In January 2016, the discovery of a new planet, tentatively called Planet 9 was announced. But this discovery is not for sure.

I cannot imagine that this is a mistake. The new planet must exist though it remains unseen. The name, Planet 9, might not be right since it refers to distance from the sun and we may later learn of other planets occupying 9’s position. But for now 9 sounds like a fine name

Whatever its name, imagine a Super Earth, ten time the mass of our Earth located 18.6 billion miles away from us. It would probably take our New Horizons spacecraft about 355 years to get to Planet 9 assuming it could do that with its present capabilities.

Our human ability to extend our knowledge this far is amazing and inspiring. It is exhilarating to see that we are endowed with such capacity to learn about the universe. At the same time it is humbling to appreciate that the more we know, the more we don’t know.

As I have suggested in On Hinduism  in Chapter 2, our capacity to know is not infinite like the universe so ultimately we must look within to fully appreciate the wonder that has caused the existence of existence.