Small World Discovered Far Beyond Pluto 63
astroengine writes: "After a decade of searching, astronomers have found a second dwarf-like planet far beyond Pluto and its Kuiper Belt cousins, a presumed no-man's land that may turn out to be anything but. How Sedna, which was discovered in 2003, and its newly found neighbor, designated 2012 VP 2113 by the Minor Planet Center, came to settle in orbits so far from the sun is a mystery. Sedna comes no closer than about 76 times as far from the sun as Earth, or 76 astronomical units. The most distant leg of its 11,400-year orbit is about 1,000 astronomical units. Newly found VP 2113's closest approach to the sun is about 80 astronomical units and its greatest distance is 452 astronomical units (abstract). The small world is roughly 280 miles (450 kilometers) wide, less than half the estimated diameter of Sedna."
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Dwarf-like? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dwarf-like? Is this planet like Dopey, or more like Thorin Oakenshield?
Didn't we just go through this whole rigmarole of redefining Pluto as a "dwarf planet" so we could use that as a real term for bodies like this?
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What will be LOADS OF FUN is the hilarity which will ensue if their hunch is correct that the orbit of this new dwarf planet and Sedna hint at the existence of a planet further out which is several times the mass of Earth.
Are dwarf planets supposed to be BIG?
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As the WISE spacecraft was sent up specifically to look for these sorts of possible large planets, and found nothing after an extensive search, it would be amusing indeed. But it's highly unlikely.
Re:Dwarf-like? (Score:4, Informative)
Something just a few times the mass of earth would've been outside the detection range.
>WISE was not able to detect Kuiper belt objects, as their temperatures are too low.[19] It was able to detect any objects warmer than 70–100 K. A Neptune-sized object would be detectable out to 700 AU
Re:Dwarf-like? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really news.
When Eris, MakeMake and Sedna were accepted in the IAU's list they already had about 50 more 'probable dwarf planets' inside the Kuiper belt. The following year the list of 'probable dwarf planets' grew to nearly 400.
The estimated number is about 10,000 dwarf planets in our solar system. Hopefully we won't have big news announcements for each one. But hey, slow news days need something...
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Not really news? Guess that is why you are not a journalist. Once they discover the many other dwarf planets then it will stop being news but a finding like this is a big deal. The other dwarf planets are not confirmed. Until then, this is newsworthy as it is confirmation of that hypothesis.
We keep finding more comets and they are relatively common but most of them are news and there are multiple newsworthy comets a year reported (and many other little ones not reported).
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Actually, this is big news. Because if you looked a bit deeper than just the headline, you'd realize why this discovery is important and why many more will be very important. Sedna has one of the oddest orbits in the solar system. No other known object has an orbit like it. Every object known in the Kuiper belt has their orbits influenced by Neptune. Sedna was obviously influenced by something way beyond the Kuiper belt. This new dwarf planet has a very similar orbit to Sedna. This is now the second object
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The difference is that, together with Sedna, this is only the 2nd object found so far out.
From what I understood, the importance of this is that it may shed a new light on how the solar system came to be. I thought that the general theory of small dwarf planets in weird orbits is that they were flung into that orbit by the larger planets that passed by them at some point in the past. However, Sedna and the new object are so far out that they don't cross any orbit of a larger planet. So, something else is go
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What will be LOADS OF FUN is the hilarity which will ensue if their hunch is correct that the orbit of this new dwarf planet and Sedna hint at the existence of a planet further out which is several times the mass of Earth.
Are dwarf planets supposed to be BIG?
The hypothised big planet would probably be a planet, not a dwarf planet, considering how it is hypothized it is herding these smaller bodies.
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They prefer "little planet".
It's a trap (Score:1)
It's Niburu
Graveyard of broken ships... (Score:2)
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Pluto (Score:5, Informative)
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Thanks for Googling that for me (seriously)!
How big are these? This big... (Score:3)
maybe Disney names this one (Score:5, Funny)
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Goddam....
Now it's going to take days to get that out of my head again.
Just that line alone is enough to wake the beast.
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It's probably just a publicity stunt for the 50 year anniversary of It's a Small World.
Disney knew it all along. (Score:2)
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But if you can give me the exact orbital parameters, that'd be great.
Second link [minorplanetcenter.net] in the summary.
Minor Planet Center? (Score:3, Funny)
The org name makes them feel inferior to the Gas Giant Center, but better-smelling.
That's some ellipse... (Score:2)
If I'm reading it correctly, a 76 X 1000 ellipse. Kind of like some comets, except that it never reaches the inner (or outer) solar system. Maybe we need to redefine a few things.
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Maybe we need a name for the region of space in which there are stable orbits around the sun. At some distance the gravity o
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
No-Man's Land? (Score:4, Funny)
So, the suggestion is that there are people out there?
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Just no men. Lot's of women tho.
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That's where they're going to send ship B.
Some noteable geographical features... (Score:1)
...include 3 small volcanoes and a glass dome containing some dead plant material.
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If you want to use that sort of definition, then how old would you say the universe is? The universe doesn't orbit the sun or any other star. And you can't say it is 13800 million earth years old either, since the earth hasn't been orbiting the sun for that long. And how far is a lightyear, if the duration of a year depends on where you are?
When a year is mentioned without any other context
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Sorry, I forgot Earth is the center of the universe and all measurements of scale and time are related to it. Silly me requesting that science article be clear, concise and accurate.
Really? (Score:1)
People like you are why I stopped visiting /. . How on earth does asking such an elementary question rather than googling it contribute to the conversation? How often do you shoehorn semicolons into your posts? I bet you googled how to use THOSE.
Frankly, I'm surprised this nonsense didn't get up-moded.
New Horizons in 2015 (Score:1)
New Horizons at WIKI [wikipedia.org]
Douglas Adams already discovered this (Score:1)
A planet in Earth's solar system beyond the orbit of Pluto. Rupert was named Persephone, but nicknamed Rupert after an astronomer's pet parrot. It was eventually settled by the Grebulons.