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New 'Planet' Discovered in Solar System
Greyfox writes: "This USA Today story tells us that astronomers have discovered a puny little "planet" between Neptune and Pluto. Significantly larger than your average asteroid, it falls just shy of qualifying as being planet sized." Plutino?
Seriously. Let's say you're in a solar system with twelve major planets, but two of them are airless, have less effect than asteroids and meteors, and pretty much are only found when you look really hard for them.
Are they planets? Or just statistical anomolies intended to distract us from sending extrasolar probes to avoid the inevitable destruction of this solar system? Because, if we don't get out of the solar system, human life is an historical footnote in the history of the universe, a leaf fluttering from a tree in a vast and empty forest, which falls and decomposes with noone ever seeing it.
Will in Seattle
I wonder if it came out of Uranus? :)
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If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
> More?
Plutanium - naw, Intel already has that one.
Plu.net - naw, Micorsoft already has that one.
Plunix - naw, The Open Group already has that one.
Plutoe - naw, Dan Quayle already has that one.
I give.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Yay! Now they can have one more sailor senshi on Sailor Moon!
Or not...
BBK
Well, there's supposedly a brown dwarf out there. It used to be called "Nemesis" since it was supposed to kill us all in a blaze of displaced comets and the terror and the ow ow ow it hurts me, but that seems unlikely now apparently.
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end communication
It's a Death Star!
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
it was bound to happen. time to sew another star into the flag...
wait a minute...
That's no planet... ...it's a space station!
Fear the power of NTie!
Broadly, the IAU group agrees that a planet should independently orbit a star, possess enough gravity to shape itself into a sphere and weigh at least 100,000 billion billion grams. EB173 just misses the last mark, Boss says.
Judging by this definition, earth's moon should be considered a planet. It is easily massive enough, and it has greater gravitational attraction to the sun than it does to the earth.
A planet which shares the same orbit as the earth, sure, but still a planet.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
For that matter, is Pluto even a planet?
Got Rhinos?
Don't get me wrong. I mean, I think it's cool that there's a really big rock floating out there and someone spotted it. But if anyone out there understands this and can explain better, please do.
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
This theory has been known as one possibility among several ever since; it was not "discovered" by later astronomers as most textbooks would have us believe. Sure, mathematics and, later, telescopes helped to prove it correct, but the idea was current long before.
Decentralization: the brief interval between the decline of one centralized regime and rise of another.
Here're some clear images of EB173 captured by the Fort Bend Astronomy Club. It seems they imaged it without necessarily knowing EB173's significance at the time.
And while I'm at it, here's a considerably grainier shot taken at the Klet observatory.
-- Anne Marie
The actual paper discussed in the article can be found here .
-- Anne Marie
Ceres = 584 mi
EB173 (Plutino) = 373 mi
Pallas = 365 mi
Vesta = 358 mi
The author of the post missed some words. This objec a planetesimal or _minor_ planet. Yes it may be too small to be called a planet but that mention in the article that "should independently orbit a star" is just ridiculous:
Pluton - Charon - which of them are to be considered to be the planet and the ????
Earth - Moon. Yes it is the Moon that mostly looses in this game. However this stuff is too heavy that it is hard to consider Earth moving "independently" around the Sun. So people we are living in a planetesimal...
Moons from the Jovian planets. One of them seems to be even bigger than Mercury if I'm not mistaken.
And to end. Recently there was some discussion sbout a "wandering planet". Well an object bigger than Jupiter but short of being a star. Wandering away from any star at high speeds. So, according to this article that is not a planet. So what it is? Flash Gordon's Mongo?
The barycenter (center of mass) of the earth-moon system is some 1707 km below Earth's surface. The Earth/Luna mass ratio is larger than any other planet/moon system in our solar system, bar Pluto/Charon, but I wouldn't go so far as to call the moon a planet.
Bottom line, your thesis is based on a faulty assertion. (i.e. Earth and Luna don't revolve around a common point in space - that point is comfortably beneath the earth's surface.)
See this link for greater detail.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
BEN: That's no moon! It's a space station.
LUKE: I have a very bad feeling about this.
BEN: Yeah, I think your right. Full reverse! Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power.
The pirateship shudders and the TIE fighter accelerates away toward the gargantuan battle station.
LUKE: Why are we still moving towards it?
HAN: We're caught in a tractor beam! It's pulling us in!
LUKE: But there's gotta be something you can do!
HAN: There's nothin' I can do about it, kid. I'm in full power. I'm going to have to shut down. But they're not going to get me without a fight!
Ben Kenobi puts a hand on his shoulder.
BEN: You can't win. But there are alternatives to fighting.
Pluto? No, don't go there, that's a Mickey Mouse planet!
-- Mork
I'm gonna be a nitpick here and note that your quote is incorect. Here's the lines from the script:
BEN: That's no moon! It's a space station.
HAN: It's too big to be a space station.
LUKE: I have a very bad feeling about this.
BEN: Yeah, I think your right. Full reverse! Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power.
The pirateship shudders and the TIE fighter accelerates away toward the gargantuan battle station.
LUKE: Why are we still moving towards it?
HAN: We're caught in a tractor beam! It's pulling us in!
LUKE: But there's gotta be something you can do!
HAN: There's nothin' I can do about it, kid. I'm in full power. I'm going to have to shut down. But they're not going to get me without a fight!
Ben Kenobi puts a hand on his shoulder.
BEN: You can't win. But there are alternatives to fighting.
This object belongs the the Knuiper Belt a class of objects similiar to asteroids. Pluto is thought to be the largest example of a Knuiper object>.
It's likely someone who has take Astronomy 101 will tell you they learned that today, many people "in the field" believe Pluto falls closer into the category of an asteroid than as a planet. With this new object being smaller than Pluto, there should be no question that this is just an asteroid.
It seems as if many people want there to be a planet X, but in reality chances are quite slim that anything of a substatial (I.E.: planet) size existing beyond Neptune.
You forgot about the third dimension. Pluto's plane of orbit is inclined by 17 degrees to the orbital plane of the other planets. Therefore a collision is not possible.
Wow...finally a slashdot article that allows me to use a hobby of mine that's really obscure! Yay!
Okay, first, this object will probably not be called "Plutino", because that name's already pretty much taken and has been used for a class of objects which astronomers decide are larger than the average asteroid, but smaller than the traditional definition of a planet. They've been discovering plutinos for years now and there's even a circular which goes out in the astronomical community a couple times a year which outlines the information on all the plutinos.
These plutinos, and even Pluto itself, is believed to have come from, or may still be part of a large group of chunks of rock called the Kuiper Belt. This belt rings our solar system just beyond the orbit of Pluto. The important factor influencing these object is the planet Neptune which, because of its orbit, will occasionally pull an object from the Kuiper belt and drag it into the solar system proper. Also, bodies in the Kuiper Belt run into each other, and the collision will send a body into our solar system. This is where astronomers believe Pluto and this new rock may have come from. Astronomers believe that there are even more bodies orbiting more closely than the Kuiper Belt, probably tucked in between the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, and just beyond Pluto.
Beyond the Kuiper Belt is yet another conglomeration of chunks of rock and dust called the Oort Cloud. This also surrounds our solar system and may actually protect us from some of the things that could zip into the system and strike another planet or disrupt things. The Oort Cloud also provides us with debris which will come floating into the solar system from collisions with object in the cloud, or from objects that arrive in the cloud from outside. We don't quite know how large the cloud is, for sure, nor how many objects are in ot, mostly because the cloud doesn't reflect what little light it might get. We make our guesses based on fairly obscure measuring methods. It has been suggested that perhaps the Oort Cloud has a good amount of Dark Matter in it, but that's pretty much conjecture right now.
The upshot of the whole thing is that, the harder we look, the more we find in our own backyard. Our methods of studyign the heavens have gotten more and more sophisticated, and allow us to see smaller objects, orbiting farther away. I, personally, hope that we realize that, as long as we're looking out there anyhow, it wouldn't be a bad idea to look systematically, especially for objects that could pose some sort of threat to our planet directly. The tech is cheap, and what we'd need to build to deal with any intruder that might run into us is also quite cheap. Maybe it's not a bad idea at all.
-Jimmie
But it's about fourteen years too late. I expect the Cybermen will arrive shortly to drain the earth of its precious energy...
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Now, the mnemonic to remember the order of the planets work any longer. I'll have to change My Very Easy Mother Justifies Sex, Unless Not Paid to something else.
 My Very Easy Mnemonic Just Sucks - Useless Now, Extra Planet.
Phillip Narf a spokesman for the P.C.R.F. said: "The traditionalists are pooh heads. Pluto is the smallest planet, and as such it needs to be called an asteroid". "Nonsense" replied Arnold Dweeb of the traditionalist school "if we call Pluto an asteroid it would be by far the largest asteroid ever discovered, and as such would automatically be promoted to planetary status."
In a related story computer nerds around the world were seen dancing in the streets. A post on Slashdot - the computer nerd news web site explained the jubilation: "Finally we have found a group even more pathetic than we are; at least we could go out at night if we wanted to. And everybody used to say that we needed to get lives."
Pluto-Lite
Bluto
Nanuto
Planet Nike®
Gnutella
Bob
Doug
Nivlem (Tax Haven for the Rich 'I pay taxes on Nivlem!')
Skippy, the intergalactic planet of evil twins
And of course...
Foobar
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Indeed. Chiron is a Centaur with a very elliptical orbit taking it into the Kuiper Belt. Possibly because of this it has a coma, more like a comet than an asteroid. It was one of the first clues, aside from Pluto itself, that there might be a broad new class of objects -- the Trans-Neptunians.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
The original Planet X (where X stood for unknown value, not Roman ten) was derived from small perturbations in the orbit of Neptune, which in turn had been the way Neptune and Uranus were discovered, through gravitational effects on the orbits of their inner neighbors.
The search for Planet X began in earnest around the turn of the 20th century. Percival Lowell (justly famed but also justly taken with a grain of salt) claimed to have found it at least once. But it wasn't until Clyde Tombaugh engaged in the tedious exercise of studying thousands of glass photographic plates (using a special machine like a ViewFinder) that he found a blip that moved from one to the other. This was Pluto.
Pluto, alas, was far too small to have caused the perturbations ascribed to Planet X, so the controversy continued for a number of years. Only in the 1980s was it finally proven that the perturbations in Neptune's orbit were due to imprecise measurements from Earth-based observatories. Voyager 2 was instrumental in demonstrating this point by determining Neptune's mass during its flyby to a much higher degree than was formerly possible.
Now that Neptune is known to be, as it were, unperturbed, all but a few diehards agree there is no Planet X.
Read the Search for Planet X for detailed information.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Why did it take them so long to find it?
Of course you're joking, but the search for Trans-Neptunian objects has barely begun, with about half the objects discovered being found just this year. Partly due to "SpaceGuard" type concerns (hitting Earth), and partly due to better Earth-based telescopes, we can now undertake this systematic search. Once people began looking with the latest instruments, the planetoids started turning up by the bucketful.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
No, no, no! It was the Twenty-Fourth and a halfth Centuuuuury!
They were claiming Planet X as the only known source of Eludium Phosdex, the shaving cream atom.
The eager young space cadet found out how to get there by following the lettered planets!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
SO, is that the planet from which all the pesky Cling-ons come from?
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Follow this link and be the life of the next party!
Unless the next party includes any of the following: Actors, actresses, models, recording artists, professional athletes, amature athletes, sports agents, literary agents, lawyers, lawyers with doberman pinschers clamped onto one or both ankles, used car salesman, RIAA scum, MPAA filth, pencil pushers, paper shufflers or accountants.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You've wandered into my jurisdiction.
Pre-telescope, a planet (for the Greek word for "wanderer") was any sky object that moved against the "fixed" background of stars. These obviously didn't include Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto, which can't be seen with the naked eye, but did include the Sun and Moon. (The makes the mystical number 7, which happens to be why we have 7 days in the week, a survival from Middle Eastern religious astrology.)
This terminology was not very useful after telescopes revealed a bunch of lot of objects not visible with the naked eye. So "planet" was redefined as an object that moved and resolved to a disk in a telescope -- except for satellites of planets, which became "moons" with a little M.
But telescopes turned up a lot of objects that moved agains the starry background (like planets) but didn't resolve to a disk (like stars). These earned the adjectives "planetoid" (planet-like) and "asteroid" (star-like). "Asteroid" seems to have become the standard noun, leaving "Planetoid" for Star Trek writers to play with.
Elsewhere in this discussion somebody argues against getting caught up in artificial distinctions. Despite my professional obssesion with words and taxonomies (or maybe because of it), I have to endorse this POV. You can argue about whether Pluto is a planet or a moon (a issue that would be clearer if it either Pluto or Charon were either closer or father from their comon center of rotation) or whether Jupiter is a hot planet or a cool star (just a few million degrees either way...) But words are just for communicating between people. The universe laughs at our petty distinctions.
__________
no no no! Planet X is where Apple's Human Interface group did it's usability testing for Mac OS X!
(No humans on Planet X, hence, no humans used in testing - only engineers).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Just what we need, another Sailor Senshi.
Trans-Neptunian Object EB173 Planet Power, MAKE UP!
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!