Posted on 03/29/2014 1:03:08 AM PDT by chessplayer
Astronomers have increased the size of the observable solar system after spotting a 450-km wide object orbiting the sun.
The lump of ice and rock circles the sun at a greater distance than any known object, and never gets closer than 12bn kilometres – 80 times the distance from Earth to the sun.
If its size is confirmed it could qualify as a dwarf planet in the same category as Pluto.
Though exciting in its own right, the discovery raises a more tantalising prospect for many astronomers: that a "Super Earth" up to 10 times the mass of our planet orbits the sun at such a great distance that it has never been seen.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
The relatively new mapping program we see now at USGS is one that I do not like. The default settings seem different than before and appear to weed out this kind of situation-unless you adjust the settings yourself.
Copied from DRUDGE.com.
By Rong-Gong Lin II and Victoria Kim
March 29, 2014, 12:59 a.m.
Authorities were tallying damage from a magnitude 5.1 earthquake that struck Southern California Friday evening.
Fullerton police said early Saturday that up to 50 people had been displaced because of home damage.
The quake, centered near La Habra, caused furniture to tumble, pictures to fall off walls and glass to break. Merchandise fell off store shelves, and there were reports of plate glass windows shattered.
In Brea, several people suffered minor injuries during a rockslide that overturned their car. Fullerton reported seven water main breaks. Carbon Canyon Road was closed.
Switched the one I look at to “1 Day, All Magnitudes Worldwide” and it appears to be more of a swarm.
predicted decades ago in ‘the 12th planet’ by zacharias stichin (probably spelled wrong). he calls the big planet ‘marduk”
There just isn’t much known about the Kuiper belt and beyond.
Personally I don’t think the discovery hints at any massive planet hidden out there. Its possible but not necessary.
! here
Must stop solar system warming ......
“Though exciting in its own right, the discovery raises a more tantalising prospect for many astronomers: that a “Super Earth” up to 10 times the mass of our planet orbits the sun at such a great distance that it has never been seen.”
Sure it has been seen. It originated out of the author’s rear-end, along with the entire premise.
What else is possible now? Let’s see....why stop at 10x the mass of our planet? Since it has never been seen, let’s shoot for a rainbow-colored, unicorn-populated sister planet to gaia, one MILLION times the size of earth, but only visible when you get within 100 miles of its atmosphere.
Sure. That’s the ticket. Let’s make that a new “tantalizing prospect”.
Sheesh.
Also known as Rocky, Rocky II, and Rocky III.
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This Twitter bot, is it named Laz?
There’s a lot of dangerous “wins” in Louisiana.
2.7 in Choctaw, Oklahoma! I hope gramma’s china is ok.
bttt
“Super-earth” is a reference to size — the suspected body is larger than Earth, but not the size of one of the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune).
Lots of people have had reason to suspect the existence of one, beginning with the discovery of Uranus (the planets up to and including Saturn have been known since ancient times).
For example, Harrington and Van Flandern calculated a planet 2 to 5 earth-masses was responsible for the disturbed Neptunian moon system; at the time they wrote that paper they also regarded Pluto as an escaped moon of Neptune.
Neptune’s variability from its ephemeris was a one-time event, and led to the search for and discovery of Pluto. Pluto turned out to be too small to account for the disturbance of Neptune, so the search for an unknown has continued. Tombaugh himself surveyed the ecliptic for years after his discovery of Pluto, and was convinced that nothing was there down to something like 12th magnitude.
Pluto’s discovery was a very lucky break, because it’s inclined out of the ecliptic, as are most of the so-called KBOs (my guess is, the Kuiper Belt Object nomenclature will be abandoned in time, at least as applied to these ‘dwarf planets’).
I think there was at least one pre-discovery observation of Pluto found in a survey of older observations (iow, it got missed by someone; the practice of looking for pre-discovery observations helps in determining the orbit of the object with greater precision). Galileo is known to have observed Neptune and not realized it, and some believe that he actually knew it but never got credit for it.
http://www.space.com/6941-theory-galileo-discovered-neptune.html
Being back the aftershock prediction page too!
More about Nemesis from the FRchives:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1962278/replies?c=46
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1670395/replies?c=81
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2188731/replies?c=43
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