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Small World Discovered Far Beyond Pluto
astroengine writes: "After a decade of searching, astronomers have found a second dwarf-like planet far beyond Pluto and its Kuiper Belt cousins, a presumed no-man's land that may turn out to be anything but. How Sedna, which was discovered in 2003, and its newly found neighbor, designated 2012 VP 2113 by the Minor Planet Center, came to settle in orbits so far from the sun is a mystery. Sedna comes no closer than about 76 times as far from the sun as Earth, or 76 astronomical units. The most distant leg of its 11,400-year orbit is about 1,000 astronomical units. Newly found VP 2113's closest approach to the sun is about 80 astronomical units and its greatest distance is 452 astronomical units (abstract). The small world is roughly 280 miles (450 kilometers) wide, less than half the estimated diameter of Sedna."
Of Rick and Morty.
Dwarf-like? Is this planet like Dopey, or more like Thorin Oakenshield?
Didn't we just go through this whole rigmarole of redefining Pluto as a "dwarf planet" so we could use that as a real term for bodies like this?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
It's Niburu
Maybe Commander Koenig will have to save us...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I saw it on a Duck Dodgers episode.
For those wondering, Pluto has a diameter of 2302km and ranges 30 - 49 AU from the sun. So these rocks range from 2 to 20 times as far from the sun as pluto, and the one mentioned in this post is about 1/133 the volume.
it's a small world after all.
Click here and listen. I dare you
They have been blasting Its a small world after all (the planets) for ever to the waiting line for Magic Mountain or whatever is their roller coaster ride.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I wouldn''t want to run into this thing at the speed I'd be going when I think there's nothing to run into out there. But if you can give me the exact orbital parameters, that'd be great.
The org name makes them feel inferior to the Gas Giant Center, but better-smelling.
Table-ized A.I.
If I'm reading it correctly, a 76 X 1000 ellipse. Kind of like some comets, except that it never reaches the inner (or outer) solar system. Maybe we need to redefine a few things.
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
Discovery of Planetoid Hints at Bigger Cousin in Shadows
By KENNETH CHANGMARCH 26, 2014
Astronomers have discovered a second icy world orbiting in a slice of the solar system where, according to their best understanding, there should have been none.
“They’re in no man’s land,” Scott S. Sheppard, of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, said of the objects, which orbit far beyond the planets and even the ring of icy debris beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper belt.
Intriguingly, the astronomers said that details of the orbits hint at perhaps an unseen planet several times the size of Earth at the solar system’s distant outskirts.
The new planetoid, an estimated 250 miles wide, is now 7.7 billion miles from the sun, about as close as it gets. At the other end of its orbit, the planetoid, which for now carries the unwieldy designation of 2012 VP113, loops out to a distance of 42 billion miles. Neptune, by contrast, is a mere 2.8 billion miles from the sun.
Much farther out, a trillion miles, the solar system is believed to be surrounded by a sphere of icy bodies known as the Oort cloud, where many comets are thought to originate. But between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud, astronomers had expected empty space.
In 2003, astronomers unexpectedly discovered the planetoid Sedna, orbiting the sun beyond the Kuiper Belt, an area of frozen objects just outside Neptune’s orbit. Astronomers have now discovered a second object in this region, which has the current designation 2012 VP113.
Source: Scott S. Sheppard/ Carnegie Institution for Science The discovery, by Dr. Sheppard and Chadwick A. Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, is reported in the journal Nature.
For convenience, the scientists shortened the 2012 VP113 designation to VP, which in turn inspired their nickname for the planetoid: Biden, after Vice President Joseph R. Biden. Dr. Trujillo said they had not decided what to propose for the official name.
The existence of 2012 VP113 could help explain why there is anything out there at all.
In the 2000s, when Michael E. Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, scanned the outer solar system, his biggest discovery was Eris, a ball of ice in the Kuiper belt that was Pluto-size or slightly bigger, the impetus for the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet.
Dr. Brown’s oddest discovery, however, came a couple of years earlier: Sedna, a 600-mile-wide planetoid also beyond the Kuiper belt, three times as far from the sun as Neptune. Its 11,400-year orbit stretches farther than that of 2012 VP113.
In the youth of the solar system, there would not have been enough matter out there to coalesce into something as large as Sedna. It was too far out to have been flung by the gravitational slings of big planets, but too close to have been nudged by the gravitational tides of the Milky Way.
Having found one such body, astronomers expected to quickly find more, and they came up with a name for them: Sednoids. But for years, no one found any.
For the latest search, Dr. Trujillo and Dr. Sheppard used a 13-foot telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. In November 2012, they spotted a moving point of light beyond the Kuiper belt — 2012 VP113. Follow-up observations last year confirmed it was a Sednoid. Scientists have come up with various ideas to explain such bodies. Dr. Brown, for one, thinks the Sednoids were pushed there when the sun was part of a dense cluster of stars — “a fossil record of the birth of the solar system,” he said.
Others suggest that a rogue planet, ejected from the inner solar system, dragged the Sednoids along as it flew through the Kuiper belt. Dr
> a presumed no-man's land that may turn out to be anything but.
So, the suggestion is that there are people out there?
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Meine Damen und Herren, the perfect place for all our bases have been discovered.
...include 3 small volcanoes and a glass dome containing some dead plant material.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...
Sounds like they found Nero we need to keep the Brits away from it, the world is not ready for the Dark Symmetry.
If you want to use that sort of definition, then how old would you say the universe is? The universe doesn't orbit the sun or any other star. And you can't say it is 13800 million earth years old either, since the earth hasn't been orbiting the sun for that long. And how far is a lightyear, if the duration of a year depends on where you are?
When a year is mentioned without any other context, it means the time it currently takes the earth to orbit the sun.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
People like you are why I stopped visiting /. . How on earth does asking such an elementary question rather than googling it contribute to the conversation? How often do you shoehorn semicolons into your posts? I bet you googled how to use THOSE.
Frankly, I'm surprised this nonsense didn't get up-moded.
It's the Mass Effect Conduit for the Sol system.
I'm pretty excited for the New Horizons project, as I know quite a few of the people at APL who are working on it. With any luck it will give us a lot of new insights to Pluto and its moons, and maybe even have expanded mission goals after the flyby.
New Horizons at WIKI
Rupert
A planet in Earth's solar system beyond the orbit of Pluto. Rupert was named Persephone, but nicknamed Rupert after an astronomer's pet parrot. It was eventually settled by the Grebulons.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
...useless shitstack detected! Aborting....
Sorry, I forgot Earth is the center of the universe and all measurements of scale and time are related to it. Silly me requesting that science article be clear, concise and accurate.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Sorry, I forgot Earth is the center of the universe and all measurements of scale and time are related to it.
Strawman.
Die, you fucking homo.
Everyone in the fucking world understands what was meant by 11,400 years in the context of TFA, including you.
You were just trying to be a smart arse, then you spat your dummy out when you were called on it.