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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."
Now you all must die!
"This discovery is being hailed as the most important solar system discovery in the past 72 years."
Not by me.
They called it "Quaoar"? You can't even pronounce it! Here I was hoping they'd have the decencey to name the planet out past Pluto as it should be named.
Goofy.
This article at TheAge disputes whether this object is really a planet...
"However, Quaoar is not an official name - at least not yet. In a few months, the International Astronomical Union, astronomy's governing body, will vote on it."
I vote for CowboyNeal.
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"Quaoar orbits the sun ever 288 years"
Do I perceive a-bit of the ol' Irish accent in ye? Or are ye a pirate be?
come on fhqwhgads
Quaoar
Otherwise known as the Vowel Planet
Table-ized A.I.
My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas Q???
ahh damn now what are we supposed to use to remember the planet order
Dunno, but I've racked my brains for the last five minutes
and I can't think of a single thing we could do with Quaoar (OSLT).
Nope. Zilch. Not a single damn use for another planet.
We still haven't figured out what we're going to do with the current lot.
Perhaps I'm an ignorant barbarian, but how is finding one more planet 'important'?
I mean... surely 'importance' has to have something to do with human aspirations?
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
yes, but pluto managed to pull its stock up over $1, so it's still listed.
Quoth BBC:
I happen to think that that is way groovy. It's about time some other ancient belief systems got in on the planet-naming! :)
Karma: T-rexcellent.
For the sake of geekdom everywhere -- If there's a tenth planet out there, it's gotta be called Persephone (I don't think Rupert would go over too well).
(We miss you, Douglas)
Triv
Film at 11.
If it's a planet, give it a proper name from the list of the major Roman gods. When they named Pluto they suggested the following (from Appolonius.net). I vote for Baccus, god of wine and mysteries, or secondly Cronus.:
The naming of Pluto is a story by itself. Early suggestions of the name of the new planet were: Atlas, Zymal, Artemis, Perseus, Vulcan, Tantalus, Idana, Cronus. The New York Times suggested Minerva, reporters suggested Osiris, Bacchus, Apollo, Erebus. Lowell's widow suggested Zeus, but later changed her mind to Constance. Many people suggested the planet be named Lowell. The staff of the Flagstaff observatory, where Pluto was discovered, suggested Cronus, Minerva, and Pluto. A few months later the planet was officially named Pluto. The name Pluto was originally suggested by Venetia Burney, an 11-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
No, they are probably afraid of naming it Nemesis - the Death Star. There are some theories about the Sun having an older sister in the form of a brown dwarf. Some consider alternatively the existence of a planet somewhat bigger than Jupiter. They use these theories to explain the episodical extinctions on Earth, supposedly caused by swarms of Kuiper belt comets falling inside the Solar system. This hypothetical "star/planet" is supposed to be much far away than Quaoar. Some theories give its orbit the fantastic period of 3 million years, and some consider it the reason why we can't find it...
Well, probably some academical SF. They, sometimes, are also good writers...
Note that he used a capital K (the computer science kilo = 1024).
1250 Km = 1250*1.024 km = 1280 km. Everything works out.
New DS9 tongue twister:
Quark, Queue me up a Quick Quart of Quaoar
Table-ized A.I.
Alien: It's only natural that humans would use a base-10 number system. You have 10 of everything. 10 fingers, 10 toes, 10 planets in your solar system...
Human: Uh, that's nine planets.
Alien: Keep looking.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
What is your favorite pronunciation of Quaoar?
1) kyoo-ohr
2) kway-ohr
3) kwow-ahr
5) kwak-kwak
6) k-pax
7) kow-boi-neel
What makes an object a planet?
That's a tough question.
Size?
Yes. Generally, a body should be large enough that gravity makes it roughly spherical, before it can be considered a planet. However, this is apparently a necessary-but-not-sufficient criterion.
The presence of its own sattelites?
No. See Mercury and Venus.
An atmosphere?
No. See Mercury.
How hard can it be? It's an arbitrary classification that doesn't actually mean anything.
You just answered your own question. It's hard to draw the line between planet and non-planet precisely because the line is arbitrary and has no real meaning.
I think we should just call it a planet if it (1) orbits a star directly; (2) is massive enough to be roughly spherical; and (3) is not so massive that it is either a brown dwarf or a star. However, please note that this definition would include the asteroid Ceres, which is generally not considered a planet...maybe it should be.
(Ceres is 900 km in diameter, compared to this new one's 1250-km diameter).
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
is Persephone. (per-SEF-oh-nee) This would be the chick from Greek mythology that ate the pomogranate seeds and thus had to stay in Hades for half the year (when the world grows cold), and gets to come out the other half (when the world warms up again).
Most of the SF and speculative fiction/nonfiction articles over the last few decades have all referred to a tenth planet as Persephone, on the assumption that we would continue naming major astronomical objects for ancient mythological figures.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Here is a link to the Quaoar FAQ, maintained by Chad Truijillo, one of the planet's co-discoverers. There's a lot of cool stuff there, including the discovery images (animated so you can see it moving across the star field), the Hubble images, information about the orbit, etc.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Pluto is the threshold case. At the moment, it seems to be the conventional wisdom that anything found that's larger than Pluto will have to be considered for planet status, and anything smaller for planetoid/asteroid/comet status. Quaoar would thus not be a planet. But who knows? The important thing is that a solar system can have these kinds of objects:
Stars (Sun)
Brown dwarfs (none known in our system)
Gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune)
Terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars)
Asteroids (Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, etc.)
Kuiper-like objects (Pluto, Quoaoar, maybe Chiron)
Comets (maybe Chiron, Halley, etc.)
Terrestrial moons (the Moon, Io, Europa, Titan, Iapetus)
Kuiper-like-object-like moons (Charon, maybe Triton)
Asteroid-like moons (Phobos, Deimos, Amalthea)
Dust lanes and planetary rings
Protostars, protoplanets, protoplanetary disks
etc.
As you can see, the star/planet/asteroid/comet/moon classification isn't quite detailed enough for what we now know.
- Around half the size of Pluto (and there's been dispute if Pluto is a planet).
- 5% of the sky was looked at before finding Quaoar, so there might very well be a dozen more Quaoar-sized "planets" in the Kupier belt. Even Pluto-sized planets might be out there.
- Water, methane, methanol, and carbon dioxide ice seem to exist on Quaoar.
- Quaoar's name isn't decided yet and its designation is 2002 LM60 until a name is officially decided upon in a few months.
- Quaoar is pronounced "kwah-o-wahr" and is the name of a great force of creation among the Tongva people.
- Quaoar is 42 AU from Earth, while Pluto and Neptune are both 30 AU from Earth. 1 Astronomical Unit = One "Sun to Earth" distance.
- If standing on Quaoar, what one would see at the Sun (and the Earth) would be what happened 5 hours ago, since light takes 5 hours to travel to Quaoar.
- A Space Shuttle would need 25 years to travel to Quaoar.
- Google News about Quaoar.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Sure. IANAA, but the problem with Pluto isn't that astronomers have some personal grudge against Pluto, but that it's orbital details and composition don't fit the pattern set by the other planets. The orbit *is* way too elliptical, it's too eccentric (e.g. Pluto is closer to the sun than Neptune for a good part of its year) and it's on a weird angle with regard to the orbital plane set by the others. The rest of the solar system fits the pattern of small, rocky planets close in, big gassy planets farther out, with a bunch of tiny ice-balls way, way out.
When you compare Pluto to the various trans-Neptunian objects in the Kuiper Belt, though, it fits right in. Composition, orbit, distance, everything. Even if you want to get picky about Charon, there have been examples of small rocky bodies in mutual orbit in the asteroid belt, so a small moonlet of a small planetoid isn't that big of a deal.
I think astronomers are just tired of having to say, "... except for Pluto." when discussing the solar system's arrangment.
IMHO, Pluto was identified first because it is among the largest, if not *the* largest, of the trans-Neptunian objects, discovered using 19th century optical technology. Now that the lenses, cameras and data analysis tools are so much improved, objects of comparable size are starting to be identifed. This isn't to take away any historical significance from Pluto for being the first of its class to be observed, but I don't really consider it a really small planet, more of a really big planetoid.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain