Scientists discover moon orbiting so-called 10th planet (nicknamed 'Xena')

ap on Monterey Herald ^ | 10/1/05 | Alicia Chang - ap

[Cheburashka]

What about Joxer?

[inquest]

It wouldn't have been Mars. What scientists think is that some random planet about the size of Mars crashed into the earth and merged with it, causing it to violently quiver and quake. This process then resulted in pieces of the earth's crust being spat out into space, eventually forming a ring, like Saturn's rings. And then after that, the ring eventually coalesced into the moon.

[ApplegateRanch]

spotted a faint object trailing next to it.

You mean the mother ship has launced a probe? Maybe Louis Fairy-Khan's days are numbered after all.

[ApplegateRanch]

What's next? Mulder and Scully?

Cisco & Pancho. Panch has to be the planet, though, since he is the fat one.

[coydog]

At least Xena and Gabby set an example of TV characters that look like healthy women and not emaciated heroin waifs.

[scrabblehack]

I think they should stick with Roman mythology though.

Who's left among the Olympians?
Juno (too far away from Jupiter?)
Hades (Hmm...)
Vesta (I think there already is an asteroid)
Minerva (Hmm..)
Apollo (no -- associated with the Sun)
Diana (maybe...the huntress and all)
Vulcan (would make people think of Star Trek)
Ceres (already an asteroid)
Bacchus (Hmm...)

Also, does the position of this new planet contradict Bode's law?

[RightWhale]

While the debate is meaningless, the continuing discovery of planets or whatever they are called out beyond Pluto/Neptune, way beyond, probably means there are planets all the way to the next star. It is possible a starship might go directly to the next star, but it is more likely that the Kuiper objects and Oort objects present a natural evolution--stepping stones--in the same direction.

[SunkenCiv]

regarding supposed impact origin of the Moon:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1234919/posts?page=10#10

[tet68]

She can't a whole moon!
A partial moon maybe...


As a poet I once knew said, "... her ass
looked like the bottom of heaven!"

[Mr. K]

Why is there no difinition of 'plantet'?

I would think that anything massive enough to shape itself into a shpere would be a good definition.

[Mr. K]

there is a huge ring of debri between earth and mars- they think that may have once been a planet

[SunkenCiv]

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[Victoria_R]

I read somewhere that it had been named “Eris”.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

What object was it?

Today we call the resulting post crash debris by the unimaginative names, "Earth" and "Moon".

Facts are elusive and science does often produce absolutes, but the crash hypothesis explains why the Earth's spin axis is titled so profoundly with respect to its orbital plane and that huge gash west of California called the Pacific Ocean, and why the Earth-Moon system is the closest thing to a double planet in the solar system, inter alia.

[scrabblehack]

Right — but this is the Greek name. The Roman equivalent is “Discordia.” It’s not an attractive name for a planet, though.