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Motivated by recent measurements of the free-floating planet mass function atterrestrial masses, we consider the possibility that the solar system may havecaptured a terrestrial planet early in its history. We show that $\sim 1.2$captured free-floating planets with mass strictly greater than that of Mars mayexist in the outer solar system, with a median predicted distance of $\sim 1400\mathrm{\; AU}$. If we consider a logarithmic bin centered on the mass of Mars,rather than a cutoff, we find that $\sim 2.7$ captured free-floating planetswith mass comparable to Mars may exist in the outer solar system. We derive anexpectation value of $\sim 0.9$ for the number of captured free-floatingplanets with mass comparable to that of Mars ($\sim 1.4$ for mass comparable tothat of Mercury) that are currently brighter than the 10-year co-added pointsource detection limits of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey ofSpace and Time (LSST). Blind shift-and-stack searches could potentially enablethe detection of such a planet if it is currently in the Southern sky. Thetheoretical argument presented here does not rely on the existence of positedpatterns in the orbital elements of small bodies in and beyond the Kuiper belt,in contrast with other hypothetical outer-solar-system planets motivated inrecent years.

Are There Terrestrial Planets Lurking in the Outer Solar System?