Scientists just found more evidence that Planet 9 exists

[Ninurta]

Galactic Plane

Thinking in 3 dimensions when dealing with space is not just a great idea, it's an imperative. The problem is, all of the various angles involved are incredibly complex... and they change over time and in periodic cycles.

The graphic above is wrong. The ecliptic (plane of the solar system) is not nearly as flat to the plane of the galaxy as is shown in it. In reality, the plane of the ecliptic is tilted 62 degrees with respect to the plane of the Milky Way, and rotated with respect to a ray coming from the center to the edge.

Then you have the slight tilt of the earth's orbital plane against the plane of the solar system (which is a lot closer to the graphic shown), and the tilt of the Earth's axis at about 24 degrees to the orbital plane... and the slight tilt of the Moon's orbit with respect to the earth's equator (which, remember, is tilted about 24 degrees from the ecliptic, since it is 90 degrees from the rotation axis), and you begin to see what an incredibly choreographed dance the various orbits interplay at. Over time, all these various orbit "wobble", like a top winding down as it spins, changing the available directions for rock balls to come from without interference, The area of danger is more like interacting cone shapes, which, when they overlap at times, creates higher probabilities of approach in the overlapping parts of the various cones.

I only know these things because that was a part of what I worked on primarily at the university, when I was taking astronomy and physics. My particular area was mapping space in 3 dimensions for future navigational purposes. I finally settled on the galactic plane as the most useful local frame of reference for mapping purposes. Once you get away from Earth, the reference systems we use here, primarily the ecliptic, become more and more irrelevant. The only system that stays constant with respect to the stars themselves is the galactic system. It doesn't change whether you're at Earth or at the eagle nebula.

As all these various objects orbit, the gravity fields dance, too. They merge, they split, they interact and influence one another. Sometimes they add together and create a lane of intensity, some times the cancel one another out and create voids, and all of this complexity goes to create go and no-go zones for wandering objects.

Sometimes those go and no-go zones will funnel a really big rock right to the place you don't want it to be, and vaporized dinosaurs can be the result.

It's a crap shoot, the luck of the draw, about like riding an SUV down highway one into Baghdad, and wondering where the IED is that has your name on it is.

Except in 3D.