Slashdot Mirror
New Frozen World Found Beyond Pluto
theBrownfury writes "BBC, Sydney Herald, and the Indian Express are reporting a new object, which is one-tenth the diameter of the Earth, and lies well beyond Pluto in an area of the Solar System known as the Kuiper Belt. The new world, which has been dubbed Quaoar, is about 1,280 kilometres (800 miles) across. Quaoar orbits the sun ever 288 years and is 1250 Km wide, about the size of all the asteroids combined. This discovery is being hailed as the most important solar system discovery in the past 72 years."
Haven't they discovered and disputed this "planet" for years? I believe I have seen this on space.com before in the past.
Who thinks up these names? I would like to recite the names of the planets without it sounding like I had major dental surgery after Pluto.
And didn't they realize that people get upset when you prematurely abandon a naming convention? Those of you who work in server rooms must know this. There must be dozens of Roman gods with no celestial body named after them yet.
Ooh! I've got to see if the International Star Registry does planets. I know it's not official, but it'd be cool to have someone name a planet for you, even if it was only for your money.
--
E_NOSIG
Since when did we start giving new heavenly bodies names out of pulp sci-fi? What was wrong with the whole Roman god motif?
Not to mention, shouldn't Quaroroaa be referred to as "beyond Neptune," since we pretty much just finished undiscovering Pluto? Maybe we should just call the new planet "Pluto" and forget about the old one.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
My first thought was, "I wonder if Stallman named it".
:)
No, then it would have been "GNU/Quaoar".
(-1, Obvious Poor Joke
deus does not exist but if he does
This planet name was obviously created by zealous Scrabble fanatics in the quest to make another word to use up their "Q"s.
"Your 'Gin n'tonic Futon Brain' sure makes you smart!"
"That's 'Positronic-photon Brain', you idiot!"
So it's 1280 km "across" and 1250 Km "wide". How does that work out? This is on two successive sentences. Nice!
Random is the New Order.
The new world, which has been dubbed Quaoar, is about 1,280 kilometres (800 miles) across. Quaoar orbits the sun ever 288 years and is 1250 Km wide, about the size of all the asteroids combined.
So, is it 1,280 or 1,250?
Hint: The difference wouldn't be so significant if you didn't write them right next to each other like that.