2 Red Objects Found In the Asteroid Belt. They Shouldn't Be There. (nytimes.com) 80
Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot quotes the New York Times: Two red things are hiding in a part of the solar system where they shouldn't be. The space rocks may have come from beyond Neptune, and potentially offer hints at the chaos of the early solar system.
Scientists led by Sunao Hasegawa from JAXA, the Japanese space agency, reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 26, 2021 that two objects, called 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia, spotted in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter appear to have originated beyond Neptune. The discoveries could one day provide direct evidence of the chaos that existed in the early solar system.
"If true it would be a huge deal," says Hal Levison, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, who was not involved in the research...
"People have been talking about some fraction of asteroids coming from the Kuiper belt for quite a while now," said Josh Emery, a planetary scientist from Northern Arizona University who was not involved in the paper. He said the research "definitely takes a step" toward finding evidence to support that hypothesis. Not everyone is convinced just yet. Dr. Levison, who was also not involved in the paper, says objects should become less red as they approach the sun. "It seems to be inconsistent with our models," said Dr. Levison, who is the head of NASA's Lucy mission, which is scheduled to launch in October to study Jupiter's Trojans [asteroids captured in its orbit].
Michaël Marsset from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a co-author on the paper, agrees that it's not clear why they would be so red, but it is possibly related to how long it took them to become implanted into the asteroid belt. Some Trojans may also be as red, but haven't been found yet.
To truly confirm the origin of 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia, a spacecraft would likely need to visit them.
Scientists led by Sunao Hasegawa from JAXA, the Japanese space agency, reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 26, 2021 that two objects, called 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia, spotted in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter appear to have originated beyond Neptune. The discoveries could one day provide direct evidence of the chaos that existed in the early solar system.
"If true it would be a huge deal," says Hal Levison, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, who was not involved in the research...
"People have been talking about some fraction of asteroids coming from the Kuiper belt for quite a while now," said Josh Emery, a planetary scientist from Northern Arizona University who was not involved in the paper. He said the research "definitely takes a step" toward finding evidence to support that hypothesis. Not everyone is convinced just yet. Dr. Levison, who was also not involved in the paper, says objects should become less red as they approach the sun. "It seems to be inconsistent with our models," said Dr. Levison, who is the head of NASA's Lucy mission, which is scheduled to launch in October to study Jupiter's Trojans [asteroids captured in its orbit].
Michaël Marsset from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a co-author on the paper, agrees that it's not clear why they would be so red, but it is possibly related to how long it took them to become implanted into the asteroid belt. Some Trojans may also be as red, but haven't been found yet.
To truly confirm the origin of 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia, a spacecraft would likely need to visit them.
They probably detected... (Score:4, Funny)
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Come on, that is crazy talk. We all know Tesla Paint really sucks and would be fadded weeks after it launch exposed to solar radiation.
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You know how insurance is always "X years or Y miles".
I have a hunch they're way past the Y miles. No matter what Y may be.
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On the other hand, that's probably miles DRIVEN. Like, having your car shipped across the ocean wouldn't incur mileage for insurance purposes.
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Musk: "You don't know the funny part, it wasn't even insured!"
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What are the chances the car, being his, is STILL insured and no one noticed, except the insurance co who is patting themselves on the back for raking in a cool $2000 a year on something that voided the policy the second it got airborne ;)
Finally... (Score:3)
Re: Finally... (Score:2)
EUROs (Score:2)
Extremely Unknown Red Objects.
Exnay on the redsay. (Score:2)
Michaël Marsset from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a co-author on the paper, agrees that it's not clear why they would be so red, but it is possibly related to how long it took them to become implanted into the asteroid belt. Some Trojans may also be as red, but haven't been found yet.
As a general rule "Trojan" and "red" aren't suppose to be discussed.
Apparently it's a secret report (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll tell you over and over again: if you want the rest of us to take interest in and respond to your article, don't post fucking paywalled links.
Re:Apparently it's a secret report (Score:4, Funny)
WE DON'T CARE!
---The Management.
Here (Score:2, Troll)
You fucking crybaby. Takes all of three seconds to open a new tab and paste the url https://archive.is/4MEKB [archive.is]
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Thanks for the hint, I never considered using archive like that for paywalls.
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"I'll tell you over and over again: if you want the rest of us to take interest in and respond to your article, don't post fucking paywalled links."
Just use reader mode and refresh.
Re:Apparently it's a secret report (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes I could clear cookies, but I'm not going to log on to my eight jillion online accounts all over again just to look at one article.
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Just open a private browsing window (aka porn mode, in Safari it's "File - New private window").
If that doesn't work, use a separate browser. Some browser you normally never use, like Chrome for example.
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Are you not capable of deleting just the cookies from that domain? Are we techies or are we whining little bitch. . . er, never mind. I forgot. Those are basically the same thing.
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People tell you to clear you cookies, so you register an account instead? You must get p0wned a lot.
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Cookie Auto Delete for Firefox and Chrome is good for this.
Unfortunately a lot of paywall sites have got wise to it so it doesn't always work.
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. . . and we tell you over and over again, clear your fucking cookies.
This is the answer. However, I've noticed a trend where mobile browsers no longer let you delete site specific cookies. It's all or nothing, and it's obnoxious.
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Dear Times,
You need your ad revenue more than we need your crap article likely copy/pasted from another source.
Sincerely,
Everyone
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- Open Arxiv.
- Search for "Hasegawa" the mentioned lead author. OK, 1400 hits - prorbably a fairly common name. Let's try that AND one of the named asteroids, Pompeja (since that's a fairly unusual spelling - Latin probably).
- Voila - one paper, with a leading code of 2106 - i.e. 2021 month 6, so almost certainly what we're looking for. https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.149... [arxiv.org]
Hmm, that article is in my "recently foll
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I use this Disable Javascript plugin: https://chrome.google.com/webs... [google.com]
I primarily got it for development purposes, but have found it's wonderful at bypassing all sorts of paywalls these days. Obviously you're out of luck if it's a proper server-side solution, but a lot of them don't seem to be.
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Slashdot doesn't have good enough software to get paid per click, they get paid per story based on readership.
Is one of them a teapot? (Score:2)
If it is the case, indeed, it shouldn't be there, the teapot should orbit the sun between Earth and Mars, not in the asteroid belt.
Quick! (Score:2)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They got a lot of shit done with resources that seem appalling even for the day.
Don't be so un-inclusive (Score:2)
They love that belt as much as we do.
Red Dwarf (Score:1)
Extra-solar objects? (Score:3)
Rogue planets, objects not part of a solar system and too small to form stars, have been showing up more and more frequently in astronomy. If the complex, deduced models of star evolution and early matter collection in the universe are flawed, there could be far more "rogue planets" than current models. And the models are definitely flawed: they don't successfully explain the details of Hubble's Constant nor the velocities of the very oldest measured galaxies, nor have they successfully explained quasars. When theories are so immature and have so many gaps in their predicted results, it's worth keeping alternative theories in mind.
For example, the increasing number of rogue planets found might indicate that solar systems encounter them far more frequently than currently modeled, disturbing planetary orbits and creating calamitous intersections among orbits of moons, or disturbing the Oort cloud and raining extra comets on bodies near the Sun.
Re:Extra-solar objects? (Score:5, Funny)
Rogue planets
Rouge planets, in this case.
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Oh. Oh. Oh my. that is.... oh my, I'm quite jealous I never thought of that pun.
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All to do with the maths. They can only do nominal models and must distort those to fit circumstance, nominal in that they can only ever be an somewhat approximate. Due to the nature of the maths involved, the model for a solar system will always be a chaotic model. The numbers become large enough that chaotic outcomes always become inevitable, the rare normal.
So all solar system form in a nominal but chaotic fashion (keep in mind, not just that solar system but the galaxy around it), there is a nominal mo
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"Model broken", unfortunately, does not allow for analysis or prediction. And "chaotic" does not mean completely unpredictable. Chaotic systems almost inevitably have very distinct trends, pools of stability that are not absolute but allow some analysis of likelihood. I'd agree that models of the solar system tend to this approach, partly because they are indeed chaotic. Miniscule distinctions in starting conditions, or in events during the lifespan of the system, lead to profoundly distinct outcomes.
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Well it does because the chaos comes from ignoring the rest of the galaxy, you can not predict anything at all in reality because the galaxy which is not being modelled is disrupting nominal solar systems models, anything can arise. Galaxies collide and WOW would that do interesting things, not with the planets and suns so much as they OORT clouds comets all over the place pulled from OORT clouds, and the occasional far more severe impact, suns and planets and planetary systems distorted and scatted. Althou
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Chaotic (in math) only means that if you e.g. use floats/doubles and try to predict something by a long sequence of arithmetic steps (a million additions e.g.) you get hit badly by minimal variations in starting conditions and/or by "inaccuracies" regarding arithmetic results.
In other words: no a butterfly in the Amazonas obviously can not cause a thunderstorm in the UK. However trying to calculate its delicate impact with its tiny wings, can lead to a cascading error bar if you "numerically" extrapolate it
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> it does not mean that we do not know where such an object will be in 10 or 100 years.
Except when we do not. I agree with most of your point, but there are many objects in the Solar System which are extraordinarily difficult to predict precisely ofer 100 years. The inner moons of Jupiter, for example, are affected by passing near each other, by Jupiter's magnetic fields, and by the most tenuous, outermost layers of Jupiter's atmosphere. Similarly, objects in low earth orbit are perturbed by Earth's mag
Just Kuiper Objects...like Comets (Score:2)
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Perhaps because they are not comets but asteroids?
Asteroid = huge chunk of rock or metal or both
Comet = huge chunk of ice and frozen gases - aka ice
Small difference. But huge in case they try an impact and you want to figure how to prevent it.
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Perhaps because they are not comets but asteroids?
Technically an asteroid is any small body in the inner solar system. Yes, usually they are made of rock and/or metal but these are ones that seem to have the same composition as a comet, which is the entire point of the article (yes, I know it's Slashdot and the usual rules apply but if you happen to take a peek the article will explain a lot).
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Technically an asteroid is any small body in the inner solar system. Yes, usually they are made of rock and/or metal but these
Nope. Technically an asteroid is a piece of rock/metal flying around anywhere in the solar system.
And a Comet is made of frozen gases, or even water ice.
but these are ones that seem to have the same composition as a comet :P
Interesting. Then they are comets
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Nope. Technically an asteroid is a piece of rock/metal flying around anywhere in the solar system.
That's not the strict definition I learnt which is consistent with Wikipedia's [wikipedia.org]. However, a wider search suggests that there is no consistent definition. NASA uses your "small rock" definition, Britannica seems to suggest that any small object is an asteroid regardless of composition or location.
So it seems that there is perhaps no generally agreed-upon technical definition other than it has to be small and solid.
colored rocks (Score:3)
Always picking on the colored rocks. Of course its the colored rocks that are out of place.
Shouldn't be there? (Score:4, Funny)
What is this? A contract for a Van Halen performance?
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That's funny, beautiful reference and here I am out of mod points.
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With apologies to Gregory Benford (Score:2)
Link to the full paper, free access at arXiv (Score:4, Informative)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.149... [arxiv.org]
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But are the Scientists stunned? (Score:2)
The reddest objects inside Jupiter's trajectory (Score:2)
The reddest object in our solar system is not some rock in thr Kuiper belt, but Mars. I understand, that astronomers have a proper explanation for its redness, and that most other objects in our solar system fit neatly into the "inside Jupiter blue, outside Jupiter red" rule, but at least a brief mentioning of "yes, Mars is even redder, but this is because ..." would have greatly helped the NYT article.
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When describing the colour of Mars, the description "salmon pink" is the one that pops up most often. The poetic description of "blood red" is fit for poetry, and possibly printing on toilet paper (if you have a lot o
Goddam aliens..... (Score:2)
Bertrand Russel's... (Score:2)
...Teapots?