Asteroid Lutetia Revealed As a Protoplanet 102
astroengine writes "Asteroids visited by spacecraft have all turned out to be piles of rubble or chunks broken off of larger bodies, but that's not the case with 21 Lutetia, a 75-mile long, 47-mile wide body orbiting in the main belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. Europe's comet-bound Rosetta probe flew by Lutetia last year and gave scientists a big surprise. With its dense body and an interior that seems to have survived intact, the large asteroid appears more like a protoplanet — a leftover building block from the formation of the solar system."
Re:Soon to be ... (Score:3, Insightful)
See, if you actually worked in the medical field and weren't just full of shit, you would care. Politically correct or not, what we used to refer to as "mental retardation" actually encompassed of a wide variety of distinct medical conditions. Chronic non progressive encephalopathy is absolutely not the politically correct modern equivalent (that would be developmentally disabled) but in fact a specific term for a specific medical condition. It's pretty fucking important for a doctor to distinguish between these in order to prescribe the correct treatment, much like it's pretty important for scientists to agree on specific meaningful definitions of scientific terms in order to compare data from independent studies.
Re:Soon to be ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Planet was never a scientific term in the first place. That's why there was such a stink about Pluto.