The smallest object ever found in the Kuiper Belt, a vast, icy ring that encircles our solar system, helps to explain how these debris disks are formed. NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Posted on 01/26/2010 7:20:21 PM PST by SunkenCiv
...a tiny, icy toehold just one-third of a mile wide. The discovery, made by a team of astronomers scouring Hubble Space Telescope observations, sets a new record for the smallest Kuiper Belt object found. Previously, the smallest known Pluto sibling was a 30-mile-wide Kuiper Belt object... Based on the number of known objects in the Kuiper Belt, scientists would have expected to find between 30 and 100 tiny bodies in their analysis of 50,000 guide stars observed by Hubble. So far, the team has only looked at 30 percent of the available Hubble data. "We only found one," Schlichting said. "It shows that there's kind of a break in the size of objects in the Kuiper Belt from large objects, meaning bigger than 50 kilometers (31 miles), and smaller ones." The dearth of small bodies may be evidence that objects in the Kuiper Belt are crashing and grinding down, she added.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
The smallest object ever found in the Kuiper Belt, a vast, icy ring that encircles our solar system, helps to explain how these debris disks are formed. NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
 |
||
| · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe · | ||
| Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar · | ||
Don’t they mean “134340” not Pluto. After all Pluto no longer is a planet...per a lot of guys with a lot of time on their hands, and needing attention.
I’ve been interested in the late TVF’s ideas (well, some of ‘em; his insistence on the “face on Mars” BS made him look foolish) for a long time, hmm, wow, close to 30 years... since I read this:
“The Satellites of Neptune and the Origin of Pluto”
by R.S. Harrington and T.C. Van Flandern
:’)
Simple, logic, not open to interpretation. By this definiton a couple of the larger K-belt objects would be planets.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
