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Video Showing Half a Million Asteroid Discoveries
An anonymous reader writes "Since 1980 over a half million asteroids have been discovered, mostly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, now thanks to this video you can see this activity condensed into a few minutes. At full resolution it's a mesmerizing experience as new discoveries are added and the video makes it possible to see patterns in the discovery positions, for example a large number appear in line between Earth and Jupiter as astronomers started looking for smaller jovian moons after Voyagers visit to the system."
Yeah, we call that "nighttime" around here.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
It looks like neither planet really meet the guideline of "clearing its neighborhood"...
Sure they have. It doesn't mean there can't be any other object in their orbit. Think of it in terms of ratios. Earth plus its moon, and Mars are both several orders of magnitude more massive than the sum of every other object in their orbits. Non-planets like Pluto or Ceres are several orders of magnitude less massive than the rest of the mass in their orbits.
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