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New Tenth Planet Has a Moon

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the everybody's-doin'-it dept.

starexplorer writes "SPACE.com is reporting that the recently discovered 10th planet of our solar system has a neighbor - a moon. The discovery team also have nicknamed the planet 'Xena' and the moon 'Gabrielle'. Many scientists are objecting to whether the new planet really is a new planet - so what do you call a moon with no planet?"

5 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Smaller object orbiting a larger... by Caine · · Score: 5, Insightful
    so what do you call a moon with no planet?


    Do people never think about why the flimsy pieces of metal flying about above us are called what they are? The answer to your question is: A satellite.

  2. What is a planet? by Starker_Kull · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For some reason, there has been a bit of a dispute about what constitutes a planet vs. an asteroid, comet, other thing orbiting the sun, etc. Some astronomers have said the origin of the object should decide, others give maximum orbital eccentricities and size, etc.

    Here is an easy idea for what should be called a planet, that is a somewhat "natural" definition. We first noticed planets were different from stars because we could resolve them into DISCS, not merely points of light - in other words, (aside from being close) planets are ROUND. This is not just an accident, but an indication that they had sufficient gravity to pull themselves into such a shape; thus their surfaces at some point were probably molten, there was a chance for various elements to sort into layers, etc. So why not just say if it's big enough to have pulled itself into a spherodial shape, and it's orbiting the sun, it's a planet?

    1. Re:What is a planet? by hattig · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't try to bring sense into this debate.

      Because someone will reply "if it is not part of an orbiting belt of material" to try and cut out Ceres and this new planet, to keep the status quo.

      Never mind the fact that the asteroid belt is in fact very sparsely populated, and merely a bunch of bodies in space in a reasonably common orbit, possibly created from the destruction of a single larger body or two.

      I'm happy with our solar system having 5 rocky planets, 4 gas planets and 2+ remote ice planets.

  3. Rupert by Alioth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Come on, don't any of these guys read Douglas Adams books? At least one of these objects has to be named Rupert!

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  4. Re:Meaning of "Satellite" by moonbender · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Etymology is amusing, but it's really fairly irrelevant when it comes to the actual, current meaning.

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