DailyDirt: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine...
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
If you're young enough, you were only taught about the eight planets in our solar system -- and possibly that there was a mysterious 'Planet X' or planet Tyche beyond Neptune. More recently, there's a new ninth planet proposal from the same folks who re-named Pluto as a dwarf planet. Check out these links on Pluto and this new ninth planet that might redefine the outer edge of our solar system.- Twisting the knife into Pluto, Michael Brown and his fellow Caltech astronomer Konstantin Batygin have proposed a ninth planet in our solar system -- that's about the same size as Neptune but with an orbit so large that it would take roughly 15,000 earth-years to complete its own journey around the sun. What does Brown have against Pluto? Dwarf planets are still cute, I suppose. [url]
- Pluto was discovered in 1930, and at the time, it was mistakenly thought to be about the same size as the Earth. Further measurements revealed that Pluto is actually about 0.2% as massive as the Earth -- and that similarly-sized bodies in space called 'trans-Neptunian objects' (TNOs) also existed in our solar system. Since the discovery of TNO Eris in 2005 meant that Pluto was less planet-like than previously thought, these larger TNOs were named dwarf planets -- and Pluto was demoted. (And Pluto still hasn't even finished its 248-year-long orbit around the sun since it was discovered as a 'planet'... before it was re-classified as not a planet.) [url]
- Despite its dwarf planet status, Pluto has five moons of its own. Seriously. Five. Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra are the names of Pluto's satellites, and Charon is about half the size of Pluto -- which had some astronomers proposing to call Pluto a binary planet or double planet (binary dwarf planet?). [url]
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Filed Under: astronomy, binary planet, charon, dwarf planet, eris, hydra, kerberos, konstantin batygin, michael brown, ninth planet, nix, planet x, pluto, solar system, space, space exploration, styx, tno, trans-neptunian object, tyche
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The First Word
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Minor Bodies With Moons
By the way, anybody else been watching the current planetary alignment? I went out this morning and saw four (I think either I was too early for Mercury, or my view was blocked in that direction). Jupiter is bright as usual, but Venus is amazingly much brighter, and distinctly yellowish. And you can just make out that it is not quite round, since it is currently to one side of the Sun from our viewpoint, and only the side facing the Sun is lit.
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it's not fair!
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Stop the flood!
When I heard about his search, I immediately wondered if the motive isn't personal. I don't know how long Mr. Brown has been looking for this new planet, but if he was expecting the honor of finding the next planet after Pluto, well...then his honors were being stolen by the discoveries of Eris, Haumea, Quaoar, Salacia, Orcus, 2002 MS₄, Sedna, 2007 OR10₁₀, MakeMake, Varuna, Varda, 2002 UX₂₆ and...*whew*! Not to mention the ones discovered long ago, that were under debate for addition to the list, like Ceres 1.
So it's possible he figured that, if he was going to have the honor of finding the next planet, he had to stop the flood of these new mini-worlds being discovered. That would be petty (and Pluto an innocent bystander) but it wouldn't be the first time something of this type has happened in the astronomical community.
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Re: Stop the flood!
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Re: Stop the flood!
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Someone please send in the ROFLcopters.
I think my favorite thing about Pluto is the vast majority of people with vocal opinions about it couldn't spare the time of day for anything remotely astronomical (or indeed, vaguely science-related)otherwise. Probably the same people who get pissed off when species are reclassified or anyone comes up with a better model of anything (unless they don't actually know about it and it makes the electronics in their smartphones work). I wonder how many got all upset with Einstein's better and more accurate theory of gravitation.
Hey, anyone else get all cranky when it was figured out that the solar system isn't as far out at the edge of the galaxy as we once thought it was? Let's have a petition for re-sizing the galaxy to suit our weird personal whims and take back our Good Old Days and Keep Kids Off Our Lawns.
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