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Close window Published online: 1 February 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060130-7 'Tenth Planet' found to be a whopperLarge size of 2003 UB313 fuels debate over what is and isn't a planet.Mark Peplow 2003 UB313 and its moon - currently nicknamed Xena and Gabrielle - take time off from their sword and sorcery shenanigans.© W. M. Keck Observatory The recently discovered 'tenth planet' of our Solar System is substantially larger than Pluto, astronomers have found. For many, the discovery that object 2003 UB313 is about 3,000 kilometres across will remove any doubt that it deserves to be called a planet. "Since UB313...

What is the effect on the Earth, currently swept into the arms of Planet X periodically by the Sweeping Arms of the Sun, when more planets crowd up to the stop sign, and halt, due to the massive Repulsion Force issues presented by Planet X standing before them. Planet X is 23 times as massive, this mass not reflected in the mere diameter of this interloper, which is only 4 times as broad as Venus or Earth or the Earth’s Dark Twin, all of which are approximately the same size. The Sweeping Arms normally just propel the planets in the...

One leading proposal would define a planet as any object whose diameter exceeds 2,000 kilometers and that is round as a result of gravity, criteria that would encompass anything Pluto-size or larger, including Xena. But that doesn't sit well with some astronomers, who are irked that the scrawny iceball with the cockeyed orbit earned membership into the club in the first place. "Pluto is an impostor," says Harvard astronomer Brian Marsden, a member of the IAU committee. "The simplest thing is to get rid of it and say we've got eight."

Astronomers working in Canada, France and the United States said they had found a small deep-space object, nicknamed Buffy, that challenges mainstream theories about the evolution of the Solar System. The rock lies in the Kuiper Belt, the name for the flock of objects beyond Neptune's orbit that are believed to be leftover rubble from the Solar System's building phase and are the source for many comets... Measuring between 500 and 1,000 kilometers (300 to 600 miles) across and taking about 440 years to make just one circuit of the Sun, Buffy is remarkable not for its size -- around...

IN THE dark reaches of the solar system lurk swarms of hidden worlds. Too small and too distant to reflect sunlight, they have remained under the cover of darkness for billions of years. But now the outer solar system is giving up its secrets. And with them comes an astonishing claim: "It's quite possible that there is a halo of planets surrounding our solar system, just waiting to be found," says Eugene Chiang, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley. What makes Chiang's claim so surprising is the sheer number and size of these planets. Weighing more than...

Scientists are over the moon at the W.M. Keck Observatory and the California Institute of Technology over a new discovery of a satellite orbiting the Solar System's 10th planet (2003 UB313). The newly discovered moon orbits the farthest object ever seen in the Solar System. The existence of the moon will help astronomers resolve the question of whether 2003 UB313, temporarily nicknamed "Xena," is more massive than Pluto and hence the 10th planet. A paper describing the discovery was submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters on October 3, 2005. "We were surprised because this is a completely different type of...

PARIS (AFP) - Should it be named after a Greek or Roman god? A great scientist or artist? How about calling it after a character in the "Star Wars" film series? Or your best friend? The British magazine New Scientist has called on readers to help suggest a name for the solar system's 10th planet, whose discovery was announced last week by a team led by US astronomer Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology. The new world has been given the provisional designation of 2003 UB313. But Brown has 10 years in which to think of a catchier...

New Planet Discovered Beyond Pluto... Designated as 2003 EL61, the main object in the two-body system is 32 percent as massive as Pluto and is estimated to be about 70 percent of Pluto's diameter. Scientists have not given the planet a name - but since it shares major characteristics with a senator we all know: dwelling in darkness, way out in left field, frigid, may I suggest... ...Hillary?

Add a tenth planet to the solar system - or possibly subtract one. Astronomers announced yesterday that they had found a lump of rock and ice that was larger than Pluto and the farthest known object in the solar system. The discovery will probably rekindle debate over the definition of "planet" and whether Pluto still merits the designation. The new object - as yet unnamed, but temporarily known as 2003 UB313 - is now 9 billion miles away from the Sun, or 97 times as far away as Earth and about three times Pluto's current distance from the Sun. Its...

A US astronomer has said he had discovered a 10th planet in the outer reaches of the solar system that could force a redrawing the astronomical map. If confirmed, the discovery yesterday by Mike Brown of the respected California Institute of Technology would be the first of a planet since Pluto was identified in 1930 and shatter the notion that nine planets circle the sun. "Get out your pens. Start re-writing textbooks today," said Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy, announcing what he called "the 10th planet of the solar system," one that is larger than Pluto. "It's the farthest...

Add a 10th planet to the solar system - or possibly subtract one. Astronomers announced today that they have found a lump of rock and ice that is larger than Pluto and the farthest known object in the solar system. The discovery will likely rekindle debate over the definition of "planet" and whether Pluto should still be regarded as one. The new object - as yet unnamed - is currently 9 billion miles away from the Sun, or about three times Pluto's current distance from the Sun. But its 560-year orbit also brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles....

A planet larger than Pluto has been discovered in the outlying regions of the solar system. The planet was discovered using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego.The discovery was announced today by Dr. Mike Brown of the Califorina Institute of Technology. Currently about 97 times further from the sun than the earth, the planet is now the farthest known object in the solar system. It will be visible by telescope over the next six months and currently is almost directly overhead in the early morning eastern sky in the constellation Cetus. Dr. Mike Brown (Cal Tech),...

Astronomers have found a large object in the Solar System's outer reaches. It is being hailed as "a great discovery". Details of the object are still sketchy. It never comes closer to the Sun than Neptune and spends most of its time much further out than Pluto. It is one of the largest objects ever found in the outer Solar System and is almost certainly made of ice and rock. It is at least 1,500km (930 miles) across and may be larger than Pluto, which is 2,274km (1,400 miles) across. The uncertainty in estimates of its size is due to...

The distant planetoid Sedna appears to be covered in a tar-like sludge that gives it a distinctly red hue, a new study reveals. The findings suggests the dark crust was baked-on by the Sun and has been untouched by other objects for millions of years. Sedna appears to be nearly the size of Pluto and was discovered in November 2003. It is the most distant object ever seen within the solar system and travels on an elongated path that stretches from 74 to 900 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth. Astronomers have struggled to explain such an...

We have, over the past several months, warned that as Planet X moved from below to above the Sun’s middle, the Ecliptic, it would move from slinging along the magnetic flow lines curling toward the Sun’s S. Pole to the magnetic flow lines curling out from the Sun’s N. Pole. Magnetic particles flow along these lines, from the N. Pole to the S. Pole, thus forcing Planet X to align with this flow. We have explained that the steps in this process are: Planet X first slings past the Sun’s S. Pole with its N. Pole pointing toward this great...

Our corner of the galaxy got a little stranger this week with the discovery of Sedna, the most distant object ever spotted in the solar system. Now astronomers are puzzling over how it got there. The most intriguing idea is that there might be another world as big as Earth, a gravitational bully lurking in some unexplored corner of the solar system. Here's the problem: Scientists can't figure out how Sedna, which is about three-fourths as big as Pluto, came to have such a strange orbit around the Sun. Sedna's path is highly elliptic. It ranges from 76 astronomical units...

Scientists Find Another Huge Mini-World in Outer Solar System The most distant object ever seen orbiting the Sun is nearly as large as Pluto, expanding astronomers notions of how the solar system formed and what resides in its outskirts. The round world is currently three times farther away than Pluto from the Sun, a distance that expands even further on its 10,000-year orbit. It sits in a part of the solar system that some astronomers had thought empty. It is redder and brighter than anything astronomers have seen in the outer solar system, and scientists don't know why. The object...

What a bum deal for Pluto: Yesterday, it either lost its nifty distinction as the most distant planet in our solar system or it got kicked out of the planet club entirely. That's because astronomers have announced the discovery of Sedna, a ball of rock and ice currently about eight billion miles from here — three times further from the sun than remote Pluto and about three quarters as large as its frigid little friend. We knew this was coming. The search for the tenth planet has been underway ever since Clyde W. Tombaugh spotted Pluto in 1930 and realized...

Far beyond Pluto, out where the Sun is only a pinpoint of pale light, a frozen world has been found on the dark fringes of the solar system. Astronomers say it is by far the most distant object known to orbit the Sun and the largest one to be detected since the discovery of Pluto in 1930. With one discovery, it seems, the solar system has gotten much bigger, glimpses of its outer reaches bringing a sense of reality to what had been a remote frontier of hypothesis. And perhaps it has gotten stranger, too. "There's absolutely nothing else like...

LOS ANGELES - It is a frozen world more than 8 billion miles from Earth and believed to be the farthest known object within our solar system.   NASA (news - web sites) planned a Monday press conference to offer more details about Sedna, a planetoid between 800 miles and 1,100 miles in diameter, or about three-quarters the size of Pluto. Named for the Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic, Sedna lies more than three times farther from the sun than Pluto. It was discovered in November. "The sun appears so small from that distance that...