Another Big Kuiper Belt Object Found

DoraLives observes: "According to the BBC a Huge rock-ice body circles Sun. At a shade over 350 miles across, it's not what you'd call planetary in size, but huge enough, I suppose, should it land in your back yard."

Comments

Units?

[Cyno01]

Miles? Its a celestial body, use proper standard units, either multiples of texas or volkswagons.

Re:Units?

[zhenlin]

0.00000376522681 AU
0.0000000000595389999 LY

2,279,474,440,000 litres/acre
148 800 297 Pascals per Newton US gallons
6,021,734,370,000,000 ((US gallon per hectare) per (Pascal per Newton)) per acre

Let's invent more compound measures, shall we?

1 ((the speed of light per ((((Newton per Pascal) per Joule) per year) per fortnight)) per (mach 1)) = 3.36285379 x 10^19 kilograms

Re:Units?

[Nos.]

Where I live (Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada), they've recently finished draining the lake/creek in town. The radio reported that the lake was draining at a rate of one stove per second.

I propose that for volumes less than one Library Of Congress, we measure volumes in household appliances.

Re:Units?

[CowboyNick]

Lets see, that would be approx:
0.4375 Texas Units
137653.63128 VW Beetles

Re:Units?

[RedWizzard]

Where I live (Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada), they've recently finished draining the lake/creek in town. The radio reported that the lake was draining at a rate of one stove per second.

I propose that for volumes less than one Library Of Congress, we measure volumes in household appliances.

"Libraries of Congress" is the unit for information storage (e.g. my harddisk can hold 23 ba'gillion Libraries of Congress). For liquid volume the correct measure is "Olympic Size Swimming Pools". For examples of usage see http://www.vivendiwatersystems.com/uk/CP_311001/or ange.htm and http://www.murrayusers.sa.gov.au/at_work.htm.

Re:Units?

[Nos.]

My apologies, this new system of measurement is very confusing (and here I am proposing new units).

On a more serious note..

[Cujo]

I think we should study a grand tour of the Neptune 2:3 resonance orbit. Perhaps we could fly by several of these objects. Might make an interesting senior thesis for a suitably ambitious young person...

Re:On a more serious note..

[Anonymous Coward]

No ambition required given the point to point flight times in the outer solar system. This would take DECADES.

Re:On a more serious note..

[Cujo]

You don't have to cover the whole arc. It depends on the population of objects in that orbit. I would think encounters a few years apart would be at least plausible, with cheap periods of hibernation between. The trick would be to have fallback modes that did respectable science with less and less power as the RTG fades. Enabling technologies like very low power imagers/spectrometers and large, lightweight deployable antennas are not outside the realm of feasibility.

Re:On a more serious note..

[Royster]

You don't seem to have any real comprehension of orbital mechanics, do you? Let me try explain it in small words of a few sylables each.

Just because they share an orbital resonance with Neptune dosn't mean that they are all in the same place. They are spread out in a roughly donut shaped region. (Pluto is on an inclined orbit which crosses Neptune's.) If you are "flying by" from inside to out, you are moving faster than the orbital speed at that distance. That means that you will soon be further from the sun and heading out. To get from there to another point in that torus, you are going to have to expend some serious delta-v to get back *down* to it. Planetary missions don't have the weight budget to to carry that kind of manuvering capability. It's too heavy.

In any kind of cheap (in weight) orbital approach, you either get one shot at a given radius from the sun which you can place prettu accurately to get close to something or you can settle for something that repeatedly gets you back to your area of interest, but not necessarially close to anything and on orbital timescales.

There could conceivably be an eccentric orbit that takes a probe around Neptune periodically, then above the ecliptic and out until it comes back to Neptune below the ecliptic and slingshots around again that would stay within this torus. But you would have to chance that something interesting wound be within visible range every time you went out. Each orbit would probably be of a year or more duration with no guarantee of actually seeing more than one thing up close.

Re:On a more serious note..

[Cujo]

You're not going to be taken seriously if you begin your posts with insults.

Re:On a more serious note..

[Cujo]

A summary of what's known about Plutino statistics reveals that they're all pretty eccentric (good) and some are reasonably close to the ecliptic (good), but they cluster longitudinally well away from Neptune, which makes a Neptune GA tough to pull off in a reasonable time. That was my main hope for getting there. So, you'd have to fly by one, and hope that you get lucky with another - probably not a Plutino per se at 40 A.U. mean solar distance, but a KBO is certainly possible.

Re:On a more serious note..

[BDew]

I agree... especially if you misspell the key word in your attempted insult.

on the other hand...

[LeninZhiv]

but huge enough, I suppose, should it land in your back yard

If your backyard has somehow found its way to the Kuiper belt, you've got problems of your own!

Nicknaming the Rock

[GrahamMastaFlash]

Did anybody else notice that scientists nicknamed the rock "Plutino" after our ninth planet?

In order to generate public interest in this story, I think "Pluto's bitch" might be more engaging. Or perhaps "the victim of Neptune's drunken advances"

"Plutino" is not a nickname

[gargleblast]

It's a reporting mistake.

All objects in 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune are classified as plutinos, after the largest known such object, Pluto.

Re:"Plutino" is not a nickname

[ForestGrump]

aah, reporting the news.
just like the weatherman, you can be wrong and its OK.

-Grump

Re:"Plutino" is not a nickname

[trixillion]

If you had bothered to read the article. You would discover that there is no reporting mistake. All of this is very clearly spelled out in the article.

Re:"Plutino" is not a nickname

[gargleblast]

If you had bothered to read the article. You would discover that there is no reporting mistake. All of this is very clearly spelled out in the article.

I have this theory. We point out mistakes here, and the BBC reporter changes the article. Let's try again shall we? Quoting the BBC:

The object is about 570 km across, making it one of the largest bodies of its kind found in modern times.

570km (350 miles) isn't all that big for an EKO. 2003 VS2's actual size is 904km (561 miles).

Size doesn't matter, or does it?

[barakn]

Couldn't help but notice that the BBC says it has a diameter of 570 km. (which probably came from some American telling them 350 miles) and the original discoverers peg it at 700 km. or 400 miles. You might think that since the BBC was handed the scoop by the NEAT team (they have a link to the BBC article), they'd agree on the size.

Re:Size doesn't matter, or does it?

[Cujo]

Very likely, the American astronmers used units of kilometers originally. In mybrief forays into the astronomical literature, I've found A.U.s and kilometers and MKS units, but no miles, feet or pounds.

Re:Size doesn't matter, or does it?

[barakn]

When talking amongst themselves, yes, they'll use metric or lightyears, A.U.'s, etc.. But when trying to communicate with the public they'll use units the public is used to. The BBC number 570 km. is a tipoff that they converted the number. 570 implies the diameter is known to within 10 kilometers, which it most certainly isn't. The NEAT website said 400 miles or 700 km, implying that the diameter is know only to the first digit, i.e. to within 100 km. Usually newspaper editors are ignorant of significant figures and when converting will include everything up to the decimal point.

Re:Free Water!

[kippy]

I don't know why this got modded as "offtopic". Granted it's flippant and not serious but if we terraform Mars or Venus, we'll need to do pretty much what this post says.

Granted, we don't have the tech to do it right this minute but by the time any terraforming effort is undertaken, the technology will either exist or it will become reasonable to develop it.

Not only does this object have water, but it probably has (literally) tons of ammonia and other useful compounds and elements. If that can be deposited into the Martian atmosphere, it will generate heat on entry, add pressure to the atmosphere and deliver the raw materials to manufacture some of the super-greenhouse gasses that will be needed.

Check out this if you want to see more about this and other proposed terraforming tech.

Re:Free Water!

[dustinbarbour]

We could do it. granted, it is cost prohibitive, but we could manage were the need great enough. I mean, how hard could it really be to slow this bad boy down? i realize that it is travelling at an incredible speed, but that only means we would need more thrust in the opposite direction. So I say let's launch a fleet of rockets to rendezvous with this rock, have them all land on their noses and then light 'em up. It'll eventually slow this bad mamma-jamma down.

2003 VS2 ephemeris

[Cujo]

2003 VS 2 has an inclination of 14.8 degrees, BTW

Re:Free Water!

[Cujo]

Well, I get that it's about 279 Joules/kg to move water with perfect efficiency from 2003 VS2 to Mars orbit, but that thing has a mass of about 10^18 kg or more. Maybe more like 10^19. So we're talking about 10^21 Joules. So, I don't see how you'd do it. Am I missing something?

Re:Free Water!

[RobertB-DC]

So we're talking about 10^21 Joules. So, I don't see how you'd do it.

I know darned little about thermodynamics, but I'd imagine that even if you *could* impart that much force, you would then have to dissipate an equal amount of force when the object reaches its destination. Assumably, it would be released by the impact with whatever planetary body you aim that sucker at.

I guess the idea of slamming it into Mars is that it's ok to vaporize the water, ammonia, and other compounds into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, you'd also vaporize a lot of Martian rock as well, and I can't imagine that the extra dust would help make the air breathable -- for either humans or for machinery. You'd be trading a very thin atmosphere for airborne Martian mud.

Putting it in orbit sounds nice, until you realize how hard a time we've had putting fridge-sized objects launched from the next planet over. Multiply that to a mountain-sized object launched from half a dozen planets over...

And don't forget which planet is next in line in case that big ball of ice misses Mars...

Re:Free Water!

[AaronD12]

The impact of this giant ice cube would be a sure-fire way to devistate a planet, then replenish it with life-giving water... or possibly give life to a lifeless planet? -Aaron-

Comprehensive List of TNOs Here

[briglass]

Here is a comprehensive list of TNO's:

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/TNOs.html

Note that you can find the size of the object under the H column... where the lower number is the wider number.

Also note that on 08-25-2003 'they' discovered another large TNO called 2003 QM91. This one had an H value of 4.2 whereas the newest one (2003 VS2) has an H value of 3.9.

This is the largest found since 2002 MS4, which also had an H value of 3.9.

Re:We are doomed!

[Almost-Retired]

If it landed in D. McBride's back yard I wouldn't complain.

Oh? I believe you would, for a few hours maybe. After that, you wouldn't be alive to care, and neither would I even if we both lived in Bombay. The earthquake ripple alone would take care of us lowly humans and ALL our construction projects over the eons.

Do the math for a 570 mile diameter object coming in at at least 18 thousand miles an hour, the escape velocity plus a bit for the original nudge that headed it our way.

I doubt that this planet would survive the aftermath and still have any life on it other than possibly some deep sea vent stuffs that can survive in a ph of 10+ and several hundred atmospheres of ambient pressure. Even that may be dicey because it would be so scattered from its home by the time the temps returned to normal for them without slowing down much in the cooloff phase that followed, if nothing else 99.99% of them would starve or run out of whatever it is they use for energy.

A 570 mile diameter object would make Jerry Pournell and Larry Nivens "Lucifers Hammer" look like a sunday picnic.

It could even knock a piece off big enough to make us another moon, but much smaller, and probably in a rapidly decaying orbit in geologic time scales.

The recurring tides from that, while it lasted, would pretty much doom anything that wasn't buried in a couple of miles of solid rock. Its the same tides that would steal its orbital energy, making the eventual re-mergeing with our planet a certainty. Close enough the Chandrasakar(you spell it, I can't) limit comes to mind, so it might come back in in pieces only 5 miles in diameter, but many of them.

But, its orbit seems stable in that 3/2 neptune ordered gravitational tug of war, so I doubt we have to worry about it in the next 5 million years or so.

Cheers, Gene