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The '10th planet' discovered; nah, it's just a Kuiper belt object like Pluto
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| Aquarian |
| Didn't hey discover it like a year ago? Or are we actually at the 11th planet now? |
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| DJ Kenosis |
| quote: | Originally posted by Aquarian
Didn't hey discover it like a year ago? Or are we actually at the 11th planet now? |
They (Mike Brown, whom I personally know, and collaborators) took observations of it in 2003, but they didn't have the proper motion data on this guy until this year. There have been plenty of other near-Pluto mass bodies found in the Kuiper Belt (my favorite is "Quohar" which is 1/2 the size of Pluto). This would be the largest found so far. It's not really a surprise given that most models for the dynamical interactions of planets and planetesimal swarms predict that we should find a large number of Charon to Mars sized bodies in the Kuiper belt and beyond that were dynamically ejected from the system as Jupiter and Saturn crossed into an orbital resonance about 150 Myr after the birth of our solar system (some papers suggest that this ejection and the late-heavy bombardment stage on the Moon are one in the same process). The model for the solar system that I have implicitly assumed suggests that even larger bodies may have been ejected.
Still, I don't think that Pluto or this one should be considered a planet. The problem is that my definition of a planet rests appeals to characteristics that we are incapable of observing, namely their formation history (though, being a good Whiteheadian, I stick to this definition :D). |
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| metalgearsolid |
Isn't this the 11th planet? I heard there was a planet closer to the sun than Mercury. I heard that this planet "ever(?)" rotates around the sun at a different angle and thats why they(NASA) didn't discover it sooner.
So When will we discover another being on a different planet? |
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| DJ Kenosis |
| quote: | Originally posted by metalgearsolid
Isn't this the 11th planet? I heard there was a planet closer to the sun than Mercury. I heard that this planet "ever(?)" rotates around the sun at a different angle and thats why they(NASA) didn't discover it sooner.
So When will we discover another being on a different planet? |
oh, no. Basically to explain the precession of Mercury physicists in the 19th century had to invent the existence of a planet closer to the Sun to gravitationally interact with it. Then Einstein developed General Relativity and there was no long a need for this :D. |
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| apostrophe |
| Does anyone have a link or reference for any of this? I'm interested..:thepirate |
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| Trancer-X |
I'd like to point to the fact that with all of our so called "modern technology," we are just now finding this planet - while the ancient Sumerian's (and other such Mesopotamians) knew about it over 12,000+ years ago.
http://www.xfacts.com/MUFON_LA/search2.ram
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| ^^ its gonna take more than a random picture to convince me they knew anything apart from how to cut stone ;) esp since theres at least 11 planets in that piccy. |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| hehe, yeah, but its gonna take more than conjecture to convince me any ancient civilisation knew about anything that we, to this day, still cannot see ;) |
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| metalgearsolid |
| o come on man look at what the Mayans did(or maybe the Aztecs?) they invented the concept of 0. They also did a lot of crap with like seasons and stuff. Trancer-X will prove it to you...hey who was better when it came to Astronomy Mayans or Mesopotamian groups? |
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