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."

Comments

Quaoar?

[Rupert]

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.

Quaouo'eoaurion

[tps12]

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.

Re:Vanna White, help!

[jumex]

Quaoar

This planet name was obviously created by zealous Scrabble fanatics in the quest to make another word to use up their "Q"s.