NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)

NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) Finds No Evidence of Planet X (Nibiru) Hiding in Solar System

Scientists and conspiracy theorists [who often accuse NASA of being part of the conspiracy] alike originally hypothesized the existence of a planet or small star in the outer solar system [called 'Planet X' or sometimes Nibiru]. This is due to the seemingly regular timing of mass extinctions that have taken place on Earth due to asteroid impact such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period.

[However...] A study of data captured by NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite has disproved the existence of the hypothesized large celestial body…

This pair of brown dwarfs represent the closest system to our star discovered in almost a century (Image: NASA/JPL/Gemini)

NASA’s WISE satellite was designed to image the entire sky with infrared light, to aid the answering of fundamental questions on the origins of celestial bodies ranging from planets to galaxies.

Before being placed in hibernation and subsequently woken in 2013 to form the NEOWISE mission, the WISE mission operated from 2010 to early 2011. During this time it carried out two full surveys of the sky, imaging nearly 750 million stars and galaxies and creating a catalog that scientists could turn to in order to examine questions and theories such as that posed by the hypothetical Planet X.

Whilst WISE found no evidence of Planet X, it did find an abundance of celestial bodies closer to our solar system than any previously discovered. The second study by WISE revealed 3,525 stars and brown dwarfs within 500 light-years of our Sun, the closest of which, a pair of brown dwarfs just 6.5 light-years away, represents the closest system discovered in almost a century.