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Earth Acquires a Quasi-Moon

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the can-we-keep-it? dept.

richard_za writes "Earth has acquired a so called quasi-moon, an asteroid: 2003 YN1, which will encircle us for the next couple of years while it orbits the sun on a horse-shoe shaped path. Full story on News24. It was found by team led by Paul Chodas, an asteroid specialist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. An orbit simulation can be seen in this Java applet."

8 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory SW Quote by OverlordQ · · Score: 5, Funny

    "That's no Moon!"

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
  2. Re:Next couple of ears? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think it might be a Ferengi unit of measurement?

  3. Re:Next couple of ears? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Final front-ear?

  4. Applet Dying ..... by hot_Karls_bad_cavern · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here's the screenshot:


    O o .
    Sun:earth:new "moon"

    Not to scale. All rights reserved.

  5. Re:Next couple of ears? by gmac63 · · Score: 5, Funny

    JFYI,

    Its a Biological measurement. Closely akin to the (distance/orbit^2)/r*(1 - n) mosquitos travel when they are in audible range (where r is the rate of travel and n is the number of mosquitos in any given area^3).

    Thought that would help.

    --

    INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
  6. Re:First... by GordoSlasher · · Score: 5, Funny

    Actually we had a new moon last weekend. It happens every 28 days...

  7. Horseshoe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "..while it orbits the sun on a horse-shoe shaped path..."

    If only Isac Newton knew this...

  8. Re:Did we Slashdotted NASA? by Cheo · · Score: 5, Funny

    It looks like NASA has been Slashdotted
    "Orbit diagram page temporarily unavailable due to high server load."