Posted on 07/12/2016 8:03:24 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Pluto isn't quite as lonely as scientists had thought.
Astronomers have discovered another dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy objects beyond Neptune. But this newfound world, dubbed 2015 RR245, is much more distant than Pluto, orbiting the sun once every 700 Earth years, scientists said. (Pluto completes one lap around the sun every 248 Earth years.)
"The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the sun," discovery team member Michele Bannister, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said in a statement. "They let us piece together the history of our solar system."
...
The exact size of 2015 RR245 is not yet known, but the researchers think it's about 435 miles (700 kilometers) wide. Pluto is the largest resident of the Kuiper Belt, with a diameter of 1,474 miles (2,371 km).
The research team first spotted 2015 RR245 in February of this year, while poring over images that the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii took in September 2015 as part of the ongoing Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS).
"There it was on the screen — this dot of light moving so slowly that it had to be at least twice as far as Neptune from the sun," Bannister said.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Revolve in peace.
This dwarf was discovered in Hawaii. The question will it be named for a Disney character, or for the first President from Hawaii. Perhaps the winning combination will be Goofy Obama.
“Jug Ears”
Is it red?? :)
“The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the sun,” discovery team member Michele Bannister, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said in a statement. “They let us piece together the history of our solar system.”
Bunch of hogwash. Their whole planetary nebula model of solar system evolution has been up-ended by all the observations of exoplanets, and finding more dwarf planets beyond the gas giants in our own solar system certainly does nothing to help them salvage their model. Until they acknowledge the situation and come up with a new model, they’re just putting band-aids on a gaping wound.
Far out, man.
" "There it was on the screen — this dot of light moving so slowly that it had to be at least twice as far as Neptune from the sun," Bannister said."
Wondered if that space case Sunken Civ had seen it yet.
Space case ping.
Pluto isn’t quite as lonely as scientists had thought.
...
At times Pluto will be further away from this new planet than Earth.
I thought the preferred term these days was "Little Person" planet.
Well, THIS changes everything.
It's all in their heads, so therefor, no actual wound?
Like honeybadger, exoplanets and dwarf planets don't care.
But -- why doesn't the concept of exoplanets, dwarves and other debris drifting out beyond orbits of gas giants (eventually out of range of being vacuumed, swept up by gravity of the big planets) not work as a postulate?
Some astronomers think a much larger object--possibly a gas giant planet or even a very faint brown dwarf--might be orbiting the Sun, but very far away from the Sun in a possibly highly-elliptical orbit. With the launching of the James Webb Space Telescope with its massive infrared sensor in a few years, we might be finally be able to find that object for the first time.
“But — why doesn’t the concept of exoplanets, dwarves and other debris drifting out beyond orbits of gas giants (eventually out of range of being vacuumed, swept up by gravity of the big planets) not work as a postulate?”
Well, that’s not even a postulate. You have to read between the lines here. What they are clinging to is the planetary nebula hypothesis, and so by talking about this discovery in context of how the solar system formed, he is implying that the discovery is compatible with the planetary nebula hypothesis.
However, the planetary nebula hypothesis is already defunct, kaput, pushing up the daisies. They have not replaced it with a new model. Therefore, they have no currently viable model for solar system origins. There is no framework that they can fit this discovery into and learn anything about the origin of the solar system. He’s just spewing nonsense at the reporters to make it look like they still know what they are talking about.
What about radiation levels?
Unknown...but the level of chicken vondaloo is exceptionally high
Maybe that’s where the other half of the Cat race landed.
Actually there is a Vertically Challenged Planet which is larger than Pluto—Eris, discovered in 2003 (period of 560 years, diameter of 1850 miles compared to Pluto’s 1485).
:) maybe
What to name it? Xena? Cyclops? Melania? Ivanka?
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