A small team of planetary scientists from the California Institute of Technology, Université Côte d'Azur and Southwest Research Institute reports possible new evidence of Planet 9. They have published their paper on the arXiv preprint server, and it has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
VIIII is a valid way to write 9, though antiquated. If you look at very old clocks, you’ll see they all use this notation.
Didn’t realize homie was an antiquated clock. (Assumed the usage of Roman numerals, like in the references being made, in which case I don’t believe the clumsy VIIII only used on old clocks would really be valid.)
The reason clocks use it, is to not make it look visually unbalanced. Most often they write 4 as IIII. I find it infuriating to break such a simple rule though.
But also, I’ve never ever seen VIIII.
Julius Caesar’s memoir of war in Gaul makes use of VIIII, for instance. You’re right that it’s much rarer, but was still used contemporarily and in modern times.