a spectrum of shapes ranging from cubic to spherical, which were coated with long, sticky molecules that bound the particles. They found that the sticky molecules were required for the particles to assemble themselves into the intermediate shapes predicted by the Nishiyama-Wassermann pathway.

Near Quantum Behavior 

Once the particles self-assembled into variously shaped nanoparticle superlattices, the team tested their behavior with computer simulations and physical observations.

The superlattices show evidence of a process known as deep-strong light-matter coupling, in which silver electrons vibrate in unison with light waves, becoming so hybridized they could no longer be treated independently. The similarity of this state to quantum entanglement leaves the team hopeful that their superlattice can be applied to quantum work in the future. 

Crucially, this action occurs at room temperature, whereas in previous instances it occurred only at very cold temperatures. This means the work could be useful for developing quantum technologies, which have been limited by the extreme cold required.

“One of the major challenges in quantum computing is maintaining coherent quantum states without requiring extremely low temperatures,” Chen told The Debrief in an email. “Our work suggests that carefully engineered nanoparticle superlattices may provide a scalable materials platform where strong and coherent light–matter interactions can persist at room temperature.”

Quantum Applications

“In the long term, such systems could potentially be used to create or manipulate quantum states for applications in quantum information science, including quantum communication, sensing, or photonic quantum technologies,” Chen said. “However, it is important to emphasize that this research is still at the fundamental physics and materials discovery stage. We are not yet building a room-temperature quantum computer, but rather exploring new material platforms that may help enable future quantum technologies.”

As research continues, the team is focused on more precisely controlling the superlattices’ quantum optical properties.

“Specifically, we are interested in: Engineering nanoparticle architectures that produce even stronger and more controllable light–matter coupling; Exploring how structural order, particle shape, and lattice symmetry influence quantum optical behavior,” Chen explained, “and Integrating these materials with photonic and optoelectronic platforms for potential quantum-device applications.

“More broadly,” Chen concluded, “we see this work as opening a new direction where nanoscale self-assembly can be used to engineer emergent quantum optical properties that do not exist in the individual nanoparticles alone.”

The paper, “Stabilizing In-Transition Phases of Superlattices Through Shape Control of Silver Nanocrystals,” appeared in Science on May 28, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

As artificial intelligence grows more sophisticated, a question once confined to science fiction is rapidly becoming a serious scientific challenge: how would we know if an AI system became conscious?

A new paper published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences argues that the debate is no longer simply philosophical. Instead of asking whether AI consciousness is possible, an international team of researchers, including prominent AI and consciousness scholars such as Dr. Yoshua Bengio and Dr. David Chalmers, has outlined a workable framework for evaluating whether current or future AI systems might possess subjective awareness.

The researchers say advances in AI capabilities, combined with growing public willingness to attribute consciousness to systems like ChatGPT, make the issue more urgent.

As AI systems become more humanlike in their behavior, society may soon face difficult questions about whether some machines deserve moral consideration, legal protections, or entirely new forms of regulation.

Rather than relying on intuition-based judgments or science-fiction-style speculation, the authors propose grounding the discussion in neuroscience.

“There is an urgent need for rigorous methods to assess AI systems for consciousness,” researchers write. “Indicators derived from such theories can be used to inform credences about whether particular AI systems are conscious.”

The paper comes at a time when AI systems are becoming increasingly capable of holding conversations, generating images, performing complex logical tasks, and even acting autonomously in digital environments. While most scientists agree that today’s AI systems are not known to be conscious, there is far less agreement about how to recognize consciousness if it eventually emerges.

The Problem of Machine Consciousness

One of the central difficulties is that consciousness itself is still a mystery.

Scientists cannot directly observe subjective experience. They can measure behavior, neural activity, and information processing, but they cannot see what it feels like to be another mind. That challenge, often referred to as the “problem of other minds,” becomes even more complicated when applied to machines.

Researchers note that opinions remain sharply divided. Some researchers argue that consciousness requires biological organisms and can never arise in silicon-based systems. Others believe advanced AI could become a legitimate candidate for consciousness within the next decade.

Complicating matters further, people are increasingly prone to anthropomorphizing AI. The authors refer to earlier research showing that many users already consider it plausible that systems such as ChatGPT possess some degree of consciousness. And as The Debrief has previously reported, some users are going even further, forming deep romantic relationships with AI chatbots.

As AI companions and conversational agents become more common, public disagreement over machine awareness will probably intensify. The stakes, the researchers argue, cut both ways.

If society incorrectly assumes a conscious AI is merely a tool, it could potentially allow harm to entities capable of subjective experience. But if people begin attributing consciousness to systems that are not actually conscious, governments and organizations could waste resources, distort policy decisions, or create unnecessary ethical obligations.

Looking Inside the Machine

Instead of focusing on how AI behaves, the researchers argue that scientists should examine how AI systems work internally.

Historically, many attempts to identify consciousness relied on behavior. Humans infer consciousness in others because they communicate, express emotions, and respond to the world in recognizable ways. But the researchers caution that this approach may be particularly unreliable for AI.

Modern language models can produce highly convincing human-like responses without necessarily possessing the internal processes associated with conscious experience. As a result, behavior alone may be a poor guide.

They instead propose identifying “indicators” of consciousness derived from leading neuroscientific theories. Researchers could then examine whether AI systems possess these characteristics internally.

Among the theories explored are Global Workspace Theory, Recurrent Processing Theory, Higher-Order Theories of consciousness, Attention Schema Theory, predictive processing structures, and theories emphasizing agency and embodiment. Each suggests different computational features that may be associated with conscious experience.

For example, Global Workspace Theory proposes that consciousness arises when information is globally broadcast across multiple specialized cognitive systems. If an AI system showed a similar architecture, one capable of integrating information across many modules and maintaining it for complex problem-solving tasks, that could serve as one indicator of consciousness.

Other indicators include forms of recurrent information processing, metacognitive self-monitoring, predictive internal models, goal-directed agency, and sophisticated representations of an AI’s interactions with its environment.

Importantly, the researchers emphasize that no single indicator would prove consciousness. Instead, each characteristic would increase or decrease confidence that a system might be conscious.

The Risk of Being Fooled

The researchers also acknowledge a major challenge: AI systems could potentially appear conscious without actually being conscious. They refer to this as the “gaming problem.”

An AI developer could deliberately design systems that mimic behaviors associated with consciousness. A chatbot might express emotions, claim to have experiences, or exhibit seemingly self-aware behavior while lacking any genuine subjective awareness.

This concern is not limited to behavior. Even computational features thought to correlate with consciousness could, in principle, be engineered into systems that remain non-conscious.

Given that possibility, the authors argue that future assessments should rely on multiple independent indicators rather than a single test.

The challenge resembles earlier scientific studies aimed at identifying consciousness in nonhuman animals. Researchers studying insects, fish, octopuses, and other species have increasingly relied on collections of evidence rather than definitive proof. The authors suggest a similar approach may ultimately be necessary for AI.

Could Conscious AI Arrive Soon?

The paper stops short of claiming that any current AI system is conscious. However, the researchers acknowledge that some existing systems may already exhibit a number of the proposed indicators.

That possibility provokes significant ethical, legal, and social questions.

If future AI systems become plausible candidates for consciousness, society may need to rethink everything from research practices and commercial deployment to legal rights and moral responsibility.

Determining whether a machine can experience pleasure, suffering, or subjective awareness would have implications extending far beyond computer science.

The researchers believe advances in AI may also help improve scientific understanding of consciousness itself. By testing consciousness theories against artificial systems, scientists may uncover weaknesses, ambiguities, or hidden assumptions in present models of the mind. AI could become not only a potential subject of consciousness research, but also a tool for improving theories about human awareness.

Ultimately, researchers argue that uncertainty is not a reason to ignore the issue.

“Assessing AI systems for consciousness is challenging, but using scientific theories offers a principled, substantive method for doing so,” researchers write. “We propose deriving indicator properties from scientific theories, then basing evaluations of the probability of consciousness in particular systems on whether they possess these indicators.”

Researchers conclude their paper with a warning that the discussion may soon become more than theoretical.

“Given that it may already be possible to build AI systems that possess many of the indicators, in looking ahead we should also contemplate the possibility that some near-future AI systems will be plausible candidates for consciousness,” researchers write. “This would presumably have substantial ethical, legal, and social implications.”

Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com