Slashdot Mirror
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?
> 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
I don't know what the astronomical distinction is between an asteroid and a planet, but I know what defines a moon.
A moon is a natural object that orbits a planet, where the center of mass of the planet-moon system lies within the planet. the irony is that although 'the Moon' is the archetypical moon, it doesn't fit this definition, as both the Moon and Earth rotate around a point in space between the two and outside the Earth. In truth, the Moon-Earth system is a binary planetary system, as is Charon and Pluto. All other 'moons' in the solar system are true moons by this definition.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
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
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