Kuiper Object Discoveries Formally Announced

ewhac writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the new Trans-Neptunian objects mentioned in the press earlier this year are being formally announced this week at a planetary conference in Cambridge, England. Bearing the extremely temporary names 'Xena,' 'Santa,' and 'Easterbunny,' the new objects are quite interesting in their own right (Santa is cigar-shaped, rotates end-over-end every four hours, and has a 60-mile-diameter moon). However, even more interesting is the intrigue behind the press conferences revealing Xena earlier this year. It seems that, using the astronomers' own observation logs (publicly available over the Web) and some key details inadvertently revealed in earlier announcements, someone was planning on 'discovering' the objects first and claiming credit. This was why the scientists 'pre-announced' the existence of Xena back in July, to establish priority. The conference in Cambridge represents the first formal, scientific disclosure of the objects."

Science is great

[ReformedExCon]

I don't care much for the whole pre-announcing subplot here, but I think that making this kind of discovery is great.

It's better than suspending tadpoles in a ziplock bag for an hour and then spending three days worrying about destroying all the evidence on re-entry.

So the question is what is the composition of these bodies? Are they rich in any materials that we may find useful to harvest in the future? If so, how can we get up there and bring those materials back?

Santa *does* sound rather intriguing.

[kyle90]

How, exactly, would an object that's larger than Pluto, form in the shape of a cigar? It doesn't even make sense...

Controversy

[Jazzer_Techie]

As the article points out, this brings the question Pluto's "planet" status to the fore. It never really fit in with the other 8 planets to begin with (compostion, relation to the ecliptic, etc.), but now that both a larger Kuiper Belt Obeject and one with a moon have been discovered, the pure scientist in me hopes that it would be possible to push everyone back towards the idea that there are only 8 planets in our solar system. Read the article. It's worth it just to see the term "plutinos" suggested as a common name for KBOs.

Re:Nope! 'twas the 11th planet discovered...

[saskboy]

I remember just a year or two ago, there was a planet discovered in the Kuiper Belt, given a name starting with a 'Q' if I recall correctly. Then the media started hyping a 10th planet just this year with a new KBO, forgetting the previous discovery.

The problem is that so many of these new KBOs could be larger than Pluto once we find them, even though they might not fit other criteria we'd been using for planetary designation. It actually makes more sense to downgrade Pluto to a simple KBO, and create a more rigid definition of a major planet.