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Kuiper Object Discoveries Formally Announced
ewhac writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the new Trans-Neptunian objects mentioned in the press earlier this year are being formally announced this week at a planetary conference in Cambridge, England. Bearing the extremely temporary names 'Xena,' 'Santa,' and 'Easterbunny,' the new objects are quite interesting in their own right (Santa is cigar-shaped, rotates end-over-end every four hours, and has a 60-mile-diameter moon). However, even more interesting is the intrigue behind the press conferences revealing Xena earlier this year. It seems that, using the astronomers' own observation logs (publicly available over the Web) and some key details inadvertently revealed in earlier announcements, someone was planning on 'discovering' the objects first and claiming credit. This was why the scientists 'pre-announced' the existence of Xena back in July, to establish priority. The conference in Cambridge represents the first formal, scientific disclosure of the objects."
How, exactly, would an object that's larger than Pluto, form in the shape of a cigar? It doesn't even make sense...
Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
So Santa has a sigar and travels with a companion. I always knew those "Santa" guys from the mall were on to something!
As the article points out, this brings the question Pluto's "planet" status to the fore. It never really fit in with the other 8 planets to begin with (compostion, relation to the ecliptic, etc.), but now that both a larger Kuiper Belt Obeject and one with a moon have been discovered, the pure scientist in me hopes that it would be possible to push everyone back towards the idea that there are only 8 planets in our solar system. Read the article. It's worth it just to see the term "plutinos" suggested as a common name for KBOs.
Thing is, Newtonian mechanics aren't the ONLY rules they follow. They also follow the rules of chemistry, solid state physics and thermodynamics. And it is these things (and others) which appear to have the potential to lead to some very very weird things indeed. That's why people think these things are exciting.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
(Santa is cigar-shaped, rotates end-over-end every four hours, and has a 60-mile-diameter moon)
Ack! It's the cheesy alien probe from Star Trek IV!
One thing you can say for sure now about Xena, Santa, and the Easterbunny is:
:)
they definitely exist.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
I remember just a year or two ago, there was a planet discovered in the Kuiper Belt, given a name starting with a 'Q' if I recall correctly. Then the media started hyping a 10th planet just this year with a new KBO, forgetting the previous discovery.
The problem is that so many of these new KBOs could be larger than Pluto once we find them, even though they might not fit other criteria we'd been using for planetary designation. It actually makes more sense to downgrade Pluto to a simple KBO, and create a more rigid definition of a major planet.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"I thought Xena couldn't fly"
"I told you, I'm not Xena. I'm Lucy Lawless."
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
I don't have access to the necessary data and my training in this area is thin, but one possibility that springs to mind is that the object has too much angular momentum. I'm sure every slashdotter knows that the Earth is slightly flattened by its rotation. As you add more angular momentum you normally expect the object to just flatten more and more as it spins faster and faster. It turns out that after a certain point the body will be more stable as a tumbling elongated shape than a fast spinning disc. Continue to increase the angular momentum and the body will ultimately separate in to two.
Now, this won't result in a perfect cigar shape - especially the high length to width ratio and straight sides - so another theory may be necessary, depending on the data. This is what sprang in to my mind when they mentioned it, though.
I would so love it if someone would name this one "Freud".
It's not that the new planet is brighter than Pluto, it's that it's brighter than a snowball at the same size as Pluto and the same distance as the new planet.
Given:
From this we can calculate the brightness of a perfect mirror the size of Pluto if it were in the new object's orbit.
From observations we know that the object is almost as bright as a Pluto-sized mirror would be at this distance.
Thus, the smallest the object can be is 97% the size of Pluto. Since the object cannot be a perfect mirror, it is bigger than Pluto.
Likewise, the reflectivity of other substances can be tried. If the object is made of snow (90% reflectivity) it will be 2% larger Pluto, and if the object has the same composition as Pluto it will be 25% larger than Pluto.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Dont be dense.
This planet is billions of km away, and only a few 1000km in diameter.
Its size when viewed from the earth is MUCH lower than the seeing from the athmosphere. In fact its so small that even the spitzer space telescope couldnt resolve it as anything more than a point.
So you have a pointsource.
brightness of the point= (light from planet)/(distance from earth)^2
light from planet=light recieved from sun*albedo
light recieved from sun= constant*(area of planet disc)/(distance from sun)^2
-> brightness oft the point= albedo*solar constant*(radius of planet)^2*pi/(distance from sun*distance from earth)^2
You know the solar constant, you know the distances, and you know that the albedo cannot bigger than 1 (perfect lambertian reflection).
If you just meassure the light recieved from the point, you have only albedo and radius left, which allows a minimum size estimate)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?