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2nd Moon Orbiting Earth Discovered
Arctic Fox writes "Astronomers at the Queen Mary & Westfield College in London have discovered a new moon. Named Cruithne, the 3 mile sized "moon" has a horseshoe shaped orbit that is 770 years in length." Heh. Lunar eclipses are just a bit rarer with this moon.
This is just one of those articles that really don't need to be relegated to the science section. A new moon is kind of one of those things that you might want to know about
What is the real definition of a _moon_ anyway?
Evidently, this isn't entirely a new revelation. A quick altavista sear ch returned this (among others), which is older than this article (hasn't been touched since '98) but goes into a LOT more detail on this thing. This may be out of date for all I know, but it was kinda hard to tell from the posted article which had breathtakingly little real information in it... Too bad, too, this looks like some interesting stuff. I wish I knew enough on the subject to have some guess as to whether this is really an exciting thing, or just somebody trying to generate some publicity...
Of course, this technically shouldn't be termed a moon. This body shares an orbit with the Earth about the sun, and does not in any usual sense orbit the Earth. Instead, their orbits coincide so that Cruithne can occupy the same orbital region as the Earth over long periods of time without being ejected by a close approach.
Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
Not even the Slashdot editors themselves read the Science section!
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.